The DCist, a miserable but extremely popular DC-focused blog, used this headline the other week to report about the coming WVU vs University of Maryland football game:
Besides the general pointlessness and poor writing of the post, I wonder why they used “‘Neers” to refer to WVU. First, the relevant nickname here is “‘eers”. Granted, I have fairly deep connections to the place, but most sports fans–of which we would, presumably, count the writer–would know that. Second, what type of nickname would start at the end of a syllable and cross over to the next? None, that’s what. Nicknames are nicknames because they are short and roll off the tongue. Screwing up syllables doesn’t do this. Notice how “‘eers” is one full syllable. So a basic copy editor, who is, presumably, familiar with basic word structure, should have caught this one.
I can’t believe the terrible writing of this area is driving me to become a nit-picky reader/writer. Do you people see what you are driving me to? (Yes, that last bit was intentional.)