I was recently awarded my first (and I hope only) coveted "Red X".
This little fellow 
.
It was awarded for the following post:
Howard Brinton Star Power Annual Conference
Christina Ethridge said it best: "Tony - why in the world is this post flagged with an X ?????"
Well - I'm not sure. In my points summary there was a canned statement "No points awarded (spam,plagerism,advertising,etc)"
Alrighty then....
Was it spam? I don't think so - but I'm open to debate it!
Was it plagerism? An unusual - but apparently valid (but not recognized by the AR spell-checker) - spelling of plagiarism. No - it was unequivocally not plagiarism.
Was it advertising? Well - it asked what other Active Rainers planned to attend what is one of the biggest conferences of the year in the hope that we might get together. It's very difficult to ask if someone else is going to be attending an event without stating which event that might be! :-)
So - apparently - by process of elimination - it must have been "etc."
I looked up etc. in Wikipedia - and finally found the answer:
Et cetera is a Latin expression that means "and other things", or "and so on". It is taken directly from the Latin expression which literally means "and the rest (of such things)." Et means "and"; cetera (plural of ceterum/caeterum) means "the rest."
It is also sometimes spelled et caetera or et cætera, and is often abbreviated to etc. Archaic abbreviations, most commonly used in legislation, notations for mathematics or qualifications, include &/c., &c., and &ca..
The phrase et cetera is often used to represent the logical continuation of some sort of series of descriptions. For example, in the following expression...
We will need a lot of fruit: apples, bananas, oranges, etc. ... the 'etc.' stands for 'and other types of fruit'. It is an error to say or write "and etc.," in which the word "and" would be redundant. This would translate as "and and the rest".
It has to do with the FRUIT!! But wait - haven't we seen the demise of the fruit to be replaced with such popular terms as sigmoid-chutney and falafel-birkenstocks? I've even seen love-in-a-mist. Seems like the graphics may reach a point where they will qualify for points as a comment in and of themselves!
OK - so it's not etc.
Well - what then?
Who knows? Who really cares?
Time to ramble on and get back to work..........
;)
;)
