If something is not really a word, please, for the love of slugs, STOP USING IT.

This is not the first time that I’ve gotten my rant on about spelling, grammar and the like. And please do not get me wrong. I break grammar rules in just about every sentence I write, and I tend to write in a similar style to my speech, so I’m NOT pretending to be the holiest of holies here but really people? Really? If I read, just once more ‘Well, irregardless of…” I am going to commit some really heinous crime against, well, likely against my laptop, because let’s be honest, I lack the motivation to actually leave my house to do something spectacular to the offending writer.

My self-diagnosed, self-imposed, and likely self-imagined agoraphobia aside, people REALLY, like FOR REAL really, need to stop saying, writing or even thinking that “irregardless” is, to use my Ms. M’s turn of phrase, a word “for in real-life”.

We are rapidly becoming a barely phonetically literate “where r u” and a “i no me 2” texting society, so I truly do not hold on to a lot of hope to stop the rampant and stupid use of this irritating and infuriating word, but just to make sure that I was not completely out to lunch in taking this position, I went to the all-knowing Wikipedia. You know, just to, like, make double-triple sure (but don’t worry, I used Google to get there, so I covered ALL of the Smarter-Than-Everyone bases). And much to my delight and disgust, this is what I learned:

Irregardless is a word commonly used in place of regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since the early twentieth century, though the word appeared in print as early as 1795.^[1] Most dictionaries list it as “nonstandard” or “incorrect” usage, and recommend that “regardless” should be used instead. (Emphasis added)

Delight? I was right! Disgust? Over two hundred years. People have been torturing others with this word for over 219 years. Over two centuries. Seriously? Over the past two hundred-plus years, society has seen everything from steam engines to indoor plumbing from electric washing machines to electric cars and we still cannot figure out a way to eradicate ‘irregardless’ from the everyday vernacular?

I don’t know about you, but to that I say: ‘stfu! i m smh @ ppl 4 b’ing 2 dum 2 no how 2 rite. im going 2 roflmao now stil smfh.’ See? That’s easy enough to read, isn’t it? We don’t really need spelling, grammar and rules to form credible, readable, or understandable thoughts, now do we?

P.S. Even my demented spell check is all lit up over this word and I tell you, that asshole lets me get away with just about EVERY WORD, no matter now made up it is. Maybe this spell check is not as useless as I thought. Just don’t try to type ‘xoxoxo’ because it will beat you with a stick to change it to ‘Xerox.’ Every. Single. Time. Sigh.