Playing with Words (A "Grammar Nazi/Short Shorts" Post)

Some random points, in no apparent order!

• Years ago, I would wonder why Bono, the lead singer of U2, pronounced his name "bonno" instead of "boe-noe," like Sonny Bono. Then I found out that his real name is Paul Hewson, and that "Bono" is short for Bono Vox, a Latin phrase which means "good voice." And as I recalled from high school, the Latin pronunciation of "bono" is "bonno."
• I'd never heard of record producer and music executive Marion "Suge" Knight until his arrest for murder in 2015. Actually, "heard" isn't quite the right word. I read about his arrest online, and when I saw the name "Suge" Knight, I thought "Sooj?" What the hell kinda name is "Sooj?" Well, as it turns out, "Suge" is short for "Sugar Bear," so obviously it isn't pronounced the way I pronounced it in my mind as I read it... But I'd like to have a few words with the guy who decided on the spelling of "Suge."
• Every so often, someone will write a short version of a word and make up the spelling of the abbreviation. (I did an entire post on the abbreviations for "microphone" here.) Sometimes these shortened words work for me, sometimes not. I've seen people abbreviate "favorite" as both "fave" and "fav." "Fave" makes sense. It would rhyme with words like "stave" and "knave." I've also seen "fav," which strikes me as wrong. I see "fav" and think, That rhymes with "have" and "salve." Another word is "vacation," sometimes abbreviated in print as "vacay" (which makes perfect sense to me) and sometimes "vaca" (which does not make sense to me). I'd pronounce that second one as "vacca," which rhymes with the way that most people think people from Massachusetts pronounce words like "hacker" and "tracker." Actually, Vacca was the name of a 6th-century grammarian, which seems very appropriate in this case.
• This isn't really grammar-related, but if you sneeze and someone says "God bless you" or "Bless you," you probably say "Thank you" to him or her. Do you thank people who say "gesundheit" (as I do) instead? People rarely say "Thank you" to me when I say "gesundheit." Why? I'm wishing them health. So, if anyone ever says "gesundheit" to you after you sneeze, thank the sucker. Or I'll hunt you down and smack you.
• I'm seeing more and more people writing "awe" lately, when (for example) something is really cute and they mean to write "aw" (or "aww")! As my friend Betsy recently said, that works "only if you really are in awe!"
• Sometimes I'm writing dialogue (or just my blog, which I kinda write like I'm actually speaking to you), and I want to stress a word, so I'll drag it out a bit. For instance, when you read "realllly," you probably read it just the way I want you to read it! I've seen people do this in different ways, ways which -- once again! -- I just might find fault with. If you stress "big" by writing "biiiig," it works... But sometimes, people think that just repeating the last letter of any word will have that effect. When I see a word like "loveeee," I don't read it the way the writer intended. (If I were to stretch out a word like "love," I'd probably write "luvvvv" or something similar.) To me, "loveeee" would be pronounced like "lovey," and as most of us know, "Lovey" was Mrs. Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island.
• Finally, speaking of abbreviations, I've seen people try to stress expressions from texting or the internet, like "LOL" ("laugh out loud," or "laughing out loud," as you know). I've actually seen things like "lololol" which would technically translate to "laughing out loud out loud out loud." ("OKAY, I GET IT. YOU WERE LAUGHING OUT LOUD!!!") Another one I saw recently was when Kendra Wilkinson tweeted "lmaoooo," which would mean "laugh my ass off off off off!" That makes a lot of sense, right? Oh, well, other than "btw" and "IIRC," I generally stay away from those kinds of abbreviation anyway.

Hey, no big finish here. Just some random points, as I told you at the beginning of the post!

Thanks for your time.