Tag grammar

Romeo

There’s a popular misconception that in Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet asks, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”, she’s wondering where he is. “Wherefore” means “why”, not “where”.

In other words, she’s saying, “Of all the guys I could’ve fallen in love with, why did it have to be Romeo?”

Hope this sets things straight.

What’s A News Octet?

One of my peeves is the phrase “news byte”.

A “news bite”, I can understand: it’s a bite-sized, i.e., small piece of news; something that fits on a napkin.

But a “news byte”? What is that? A news item that can only take on one of 256 values and fits into a C char?

The same goes for “sound bite” and “sound byte”, by the way.