1) What the brand-owner wants is neither here nor there in a language sense, only in a legal sense. You can Google with whatever search engine you like, and (in Britain at least) do the hoovering with whatever vacuum cleaner you like.

2) Although I wouldn't personally pluralise LEGO, I think that has more to do with whether or not LEGO is a countable noun. I can't see how you can make a blanket rule that it is grammatically incorrect to pluralise brand names, which are simply proper nouns, and which can be pluralised like any other countable noun:

Who's coming to the party? - Well, there are the two Johns, then there's Jenny ....
He's got two Fords and three Harley-Davidsons
He has an excellent collection of maps of the Americas

3) And even if you couldn't do this in formal documents, for some inexplicable reason, it really is an old chestnut that only what is permissible in formal grammar is "correct". If that were the case, most of us would be talking ungrammatically much of the time, which makes a nonsense of the whole idea of grammar, which is simply the system we use to form words and put them together so we can be mutually understood.

4) 'It may have *fallen* into common usage' - Common usage is exactly how the rules of languages are formed and evolve.

First, Lego's demands that people use Lego bricks is ignorant of the fact that only a small fraction of the pieces are, in fact, bricks. There is an array of pieces that does not include the iconic brick. There is a possibility for Lego pieces.

Even so, I will refuse to accept what they have prescribed.

Additionally, to say that,

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, not everyone is entitled to their own facts."

is ludicrous considering the subject being English because of how it, and other languages, evolve. You still don't speak Anglo-Saxon do you? Or do you still you use thee, thou, thy, and thine? Or the noun suffixes that are attached when matched with certain verbs?

If you believe the rules of stranding prepositions and splitting the infinitive, then you are only following prescriptions and are unable to discern the Germanic roots of the English language.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, not everyone is entitled to their own facts"

Any word like LEGOES, LEGOS, LEGOs, or any attempt to pluralise the brand name LEGO is WRONG. It's grammatically wrong, and it's wrong according to the company who own the brand name.

In many circumstances there may be a social convention of dropping the noun and pluralising the brand name, such as BMWs or any other brna dname that does not actually name their product with the branded name. This convention, no matter how widely accepted and used, is not correct. It may have fallen into common useage, but it would not be used in any formal or official document where correctness of grammar is required, and is therefore WRONG.

So pluralise LEGO all you want, enjoy the sound of the word, let it roll off your tongue daily, just don't try to argue that it is grammatically correct,

http://britishisms.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/spot-on/
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/spot%20on

Good point about the derivation of pled. And there's a distinct pattern - lead > led, feed > fed, read > read, as others pointed near the beginning of this post.

The aversion to "dos" is simply because it looks like (and is) another word: Spanish for two, French for back, or one of those black pop-up screens with code in it. "Ifs and buts" causes no such problems (well actually "buts" is a French word but hey...)

As for decades, I prefer to dodge the apostrophe issue by writing (say) nineties.

From Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 2, Act II: Simpcox: A fall off of a tree.

And let's not forget the Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud"!

Think of pleaded > pled as going from goeth > goes. Things change!

Government reaches out to the people (Free Dictionary)
I try to reach out to my daughter but she doesn't want to have anything to do with me (Free Dictionary)

Macmillan gives two definitions:
- to offer help to someone: "We are reaching out to the most vulnerable members of the community."
- to ask someone for help: "She urged him to reach out to his family."

Cambridge also gives two definitions:
- to try to communicate with a person or a group of people, usually in order to help or involve them: "The new mayor is reaching out to the local community to involve them in his plans for the city."
- to offer help and support to someone: "She set up her charity to reach out to the thousands of homeless on the streets."

I don't see that these are about indirect and empty gestures, and in none of these example does 'reach out' simply mean contact (which is what my question was about). In the three examples of the new usage I quoted in my question, the use of 'reach out to' is completely different from all the dictionary examples I've quoted here, meaning simply to contact, get in touch with, phone etc, which we already have perfectly good words and expressions for.

You say - 'Reaching out to libraries on behalf of Google, for example, is an attempt to help make the information contained within more freely available' - sorry, but I think you misunderstood this one, which was no doubt my fault as I didn't quote the whole thing, which read "please reach out to a Library staff member"; it was simply a particular library saying that if users of Google Reader have any problems (with transferring their feeds, as Google Reader is closing down), they should contact a member of staff. Nothing about on behalf of Google or spreading information.

I don't really have that much of a 'hang-up' about it. In my hippy days, I both subconsciously and deliberately used words used by my peer group which no doubt sounded weird to 'straights', and later spent years trying to get rid of them. It's just that this usage sounds a bit affected to me, and I'm by no means alone:

- “Reach out” is one of the best examples of how corporate jargon makes things unnecessarily complicated. The English language already has lots of useful words related to communication. “Reach out to me by phone?” Seriously? How about just “call me?” - Huffington Post

- Jargon for “let’s set up a meeting” or “let’s contact this person.” Just say that—and unless you want the Human Relations department breathing down your neck, please don’t reach out unless clearly invited. - Forbes Magazine

And it's also on nearly every list of the 'Ten most annoying office expressions' type:

- Thinking 'outside the box' and 'going forward' and 'let's touch base' have been found to be the most overused phrases of office jargon. The other annoying office phrases are 'reach out', 'It's on my radar', 'I'm aware', 'flag up', 'low-hanging fruit" - Times of India, commenting on a survey by the London-based Institute of Leadership and Management.

And included in two of the best online collections of office jargon / business buzzwords:

MBA Watch
The Office Life

Not now; afterward.

the adjectival "-ward" by contrast, describes the position or the point in time occupied by one grammatical person, relative to another (perhaps after having moved in the direction specified). Followed by "of", words ending in "-ward" become prepositional constructions (usages of the form "forwards of" are sub-standard), although only "forward of" (= in front of/ ahead of/ before) appears to have been in common use (to my knowledge..

"Afterwards" and "afterward" are used only adjectivally, and only to describe the point of time occupied by a person relative to another. According to the above scheme, "afterward" is legitimate while "afterwards" is presumably a corruption.

Just because Americans use constructions that you and I weren't brought up with doesn't make them grammatically wrong. Just as Americans shouldn't jump to the conclusion that constructions that Brits use are wrong simply because they are unfamiliar with them.

As for the idea that 'pled' resulted from Americans 'screwing around' with 'our' language, that is just nonsense, as the Oxford English Dictionary has an example of “pled” from Edmund Spenser in 1596. What's more, as has been pointed out, it is used mainly in a legal sense, not only in North America, but also in Scotland.

I think love is at least a borderline case. Yes, when we are talking about the emotion of love, we don't usually say 'I'm loving her so much' or 'I have been loving her ever since we first met', apart from in the meaning that eddy mentioned. But as someone has already mentioned, when we use 'love' to mean 'enjoy' (a dynamic verb), then I think we can sometimes use continuous forms to describe a temporary situation and not sound unnatural (the only criterion, as far as I'm concerned) - 'I'm really loving my job at the moment'. And from the web, 'He's loving his swimming lessons'.

I imagine that even the greatest Big Mac fans tend to enjoy the place rather than have deep emotions towards it. I think this is why McDonald's slogan, while being edgy enough to gain the attention of the traditionalists, didn't actually sound that unnatural to many of us, so we accepted it quite easily. They were playing with the language, sure, but we accepted it as possible .

In contrast, during the 2012 Euro championships, Warsaw put up banners saying (in English) - 'Feel Like At Home'. When it was pointed out that no native speaker would ever say such a thing, their publicity agency said they were simply following McDonald's example and playing with the language. But unlike the McDonald's slogan, this one was so unnatural that it was just met with mirth by expats here, and in the British press. As porsche said, McDonalds knew just what they were doing - different enough to get publicity, but not so different that the bulk of native speakers would find it particularly unnatural.

It's a different story for non-native speakers. But they often know even better because they've gone through their fair bit of studying grammar.

People also say things like "it's done a lot of kays" but I've never heard (or seen) kilometrage. It's just not a pleasant word to say. For all the advantages of the metric system, I'd say its biggest shortcoming is linguistic: the imperial measurements are nicer and more convenient to talk or write about.

As for fuel economy, the metric equivalent of "miles per gallon" tends to be "litres per 100 km", in NZ at least. That feels weird because it's the inverse, i.e. a low number is good.

Worst case, we'll get arrested and put in jail.
What's the worst that can happen?
At worst, we'll have to find another job.
In the worst-case scenario, the company gets sold to its long-time competitor.
Think of the parallel construction: good, better, best, i.e., bad, worse, worst.
When you use worst-case scenario, maybe you only need worst case.

You can find more US regional variation maps at -http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6

On the other hand, there is a reference on the website of the government of Nova Scotia to "Kilometrage Rates, Monthly Allowances and Transportation Allowances Regulations", so maybe Canada is an exception.

http://www.gov.ns.ca/just/regulations/regs/cskilometrage.htm

[NB. Not that time and space are separable entities. Far from it. For time and space, either as ontological entities -- that is, common medium in which all things are, or as epistemological entities -- that is, their relative arrangement across cultures, are inseparable in reality, as in nature, mind and society. Many thanks.

As for the grammar aspect, as goofy says, of course 'bad' can be a noun, and is listed in my dictionary as such. Other examples - 'The good, the bad and the ugly', 'You have to take the bad with the good', and the British idiom - 'After the sale they were £300 to the bad.' (worse off).

But in any case, this is an informal, if not slang expression, and we really don't need to look for any great grammatical justification for these. People obviously find it useful or they wouldn't use it. And it's been used on this forum by at least once by a very experienced forum contributor, to me in fact.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-bad.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_bad

For a poison emergency in the U.S. call 1-800-222-1222

What's more, as Verka has pointed out, we can precede light blue etc with very, which also suggests to me that these are adjectives.

Just this once, then, I disagree with JJMBallantyne. In fact, Oxford Dictionaries Online (and other dictionaries) list these as adjectives, specifically giving examples of them preceding colour and pattern adjectives:

light - adjective - 2. (of a colour) pale - "her eyes were light blue"

dark - adjective - 2. (of a colour or object) not reflecting much light; approaching black in shade - "dark green"

pale - adjective - 1. light in colour or shade; containing little colour or pigment - "choose pale floral patterns for walls"

bright - adjective - 1. giving out or reflecting much light; shining - (of colour) vivid and bold - "the bright green leaves"

same - exactly like the one or ones referred to or mentioned
similar - like somebody/something but not exactly the same

There's no discrepancy between exact and same, and when we say 'exactly the same', we are just using 'exactly' as an intensifier, that's all.

I'm afraid using artificial examples is one of my bugbears. There's one grammar website which, while explaining the passive, gives two examples - 'The dogs are loved by Suzanne' and 'The dogs are being loved by Suzanne', neither of which a native speaker would ever say. I write lots of grammar exercises myself, and make every effort to use natural examples. Otherwise it just confuses people.

Someone, like yourself, with a good knowledge of romance languages might find the term 'disjunctive pronoun' useful, but it doesn't seem to be a standard concept in English (except in explanations to French speakers, fro example). The entry for pronouns at Oxford Dictionaries online makes no mention of it, Collins has it but refers to French, and a linguistics book devoted to these very uses of pronouns has no reference to disjunctive pronouns at all. Those who use this term are transferring an idea from French and Italian, etc, which works for some things, but not others. And while the use of the disjunctive pronoun is mandatory in French, in English its use is frowned on by the traditionalists.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/pronouns
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/disjunctive-pronoun?showCookiePolicy=true
http://books.google.pl/books?id=gjRV0gU1W3oC&pg=PA134

My mother did hear some Glaswegian girls in the Second World War making this suggestion to some Polish soldiers:

"If youse yins'll teach us yins Polish us yins'll teach youse yins English".

So here is an example of "us" used as the subject. But despite what they said it isn't really standard English, is it now?

Glad to make a Polish connection there, Warsaw Will.

Your disjunctive pronoun theory is interesting, although I've never seen this term used in any standard English grammar book. Those few sources that I've found which talk about disjunctive pronouns in English only use it for expressions like 'It's me', or solitary 'Me', which are certainly not accepted in those prescriptive grammars that insist on 'It is I'.

But even if we accept the idea of disjunctive pronouns for things like 'It's me', surely 'with me' and 'with us' are different. Everyone, prescriptivist and descriptivist alike, agrees that prepositions should always be followed by an objective form - 'Between you and me' - we don't need any special rule to explain that. It might be the case in French - 'Viens avec moi' - but English isn't French, and we don't have separate pronouns forms like 'moi' and 'lui'. We only have subjective, objective and possessive forms for pronouns.

Another thing worth noting is that when it is used, the subjective form is usually used without contractions - 'It is I', whereas the objective form is normally used with contractions, 'It's me', suggesting that the difference between the two is one of register - both are correct, but the former is rather formal. I might not use 'It is I', but I can't say it's incorrect. In French, on the other hand, 'C'est Je' is definitely not correct; you have no choice. This why 'I hae me doots' about extending this this idea of disjunctive pronouns to English.