I’m gonna use that. and no way am I going to give you credit for it. But clever, nontheless. Although I still think the site is fun. Now I looked at a web site about apostrophe abuse - and quickly decided it was full of people that needed to feel superior so they pointed out grammar errors. But the “literally” site so far does not have that feel to me, at least not yet. But then again, I have only looked at it for the last sixty minutes. Or should I say, “for the last hour I have literally been reading this website.”

“Now discuss - was the usage correct?”

I agree completely. Technically, his uses might not be incorrect, but they’re annoying as hell. Were any of those statements he made enhanced by adding “literally”? I would say not.

1. You can see the fear and terror in their eyes.
2. Tomorrow morning, 37 million of our own people will wake up worried about feeding and clothing their own children.
3. Because we know that it is the future of our country.
4. Our older son John Mark, our son David, his wife Lauren, our daughter Sarah, who’s lived in Iowa for the past 2 1/2 months.

Any detection of abuse in Edwards’ speech is nit picking.

Especially #2, where any abuse is more due to bad editing than incorrectness. There are people who literally worry about feeding and clothing their children. The word literally isn’t needed in the sentence, but it is not necessarily incorrect. Quibbling about the 37 million figure is a discussion for another forum.

And it only takes a slight generalization of eye to include the eyelid and muscles surrounding the eye for #1 to make it true. One can literally see emotions expressed in people’s eyes. See the publications of Dr Paul Ekman, probably the world’s leading expert on human facial expression. For example, the way to tell a real smile from a fake one is the eyes. Not literally the eyeball, but generalizing to the area around the eye isn’t a huge leap.

This is the weakest entry I’ve seen yet.

I KNEW you were gonna say that!

Seriously, though, I invite you to ponder the difference between formal and informal discourse and then revisit your comment from within that context.

I’m assuming that, yes, the speech was written, edited, and properly delivered, and that there was conscious thought put into speaking formally, but with accessibility. Remember, Edwards’ big focus is appearing to be “of the people.”

But even if this was an unknown Joe Schmo there is still a such thing at being too formal with one’s speech. And remember, pedantry and prescriptivism are too closely related to marry. And I say that as a proud member of the Facebook group “Good Grammar Is Hot.”

-Mark Twain

It may be a minor difference, but it is a difference. Also, if it wasn’t being overused to the point where I want to shoot myself in the head every time I hear it, it wouldn’t even be an issue. It goes along with “sort of” for annoying words/terms that won’t go away.

Literally literally means “word for word.” If there was no alternate figurative meaning, there wouldn’t be a need for the word’s existence. The word exists to point out a difference.