Words and all that

Happy. National. Punctuation. Day. Really, I, mean, it,

I swear, the media can gin up a phony controversy over the stupidest things:

NEWTOWN -- Newtown eighth-grader Thomas Hurley III was thrilled to be chosen as a contestant on the Kids Week episode of the television game show "Jeopardy!" that was filmed in February and aired this week.

PC has been running amok for some time, of course. And just when we think it can't possibly get any amoker, here come Seattle and New York to prove us wrong:

"Perfect metaphor for the times" alert:

One of only a handful of a type of small bird from Asia to have been spotted in the U.K. in the past two centuries was thrilling twitchers off the northwest coast of Scotland earlier this week.

Then, tragedy struck. It flew into the blade of a wind turbine and was killed.

A lot has been written about how the term "tragedy" has been weakened and diluted. Originally, it had a very specific meaning: A tragic figure was someone who had the potential for greatness but was brought down by his character flaws. By that definition, Richard Nixon was a tragic figure. But in recent years the term has been used for everything from floods and other weather extremes to missing a party because of coming down with a cold.

The New York Times has joined The Associated Press in getting all icky-gooey over "illegal immigrant." From its stylebook:

Newspeak in the Associated Press Stylebook:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

For the "questions we never thought to ask" file: Why do people use nope even though no is shorter?

RIP, the pun:

These mind-bending two paragraphs really stopped my when I was crusin' through the news online Saturday evening: