gmonkey42

The following grammar rant is free of spoilers.

I was reading Something Awful. Lowtax is fairly conservative but he's funny so I'll forgive him. I will not forgive him, however, for using "infer" where he should have used "imply." I've seen that crop up a lot lately. It's my new pet peeve now that people have stopped abusing "literally" so much. I don't have a catchy song like Strong Bad* but this is a good general rule:

If you're doing the talking, you're implying.
If you're doing the listening/reading, you're inferring.

Here's an example:
"That's a very nice wand you have there, Sevvie," said Divinity Raven Celestia.
Divinity was implying something inappropriate.
Snape inferred from her name that she was a Mary Sue and turned her into a radish.

Misused words make Snapeypuff sad.

Yeah, dictionary.com includes the word "imply" in the 4th definition of "infer" but "imply" is not a synonym of "infer" and I don't like it when people use it as such.

* I can't remember which Strong Bad E-mail it was so I'll just have to give you the lyrics:
Oh! If you want it to be possessive, it's just "i-t-s"
but if it's supposed to be a contraction then it's "i-t-apostrophe-s!"
Scalawag!