Friday, July 8, 2011

Redundancies and Solecisms

Since I monetized my blog (sold out to greed and corporate interests) by allowing Google to place ads on it, which so far has netted me about $3.47, I'm looking at what ads show up. I sold ad space for 20 years, and take a professional interest. The process of ad placement on the page is entirely automatic, based on the content of my posts. So the one I just posted mentioned trikes, and an ad for "three wheel trikes" showed up. I wonder what other kind of trikes there might be besides ones with three wheels. People just don't pay attention to language. Quite often when I am out on a ride on my trike, passersby will call out, "nice bike!" This is of course inaccurate, since bike is short for bicycle and by definition, means it has two wheels. Sometimes I correct them. More often I just seethe inwardly. As a regular reader of Craig's List, I've also noticed that "recumbent bike" to many people means a type of stationary exercise equipment that has no wheels at all and doesn't go anywhere by means of pedaling--though perhaps it goes somewhere by peddling, which is why it's on Craig's List in the first place.

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