I am a better writer than you, and if I say use "chosen" instead of "decided", you should listen to me.

In college, I had a good friend who transferred from the College of Education over to my College of Arts and Letters and we ended up in an American Literature class together. I'd had the professor before and knew what she liked, and the College of Education had, uh, a certain lack of rigor when it came to essay writing. She asked me to edit her paper, and in an attempt to be a good friend, I pretty much slaughtered her paper with edits & recommendations. I probably threw too much at her at once because she didn't take my advice.

Guess who aced the class and who barely passed? Yo, you think you can go from zero to Henry James without any help, it's no skin off my nose.

Offen. Or all Pirates of Penzance style, if I'm in that kind of mood.

I think, in general, people inside a group see it as more individualistic and people outside it see it as more conformist. Not that there aren't actual differences between groups, but I think that's a common difference in perception.

Random question: Do you pronounce the 't' in 'often'?

Nope. And I don't think it's more correct to do so, either.

She sent me the revised version, and it looks like she ignored most of my editorial corrections and only changed the substance/structure.

That's annoying, but also odd to me.

I pretty much slaughtered her paper with edits & recommendations

Turns out she didn't see my edits because she had revision mode turned off on her computer. While I was on the phone with her just now she turned it on, and was all, "Oh! Lots of changes!"

So I feel better that I didn't waste my time, and bad that I assumed she would ignore me. Technical problem, rather than human error.

Yeah, pronouncing the "t" in often is not more correct by any means, at least according to two different speech professors I've had (one at regular uni and the other at ACT). So no beating yourself up about not pronouncing it.

When I was three or four I noticed something strange about language--that if a word ends on a hard consonant and the next word begins with the same hard consonant, you only pronounce the consonant once.

So if you were saying "Cat tree" you'd only say the 't' sound once. For some reason this realization really bothered me. But after experimenting I realized that saying the 't' twice sounds really weird.

I'm not sure why this bothered me. Maybe it was that this was language rule that everybody knew but was not taught explicitly?

Anyway, the moral is that my brain has always been weird.

Anyway, the moral is that my brain has always been weird.

One of us, one of us ...

I say offen, and I haven't changed that one. I did grow up saying "acrost" instead of across, though. I thought it was just my mother being weird, but my boss says it too!

My mother had problems with the name Nelson, she pronounced it Neltson. I'm afraid my sisters and I made fun of her, though she knew she wasn't saying it the same way as everyone else. She had to force herself not to put the T in there. I can't recall if she put the T in other words with that construction--and can't think of any other words with that construction.

So if you were saying "Cat tree" you'd only say the 't' sound once. For some reason this realization really bothered me. But after experimenting I realized that saying the 't' twice sounds really weird.

...

I pronounce both Ts.

Also, often has a t when I say it. February occasional, possibly often, has an r. That one I'm back and forth on.