Today's language lesson from the curmudgeonly nitpicker: "Via" means "by way of," as in, "We flew from Indianapolis to San Antonio via Dallas/Fort Worth." It does NOT mean "by means of," as in, "I talked to Aunt Betty via telephone" or, "Uncle Sam informed me of my draft status via letter." OK?
However, there is an interesting new way to use the word with it's correct "by way of" meaning. Say I want to point you to this article about evangelist Ted Haggard's problems. And say I ran across it while perusing Masson's Blog and want to give that site credit for having found it. Then I might write something like: "Hey, all you chuckleheads, here's the lowdown on hypocritical God mongers (via Masson's Blog)."
Class dismissed.
