BigBadBill, I really want to thank you!

Your take on the use of the word “nauseous” was a highly informative and I enjoyed reading every long winded second of it. Especially the part where you go into detail about your “trusty 1961 Webster’s dictionary with the slate blue cover, onion-skin pages…”

Even more I just want you to know I appreciate you weighing in and correcting everyone on the use of the term “scan”. I for one was one of the few people who read “scan quickly” and immediately reverted back to my 18th century dictionary thus leaving me in a state of confusion.

Ever hear someone say, “I feel nauseous?”

That used to drive me crazy, because in my trusty 1961 Webster’s dictionary with the slate blue cover, the onion-skin pages, and the thumb cut-outs for quick access to each letter of the alphabet, the word “nauseous” was clearly defined as [I'm paraphrasing here] “having qualities or characteristics that cause nausea. e.g. a nauseous smell”

In fact, when someone would tell me they feel nauseous, I would smartly say, “You know, you’re right; you’re making me sick!”

Ha hah. Except by 2007, so many people had used the word nauseous to mean nauseated, that the two words had become synonymous in usage and meaning. Even Webster’s acknowledges the definition this way now.

Once a word is used often enough to connote a specific meaning, and understood by a majority of the intended audience to have clearly communicated a specific idea or concept, then the word has now achieved a new definition — even if that new definition diverges from the “original” definition.

If you think about it, the problem is one of perspective; how far back should one go in choosing the authentic, authoritative “original” definition? 40 years? 100 years? Back to the 18th century?

I would argue that there is no “right” answer; it depends on the word’s current usage flexibility, it depends upon the audience certainly, and undoubtedly it also depends upon how comfortable with change the speaker, writer, IMer, or blogger is.

So when greg said “scan quickly,” I’d wager that everybody who read his remarks still correctly understood the specific concept or idea he was attempting to communicate. By that yardstick, greg is absolutely, incontrovertibly in the right in using the word “scan” just the way he did.

So what if greg was trying to assuage his own feelings of inadequacy by “me tooing” a post that appears to be, at its core, a none-too-subtle attempt by ShandyKing to make himself feel better than others by putting others down?

Obviously, ShandyKing is attempting to instill in himself the sense that he’s somehow different than or better than “they” are; he does so explicitly by using rich imagery to evoke the image of “them” in the first place!

greg does nothing more than unabashedly attempt to include himself in the “exclusive” club that ShandyKing has created.

Then you, Ricklionhart, obviously inspired by all this, unwittingly follow the example set by ShandyKing and in turn put greg down.

Dude?! How unique or different are you, really, if you’re but one member of an ever-expanding group of people all expressing the same negative behavior?

Do you talk to all participants like that?

There’s a couple things that stand out as red flags for hiring designers to me:

1. Bad typography choices. If you’re using Times New Roman or another MS Word-default font, forget it.
2. Bad alignment choices. An all-centered resume means immediate disqualification for me. Good designers know grids, and if their resume doesn’t have one, they’re out.

Jeffrey Veen has a list of dos and don’ts for design portfolios that I particularly like also.

According to my Oxford American Dictionary, this is one of the definitions of “scan”:

“look quickly but not very thoroughly through (a document or other text) in order to identify relevant information”