>>>Paying the bills and opening other official looking mail from the past week, I just got a smile from this one. It is from the U.S. Census Bureau and warmly addressed to "TO RESIDENT AT...." Wait, it gets better. This is not the new census form, which I have read will be much less time consuming than earlier ones. No, this is just a heads up. Here is the beginning:
>>>
>>>"Dear Resident:
>>>
>>>"
About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it in promptly."
>>
>>This mean you're supposed to try it on and, if it doesn't fit, put on weight till you do?
>>In UK we fill IN forms.
>>
>
>"Fill out" is fine here. We all know there are lots of small usage differences like this. "In hospital" vs. "in the hospital," for example.
>
>There are even differences within the U.S. In most of the country we get in line. In New York they get on line. You join a queue.
And the Germans cut *in* line ( okay that will be my last ethnic stereotype of the morning unless some drunken Irish man picks a fight with me ... )
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
