Differences in past tense in American and British English (and other English oddities)

What is the only English word that ends in mt? See the bottom of this post for the answer.

In Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand it is more common to end some past tense verbs with a "t" as in learnt or dreamt rather than learned or dreamed. However, such spellings are also found in North America. The "t" past tenses may have been influenced by German past tenses which often end in "t". Several verbs have different past tenses or past participles in American and British English:

• The past tense of the verb "to dive" is most commonly found as "dived" in British, Australian and New Zealand English. "Dove" is usually used in its place in American and Canadian English. Both terms are understood, and may be found either in minority use or in regional dialect.
• The past participle and past tense of the verb "to get" is most commonly found as "got" in British and New Zealand English. "Gotten" is also used in its place in American and Canadian, and occasionally in Australian English, as a past participle, though "got" is widely used as a past tense. The main exception is in the phrase "ill-gotten", which is widely used in British, Australian and New Zealand English. Both terms are understood, and may be found either in minority use or in regional dialect. This does not affect "forget" and "beget", whose past participles are "forgotten" and "begotten" in all varieties.

 largely from Wikipedia































What is the only English word that ends in mt? Dreamt.

One small shift for a man... one giant leap for a sport

Larry Kwong’s career with the New York Rangers lasted literally a New York minute, but his legacy lingers some 65 years after his debut ended in disappointment, losing to the Canadians that night and never to play for the Rangers again. He only skated for one shift, in the third period of one game.
 

Kwong was the first player of Chinese descent to appear in the N.H.L. Despite for playing in one game, he said: “I broke the ice a little bit,” pointing to the numerous players of Asian ancestry who have since played in the league. “Maybe being the first Chinese player in the N.H.L. gave more of a chance for other Chinese boys that play hockey”. And remember folke, this was before Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Full story here

Live chat with Jack Dongarra re Exascale

Live chat with Horst Simon and Jack Dongarra on Exascale Computing - Live Now! http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/01/live-chat-the-future-of-supercom.html

Elegant Email Spam Deterrent

Have you ever found yourself doing something like this on one of your webpages/blogs/etc...

"Contact me at your [dot] name [at] domain [dot] com", instead of "Contact me at your.name@domain.com"

...because clearly the latter (on a publicly accessible page) would have your inbox (or hopefully spam folder) crammed with junk in short order?

Try this:

<div style="float:left">
Contact me at</div>
<div style="text-align:left;direction:rtl; unicode-bidi:bidi-override">moc.niamod@eman.ruoy
</div>

It will display in a web browser as "your.name@domain.com", but... try copying the displayed text and pasting it into Notepad/Wordpad/etc. It pastes backwards, and is useless - particularly to robots that try to rip your email address from the document source. (Just don't make it a link!)

This method is of course still exploitable, bit it will avoid your email address from being picked up by poorly written code, of which 99.9% of malicious code is. Additionally, it is as safe as (or more safe than) "your [dot] name [at] domain [dot ] com".

Done!