rbc's not rbcs or RBC's
WBCs
EEGs

Use 's to form the plural of single letters and symbols, i.e., serial 7's.

For numbers, add s without an apostrophe. Exception: With single numerals, add 's:

500s
She is in her 20s.
6's and 7's

The answer is yes.

And the only "true" nominative forms occur only as a tiny corpus of pronouns: I, he, she, we, they and who - if you are one of those who still use "whom".

Her can be used in more than one way right? Not just for possession. Why don't other people know that?! Isn't that weird? Her can be an object too aside from using it for possession (her ball, her hand, etc.). Ex: I told her. (subject:I object:her)

And you can't just interchange the subject and object in the sentence. Ex: "It is me." cannot be "Me is it." To make the sentence this way, it will be "I am it." So you can't use that "interchange" thing as a basis for making a rule like "She is me." is wrong because "Me is she." is wrong, because we all know that the first sentence is right and the 2nd is wrong.
"This is her." is not wrong. I've read a post saying that it is wrong because when you interchange the nouns, it will be "Her is this."! What?! When you interchange the nouns in "This is her.", it will be "She is this." (meaning: she is this person right here) "She" is used as a subject and when it becomes an object, it becomes "Her". Get it?

You are smarter than I is different from You are smarter than I am and it's not a short version. If you're going to use the first sentence, it should be You are smarter than me. In You are smarter than I am, "I am" refers to how smart the person referred to is. It is not the same as the "I am" in the sentence "I am a person". which is the subject in this case and not the object.

I've heard characters in tv and movies use "This is she." for me, this is not grammatically correct because there is no rule that can say that it is correct. Maybe some people are just used to saying it or heard it from supposedly smart people and trusted them right away. It's not wrong to use it as long as other people understand, but, you shouldn't use it in arguments like this.

As it happens, I live in the Rockies, and was aware of the exception. But I presume that Mr Balboa and others with his given name are Rockys.

It is this line she wrote after the eyes that she called hers gazed upon all posts written by those who typed them on the page that you, I and we are all reading.

Now I work in Europe and try to use British spellings when writing in English for my company. But what I have noticed is that only the British use these spellings...non-native speakers of English generally use spellings like 'optimize'. I found this page because I'm now considering just sticking to 'American' spellings - I would have a lot fewer corrections to make in the texts I proofread!

Even if the 'standard' form is -ise in several English-speaking countries, I think that -ize can be considered the global norm.

OE had gebōd (gebode) for order, mandate, command ... but no noun form like geboder.

hack (v.2)
"illegally enter a computer system" by 1984; apparently a back formation from hacker. Related: Hacked; hacking. Earlier verb senses were "to make commonplace" (1745), "make common by everyday use" (1590s), "use (a horse) for ordinary riding" (1560s), all from hack (n.2).

Janet is right, a foreigner may not be an immigrant. If yu are looking for another word, try outlander. Same meaning.

BTW, the band "Foreigner" had some hella good music!

Anent the "me" instead of "I", it's the old dativ form. We see it in "methinks" (It seems to me) from Old English "mē thyncth", from mē "to me" + "thyncth" — "it seems" (3rd person, sing.) from "thyncan" — seem; akin to, but sunder from, think).

@AO the a- forefast (prefix) does not come from the ge- forefast. The a- has been in English since Old English/Anglo-Saxon. It was a common forefast ... much more common than now.

The ge-, for the most part has been lost in nativ English words. Gebur and gemoot are two that come to mind which are still found in the wordbooks. Enuff was once genog. Ge- did change to y- in a few words like yclept. However, today it's mostly found in German loanwords like gesundheit, gelande, asf ...

@Englishman ... The Brits hold no high ground in changing of English. The Brits stopped using the "proper" participle "gotten" long ago and seem to be fast losing the subjunctiv such as saying, "If I were ..." .

I'll disagree with yu about u or yu ... The 'ou' diphthong for the u/oo sound is a holdover from Norman-French scribes and should (shood?) be gotten rid of for this sound.

Definitely should lose the second e since the i before it is short. It would be better as 'definit' and 'definitly'.

my bad
North American informal used to acknowledge responsibility for a mistake:
Sorry I lost your CD. It’s my bad
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bad

Altho today's noting of it is said to hav started in basketball pickup games, we do find that Shakespeare noted the phrase with something like today's meaning, in his Sonnet 112:

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?

It is a word ... not one that I would note, but it is a word.

I'm amused that you would get all huffy about "literally" but yet have no objection to the use of "boy" as an interjection.

Why is the original meaning of "literally" so sacrosanct in your view but not that of "boy"?

Worst-Case-Scenario = is a win or lose situation, period. It has no secondary option if you win or lose, it is like, live or die.
Example:
A dam is about to overflow on a city and you are the only one who can stop it from happening. If you managed to stop it, you win, if not, millions will die. Now, this is a worst-case-scenario.

"My bad" therefore means "my mistake". Or is that just my bad?

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtNusl2CKM0

U/Ur drives me nuts. I know people who write out every other word in the English language except for you and your. Why?

Definitely has no a in it and losing only has one o.

Most people will say or write "my bad" when the term comes from saying "Am I bad" rapidly and should be written as 'mi bad. But most people have no clue that it's not literally "my bad." I can forgive that one but not all the above.

It's not that conversate is so horrible but it's just another example of people accepting idiocy as "whatever."

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone... this is interesting.

Practically speaking, if I waive my right to pursue you, then you have been released from your obligation to do it to me.
If I release you from your obligation to do something to me, then I've waived my right to force you to do it.

Verified by the immigrant parents of a friend of yours does not make it any more definitive, unless your friend's parents are the ones in charge of the English language. But English doesn't work that way. Languages such as French are officially under the province of government. The French government gets to decide what is and what is not French. But English did not evolve that way and has nobody in charge. First, people were speaking it. Then people were writing and reading it. Then dictionaries came along to document how it was being used. Dictionaries don't dictate correct usage, but document it based on what's generally accepted. That would go by how phrases such as "First generation American" are used and understood in everyday language. If there's no consensus, there's no valid authority with the right to define it.

RaymondBalta,

You are correct if we look at the word "generation" alone, and specifically look at the definition that would apply to families. Parents and children are a single step away in natural descent. There's no question that my parents, I, and my children, are of three different generations. There's also no question that my parents were Americans. But that doesn't clarify anything.

My mother is American and so were her parents, but none was born in the US. Thus, her parents may have been the first generation in her family to live in the US and become naturalized citizens. I don't know if they became naturalized before, after, or at the same time as my mother. If my mother was naturalized first, then she was of the first generation in her family to become US citizens, and her parents' generation would have been the second one to do so. If it was the other way around, it would mean that she became naturalized while having parents who were US citizens. Thus she would have been the second generation in her family to attain US citizenship, and the second generation in linear succession to do so. If they all got naturalized at the same time, then what? She'd still be the offspring of first generation Americans and would have equal claim to being the first generation in the family to have US citizenship.

And it still does nothing to address offspring of parents whose families have been citizens for a different number of generations. Under your definition, my children would unquestionably be fourth generation based on paternal lineage. But they'd be second generation based on maternal lineage. So what generation does that make them, and according to what rule?

So you can't look for which one is correct. They are both correct, but neither is meaningful. Dictionaries, Wikipedia and other sources do not make any of this clearer because there's no definitive answer.

If there were a definitive answer, there would be one and only one way to answer this question: What generation am I, what generation are my children, and what generation are my parents? (I'm talking about me specifically.) My father was born in the US to immigrant parents. My mother and her parents were immigrants. I was born in the US (to one immigrant parent and one US born parent, for those keeping track) and my wife is an immigrant. Thus my children also have one US born parent and one immigrant parent, but have no idea if their US born parent is first generation, second generation, or third generation. They can be considered anywhere from first to fourth generation depending on which person you ask. Can anybody answer the question without saying (implicitly or explicitly) "because I said so?" If it's not because you said so, it means you have a definitive source that shows why your explanation is correct and why others are wrong.

In German, we have der Feldherr "Commander", der Befehlshaber, der Gebieter, der Anführer among others.

Old English has Campealdor, Wīgfruma, Wīga, Hildfruma, Fyrdwīsa, Hererǣswa, Heretoga (see G. Herzog), among others.

Strictly, strictly speaking, educated writing everywhere should use 'ize' - but we have a changing situation where people think it's British to use 'ise'

Subordinate clauses I know about, subordinate people not. Is it something to do with the army? Schoolboys rebuked for insubordination yes - very old-fashioned idea, I think, suggestive of the notion that their superiors are owed subordination ex officio. But that's all about something else - my own mystification is why people use " that", desperately avoiding "who" and its variants, no matter how ugly the result. For instance "people that are subordinate ...".

"Who would have thought he would become ...". Yes, third person. No I, you or we about it. Just he (or she).

@Lee Kay
I think "solecism" is a bit wide of the mark, although in some circles it may well be most appropriate. :-)
.

It has been my unfortunate experience that a word misused by mistaking it for another word is funnier than doing it on purpose. At least people laugh AT the person when they did it by mistake. When I do it on purpose for comic effect, my less silly friends are in confusion. Then they correct me, and I have to explain that I said it to be funny. I gotta get some smarter friends!

My mom worked for a guy once who always got words and phrases mixed up. He was a Real Estate agent, and one of my favorites was, "We have to put the money in an escarole account."