[Ads-l] "almost literally"

[Mark Mandel]

"Towards" is no stranger to my usage. It doesn't sound weird to me. And I
suspect you've heard it before on multiple occasions, but your mind has
dismissed the /-z/ as inconsequential.

Mark Mandel

On Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 5:15 PM Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I hadn't previously run into this permutation of misuse of "literally" as a
> generic intensifier:
>
>
> https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/issues/362#issuecomment-368269989
>
> "In fact, I would go as far as to say that a hardcore mode would go a long
> > ways towards bridging a major problem with [the video game] Endless Sky:
> > that death and failure has almost literally no impact."
>
>
> Note also the doubly redundant *-s* suffixing in "a long ways towards"
> where "a long way toward" would do.  Is it even idiomatic in any dialect? I
> can imagine "a long ways toward" and "a long way towards" in some of them,
> but "a long ways towards" seems likes overkills.  Also caught that "go as
> far as to" for "go so far as to", though maybe the former is more common
> than I think. It looks weird and slangish to me, like "would/should/could
> of" in place of standard "... have".  The "bridging a ... problem" mixed
> metaphor is interesting, too.  Reminds me of Farberisms and Berraisms, like
> "hit the nail right on the nose".
>
> This is trivia I suppose; it's not in a professionally edited publication,
> and I have no idea of the background of the writer, who might be young, or
> a non-native English speaker.
>
> --
> Stanton McCandlish
> McCandlish Consulting
> 5400 Foothill Blvd Suite B
> Oakland CA 94601-5516
>
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>
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>
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>
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