@HS - I think I probably agree with you, and the reason's not too hard to find: it's far more common, especially in British English, so no doubt sounds more familiar:

British National Corpus - that respect: 235, that regard 66
The Guardian - in that respect 12, in that regard 4
The Times - in that respect 64, in that regard 30
The Independent - in that respect 543, in that regard 227
The BBC - too many to check, but the opening figures (not to be trusted) suggest 10:1
But The Telegraph bucks the trend - in that respect 565, in that regard 579

The preference for respect seems to be greater in British English than in American English, and although the use of respect appears to be declining, that of regard is increasing, especially in AmE:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in+that+respect%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cin+that+regard%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cin+that+respect%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cin+that+regard%3Aeng_us_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

I agree with Markustenhaafus that the simile refers to general time and doesn't need to agree with the tenses in the main clause, but in that case why use past perfect rather than present perfect in the 'as' clause? That's the strange one for me. Why not simply - 'as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.'?

@Brus - 'You can tell from his number XII that he probably wasn't Roman, so that may explain it' - I think I'm missing something here - why does the number 12 tell you he wasn't Roman?

However your theory is wrong, I'm afraid, he was Roman, born and bred.

@Brus and Skeeter Lewis - the learned Will did indeed slip up there, and will willingly admit that classics is not his strong point. Brus, I think SK means me, not that playwright chappie.

@Brus - I hope you realised "Weeny, Weedy and Weaky" was a joke. You do know 1066 and All That, I hope. And not all English schools pronounce v as w or c as k. For example in my school, we didn't.

@HS - atrium is a well-established English word in its own right, and posh or not, the standard pronunciation (the only one in three British dictionaries I've just checked) is /ˈeɪtriəm/, i.e. ae not a. So I'm afraid that it's the person who pronounces it to rhyme with Athens who is being at least different. Aqua is a different kettle of fish, being really a Latin word used in very specialist contexts. Atrium, incidentally, seems to be one of those words where we have a choice as to the plural - atria or atriums (so says Oxford - but atriums is being red-lined here!).

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/atrium

@Nancy N - as far as I remember, the first recorded example of the thing version is from only about ten or twenty years after the 'think' version, so that's quite possible. The 'think' version goes back to at least 1898, when this apparently appeared in the Quincy Whig:

"Chicago thinks it wants a new charter. Chicago has another think coming. It doesn't need a new charter as much as it needs some honest officials." (NPR)

One source puts the earliest recorded use of the 'thing' version as 1918, but it has really only grown in popularity since the late 70s, which puts it later than my generation, for example. And amongst my (mainly British) colleagues, it certainly seems to be generational. But it may also have been regional, of course.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=another+think+coming%2Canother+thing+coming%2Cgot+another+think+coming%2Cgot+another+thing+coming&year_start=1880&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

@HS - agreed, but it's marked in Oxford Dictionaries Online as "chiefly archaic or Scottish" - I thought you'd prefer to be thought Scottish rather than archaic.:)

And speaking of Latin pronunciation, did Julius Caesar say 'veni, vidi, vici' with a V, or were Sellar and Yeatman (1066 and All That) nearer the mark with their “Weeny, Weedy and Weaky'?

@HS - "Wow! I certainly got your attention." - because it was an interesting question and you pointed out something that was new to me - the "in that respect / regard" question. I'd known about the problem with "with regard(s) to", and had a vague idea some people preferred to avoid expressions with "regard", but that was all. I'd also just been reading about Bierce, so was interested to find out he was the source of much of the opprobrium for "in that respect". Google Books has the first few pages of an annotated version of his book, which shows just how often he got it wrong. For example:

afraid - do not say 'I am afraid it will rain', say 'I fear it will rain'

http://books.google.pl/books?id=UxAsQOny_ucC&printsec=frontcover

I know your fondness for "anent" but I imagine you might have some problems with comprehension outwith Scotland. In conversation "about" will usually do.

@HS - sorry, but who on earth pronounces alias with an 'ah', unless as jayles says, they want to sound like a prat? There's nothing wrong with anglicising Latin words, just as we do with words from other languages - for example: menu, alliance, yacht - all have different vowel sounds than in their original languages. Even Anglo-Saxon derived words are often pronounced differently today from how they were originally pronounced, hence our problems with the Middle English. Not to mention the Great Vowel Shift.

Then there are words like baron, which we got from Old French, which in turn got it from Late Latin. But it turns out Latin got it from the (Germanic) Frankish 'baro' which was cognate with Old English 'beorn'. So it went full circle - Germanic > Latin > Romance > Germanic.

And when we talk of how Latin was originally pronounced, what Latin are we talking about? Many words came into English through Vulgate Latin or Middle or Late Latin rather than from Classical Latin. The pronunciation of Catholic Church Latin (based on the Vulgate), is somewhat different from Classical Latin pronunciation, for example. I'm thinking especially of words like 'caelis' and 'adveniat' in the Lord's Prayer. Here is the way it's pronounced throughout the Catholic world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dycGI-dFvLs

And here it is in Classical Latin, with an explanation:

http://www.filiuslunae.com/2009/10/pater-noster.html

Which did early Christians use? I would plump for the Vulgate, myself, but no doubt Brus can tell us.

Quintilian listed four characteristics for judging the 'purity' of a word - reason, age, authority and custom (consuetudo), (no mention, apparently, of origin), which Ben Johnson developed into the adage - 'Custom is the most certain mistress of language' - or, to put in into modern English - 'Go with the flow'. If someone insisted on using a different form than everyone else, just because it was (were for those who insist) nearer the original, then maybe jayles would have a point.

So data but museums, flora and fauna but forums (of the internet type at least). And as Brus points out, most of us have converted data into an uncountable singular noun. And sometimes we have a choice: I personally prefer referenda, although referendums seems to have won the day - but both are in dictionaries. Anglicised plurals for Greek -is words would be tricky to pronounce, so -es plurals work well (analyses, crises etc).

And sometimes words have different plurals depending on context: doctors talk of appendixes, but publishers of appendices.

Some useful stuff at the ever-excellent Alt.English.Usage:

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxplural.html

I think there are two separate points here. Firstly, there’s the use of 'respect' instead of 'regard' in the expression “in this/that respect/regard”. In his (unintentionally) rather amusing 1908 book, ‘Write it Right’, a certain Anthony Bierce objected to "in that respect" and includes it in his ‘Black List’ -

‘Respect for Way, or Matter. "They were alike in that respect." The misuse comes of abbreviating: the sentence properly written might be, They were alike in respect of that—i.e., with regard to that. The word in the bad sense has even been pluralized: "In many respects it is admirable." ‘

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12474/12474-h/12474-h.htm

But Pierce was wrong on so many things (such as regarding “in many respects” as a misuse) that he is hardly worth paying much attention to. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage regards this use as “perfectly standard”, and Oxford Online has the example sentences:

“the government’s record in this respect is a mixed one”
“there was little incentive for them to be active in this regard”

I think there is more controversy over your second point, the use of expressions such as:

as regards - as regards content, the programme will cover important current issues
in / with regard to - he made enquiries with regard to Beth

The first problem, and the one that’s most discussed on the Internet, I think, is confusion between ‘regard’ and ‘regards’. At ‘Separated By A Common Language’ the normally placid Lynne Guist (gettit?) writes “For the past couple of years my pet peeve has been with regards to and in regards to -- I rarely read a student essay, dissertation, or thesis without at least one of these scratching my eyeballs more than once”

She ponders as to whether this is more of a British or more of an American custom. and her article is well-worth reading (in this regard / respect)

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2011/01/with-regards-to.html

At Common Errors, Prof. Bryans says that “As regards your downsizing plan . . .” is “acceptable, if stiff.” He also allows “In regard to” and “with regard to” as being correct, but says that “in regards to” is nonstandard.

But he seems to prefer “in respect to” or “with respect to,” or—simplest of all—just plain “regarding.”

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/regard.html

The second point is whether these expressions are overused. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary refers to them all as formal. Fowler saw nothing “strikingly bad” about their use in individual examples, but found that they “cumulatively spoil a writer’s style“. His later editor Burchfield says “they are all in standard use, but should be used sparingly and with discretion”. MWDEU suggests that many commentators see it as jargonistic, preferring such alternatives as "about, on, concerning". But then MWDEU goes on to say -

"... in many cases you will no doubt find them preferable yourself. But remember that the matter of wordiness is entirely secondary to the matter of how your sentence sounds.When longer phrases suit the rhythm of a sentence better than short ones, the longer ones are a better choice".

Like any formal and formulaic language, it is hard to avoid occasionally using phrases like this, especially in business correspondence, but we should probably remember that they are just that - formal and formulaic, and while bearing in mind what MWDEU say, I’d probably go along with Bryans and use ‘regarding’ where possible, when 'about' would be too informal.

It's probably like a lot of things: in moderation is fine. The occasional 'There were like thirty people there' is fine, but when every sentence includes like, it gets a bit noticeable.

Apropos, what about the use of the expression re: in spoken English? “Re what we were talking about earlier, have you had any thoughts?” I quite like that.