To Alden from SoHo... In "Woe Is I," Pat says farther refers to physical distance. Further means to a greater extent or degree. "Lumpy insisted that he could walk no farther, and he refused to discuss it any further."

Answer about City of, etc. It may very well be standard terminology about legal jurisdiction and boundaries. The postal address and the common name for a location may be very different from the legal name. For example, I grew up in a small village on Long Island where the signs read "Town of North Hempstead" even though we were quite far from the place called Hempstead. I will venture a guess that it's the politicians in charge of various districts who like to put up the signs because they get to add their names. Similar to on the websites. I just tested my theory and it works:
http://www.northhempstead.com/

BAGS. Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size. That is the order for adjectives in the French language. In English it seems to be perfect logic in saying small green apple instead of green small apple because green apple is the more important category. Doesn't it all boil down to custom? I have never seen apples group together in the store by size.

Love these segments!

Less and fewer. Now always being used incorrectly, to the point that one of the cable channels has as their tag line "less commercials".
How do we fight this?

Back in my college days, upstate NY, we used to go out and get some "za" (pizza), usually with extra cheese. Haven't heard or thought about that in many years!

Thanks for a great show.

Regarding the "Za", I'm from Buffalo and we called pizza "Za" all the time. I guess it was out thing.

Please explain why "is" and "are" have been misused by all including BBC radio spokespersons? example: "How is things?" "There is many choices? etc;
What is going on here??

To see really rampant use of abbreviations in online communications, take a look at flyertalk.com - a website dedicated to discussions about air travel.

The "netspeak" which has recently invaded the e-correspondence of the general population (u, lol, rofl, l8er, omg, g2g, ttyl, tho, luv, etc..) has its origins in the instant messaging conversations of tweens at the turn of the millennium. It seems that they're now in their early twenties and are unable to kick the nasty habit in the workplace...

In France they say "informations" when we say "information" sing and plural -

pointing out bad signage and feigning surprise... smart people laughing at dumb people

Great facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2209553478
"i judge you when you use poor grammar"

Would you please discuss the difference between "any time" and "anytime"?

I just heard Patricia say: "He couldn't resist making a 'funny'." Patricia, a "funny" isn't a noun. That like when people say: "my bad" instead of "my mistake".

How did it come to be that 'transparent' came to describe something easily seen or understood? Wouldn't opaque be better?

How did "entrées" ever come to mean "main course" on American menus and how could such a mistake perdure?

Sacrebleu! It drives me crazy.

Sadly, "Brooklyn Tattoo's" on Third Avenue in Brooklyn has gone out of business.

My favorite sign ever, grammatically correct but questionable as a promotion; as seen at a then new but now-closed cafe at West Broadway and Canal:

"Now Serving Toast"

Highway sign seen years ago while approaching a city in the south of France:

Big straight ahead arrow saying "Toutes Directions" with an arrow branching off to the right saying "Autres Directions"!

I really want to know why contemporary English doesn't use the Thou (you familiar) form anymore. Why do we just use the formal form form of 2nd person address? Are we just prissy?

Quick one: Is there any difference between "further" and "farther"?

What's the rule about usage of "might" vs. "may"? As in: "This might happen;" or "This may happen"?
Thanks!

This is not really a grammatical question but I would be curious to hear what Patricia thinks
of the trend of cities and towns phrasing their names such as The Borough of Madison. The City of Newark, etc. These are fine. I am
bothered by the ones that I see such as The City of Jersey City or The City of Union City. Why the repetition? So silly.