Literally, and what it “literally” means

I overheard this while eating in a restaurant last night.
“I am so hungry, I could literally eat all the food in the whole restaurant.”
It’s hyperbole and I generally have no problem with it conversation.
Talking with other human beings can be a boring practice and spicing it up is necessary through metaphor and hyperbole, but I draw the line at literally.
As an English major, I use the word all the time to distinguish between metaphorical interpretations of passages and literal interpretations of passages.
For example, for this sentence, “Jane walked with her friend Maria into the canyon,” literally means she walked into a canyon with her friend Maria. That’s the simple meaning of that definition.
Or as Merriam Webster likes to define it, Literally is “in a literal sense or manner : ACTUALLY ”
A metaphorical, and ridiculous, meaning could be something along the lines of “Jane and Maria explored their sexuality” because metaphorical canyons represent vaginal symbols or some ridiculous bullshit.
See, the literal tag allows writers and interpreters to allow them to them to cut through the metaphorical swatches of meaning with the word, “literal.”
The word has a concrete and unbreakable connotation. Something is what it is, and there are no exceptions about it. It’s like the top from Inception that supposed to fall over when the narrator is in reality but keeps spinning when he’s dreaming.
“Literally” is that totem. Not literally, but in a metaphorical sense, you know?
However, the misuse of this word is taking away its concrete meaning, and throwing the rest of the world into a horrible surreal reality where everything is literal and nothing is metaphorical. This is just as frustrating as it is in the movie when one can’t tell if the top falls or not. And just as anticlimactic.
When that women said, she could literally eat all the food in the restaurant. I was scared. I hid my food. I didn’t want her to eat my food as well.
Whenever someone says they literally could kill someone, I run in fear. Literal or not, I don’t want to be part of a murder investigation.
And I am even more cautious when someone says, they literally drank a gallon of vodka. I always call the cops, but I am usually made into a fool because I believed the literal sense of what a drunk person was telling me.
My reality is unreal because of the bastardization of this word. I have taken the pains of proposing possible solutions.
Treat the word and what follows it as concrete truth: In this manner, maybe people will stop using it. I know I would the first time I said something like, “I literally don’t need my pinky toe,” and then had my pinky toe taken away from me.
Treat the word and what follows it as metaphorical: This manner will also encourage the use of the word to die down. For example, if someone said, “I am literally dying for water,” and they were in fact dying, and I told them to quit exaggerating, and they died, I am sure no one would ever use the word literally around me again for fear of not being taken seriously.
Ignore anything that’s said if it contains the word: This applies better to the previous example. “ I am still literally dying of thirst.” Oh yeah? I am still literally not listening to you until you change your diction choice.
Stop overreacting to a seemingly innocent word choice: This manner would require English majors to let things go, which seems like a great idea. However, it’s not possible and will not be considered.
Again, I don’t have the solution.
Until a solution is reached, I will continue to overreact, for safety of course, anytime literally comes up.

A confession: exclamation marks

A confession:

I have an confession to make.
I sometimes use an exclamation mark to denote an intense feeling or an imperative command.
I know, I thought I was better than that too, but I have failed you dear readers.

The beginning:

Like the rest of us, I was introduced to the exclamation point in elementary school. Like all young children, I was enticed by the power it offered to me.
Normal sentences became something... more. Where my writing lacked pop, teachers and friends marveled at my mastery of the exclamation point. Everything I wrote was imbued with more emotion from one of the simplest strokes to learn in penmanship. I was unstoppable.

The simplicity:

It still marvels me with its simplistic beauty. A single straight line, sometimes wider near the top depending on the font, could change everything about a period.
The exclamation lacked the pretense of a question mark. It wasn't difficult to write, and it could be applied to any situation. A love note to girl in the hallway. An assignment about thankfulness for my family. It was even on some fancy graphing calculators.

The friendship:

Yes, the exclamation mark and I became fast friends, and we blazed trails across the frontiers of my developing grammatical skills in elementary school.
However, as Americans realized their manifest destiny was over at the sight of the endless ocean, so was mine upon discovering the sea of grammar in high school and college.

The chains of style:

I began, reluctantly, to learn the rules of style. Red pens tore into my papers and ego, and my once powerful writing was washed away in a sea of crimson ink.
One of the things washed away were the exclamation marks. They were declared tacky and a crutch of a weak writer, so I gave them up, but I did much more than that.
I turned once was love into hate for something I was no longer allowed to have. Anyone who used an exclamation mark was a simpleton, a failed writer, or generally lacking the excellent taste I had developed.

The regret:

But I knew, somewhere deep, that I wished I could bring the exclamation point back.
But I didn't. It was too far gone. When I realized my wrong, it had been high jacked by preteens and the illiterate on facebook. They threw it around like it was a common whore instead of the fancy lady it deserves to be treated like.
I was shocked. I realized I had treated it the same way when I was younger. It's a powerful tool, but only when used in the hands of the powerful.
And when should it be used you ask?
The suggestions:

Well , this site has some pretty good ideas of when, but I would like to offer an even simpler suggestions:

Allow exclamation points if you're willing to give up a lock of hair: I love this idea. It would cut down on the long hair of hippes everywhere while ushering a new gold age of appropriate exclamation use. Moreover, it would provide the sparring use required to make the exclamation point useful.

Put people in the stocks if they use exclamation points too much: Nothing reinforces positive behavior like getting hit with rotten vegetables and fruit, at least in my experience.

Do nothing: We allow the English language to be overrun by the abundance of unnecessary and overdone grammatical punctuation marks. When all has been destroyed, we can rebuild the language from scratch.

Stop listening to and/or reading sentences that have inappropriate exclamation points and/ or more than one: This idea I like the best. It's simple and easy to implement. It also allows us to avoid listening to half of the population.

A final note:

Again, I can't say what idea is right, but I do hope something can be done to save the exclamation point. It's done nothing wrong and no longer deserves such suffering at the hands of angry teenagers and poor fiction writers.
Take the time to use an exclamation mark correctly in your life. It can make all the difference for an oft abused punctuation mark.

"Chris' third blog post" or "Chris's third blog post"

Let's talk apostrophes, shall we? And I don't mean, the apostrophes for contractions or possessive ownership. No, I want to talk about the tricky little bastard of a rule for apostrophes when a noun ends with a "S."
See I have lived this plight. My name, or the one I choose to go by, is Chris, which means anytime I want to say something belongs to me, I have to make a huge decision.
Do I add an apostrophe "S" to my name that ends with "S" , "Chris's writing never ceased to horrify young children," like this?
Or do I drop it all together, "Chris' writing never ceased to horrify infants," like this?

The question haunts me.

See, I know that if the word is monosyllabic you add another "S" in the interest of helping the reader pronounce the word correctly.
You can't just say "Chris writing." You have to say, "Chris iz writing." It says so at the BBC. And if you can trust the BBC, then who the hell can you trust about the proper use of English?
However, the majority of the world didn't waste four years of its life studying grammar in college, so I do add the "S" I am always meet with indignation.
They say, "Don't you know, you don't need an apostrophe if the word ends in S. I thought you were an English major. Probably, not a good one."
And sigh. I give up. This fight is one I know I can win, but not without making self into a total asshole, so I let it slide and let the other person have victory even though I know I am right.
I keep tally. It's happened 27 times.
27.

Possible Solutions

• Let this battle go. No one knows the rule anyway, and it's only a matter of time before it becomes as obscure as the oxford comma. Too many people have died for the cause already. It's time to end the bloodshed. (Note: I might have made the last part up for dramatic emphasis.)
• Force everyone to study grammar for four years. And not just this dangling modifier or misplaced participle business. We need to get back to basics, which means going back to Old and Middle English. No one will be allowed to leave the grammar camps until they can recite Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales from memory.
• Stop caring about apostrophes. No one else does, so why should we? We would save ourselves a lot of time and effort from typing that extra symbol. In fact, we can get rid of all superscript elements, so say goodbye to quotation marks as well. Periods and commas had better watch their backs though. They might be next.
• Inform people in a kind way when they misuse grammar if the scenario calls for it. This is the boldest of my ideas, and I think the riskiest. Lovers of grammar would have to let things slide now and then. You wouldn't correct someone every time they said something like, "Me and him are going to the movies." This means we wouldn't have to worry so much about apostrophes, but could still point out when people use them wrong in a formal paper or when the error results in confusion.

The Reality
Alas, I think most of us would probably die if we couldn't correct others. The world would be thrown into chaos with apostrophes to mark whose stuff belongs to who. Lawmakers would never approve the grammar camps us English majors dream of.
It looks like time will have its way with the extra "S," and we will have to mourn the rule alongside the oxford comma.

Minor differences: More than and over

Which is correct?
The death rate was more than 90 percent?
or
The death rate was over 90 percent?
Now, I know, in the interest of brevity many might be inclined to use "over" in place of "more than," but I would argue that's American laziness at its finest.
If we take some time to analyze the words, one can see my point.
"Over" defined by Merriam Webster means , "used as a function word to indicate motion or situation in a position higher than or above another " or also, "a : across a barrier or intervening space; especially : across the goal line in football."
In short, "over" is most often used for spatial reasons, primarily to be above something, so it makes sense that it soon was used to mean "above" for abstract concepts.
"Over" is often used when dealing with numbers, particularly with percentages or groups of people. Recently, I saw the Sony website state, "It had over 9 million customers..." which is an acceptable use of the word, but I feel the word over ought to be restricted to spatial terms so as to avoid confusion.
The English language is already confusing and the multiple meanings of our varied words certainly don't make it any easier to understand. Prepositions in particular should be simple because they deal directly with the physical world. To get them mixed up with the abstract world seems reckless and asking for trouble.
For example consider the sentence, " I drove over you." Taken literally it means I drove my car over you, dear reader. I assure I would never do such a thing, unless you made me angry and said something as silly as "irregardless" but I digress.
The point is the use of over is unclear in this scenario because "over" deals with spatial concepts. Thus, "I drove over you," means I literally drove a vehicle over you, and probably killed you in the process.
I probably meant to say, "I drove more than you," which doesn't mean I committed vehicular manslaughter, but instead suggests I drove a farther distance than you. (Note: more on farther and further in the weeks to come.)
For this reason alone, I suggest we use "over" in its position as a preposition and stop trying to use it to represent abstract concepts. Bad things happen when you mix incompatible concepts such matter and anti-matter, peanut butter and beets, and Lana Del Rey and singing. Need I say more?
For sanity's sake, please be careful when using prepositions for abstract concepts.