Clancey, this has been said before, but those methods only work in certain applications like Microsoft Word, Wordpad, etc. They do not work with Notepad or with Windows in general.

Regarding "...why on Earth would you prefer to say 'This is my friend Jane. She and I traveled to Kansas together,' rather than 'This is my friend Jane. We traveled to Kansas together'?", already asked and answered. "We" is ambiguous. Maybe you're telling Jane that you and I went to Kansas, not you and Jane. Maybe you and someone else in the room who's part of the conversation went with you. Without a context, and especially in writing, "she and I" clarifies the situation. See the examples I already posted. Referring to someone present in the third person is not rude if there are more than two people present, at least, if it's not constant and exclusionary.

No, I'm not wrong, William. As I have already mentioned, using an apostrophe to form the plural of dates has only recently been frowned upon, but such usage follows the older, more traditional rule. Just about every current style guide does now recommend omitting such apostrophes, but almost always has a note that says "...is no longer required...", which clearly indicates that it once was. Older style guides do forbid both '90's and '90s and require 90's. Some newer ones will suggest '90s.

Chris, "Please tell me which of these figures is correct" is ambiguous, at least if you ignore the presence or absence of commas. Clearly, "please tell me, which of these figures is correct?" with a comma, would require a question mark. Interestingly, the verb "tell" is reflexive in the statement, but not in the question. The other two examples of yours are clearly statements.

Often, putting a single word in quotes in this manner expresses doubt or irony. A free vacation is one that costs you nothing. A "free" vacation is one that includes extra "processing fees", etc., perhaps hidden in the fine print.

Sometimes quotes are used simply for emphasis. This usage is non-standard and considered by many to be incorrect as it can be easily confused for irony or sarcasm, sometimes with humorous results. Using italics, boldface, etc., is preferred.

For a good presentation on various uses of "out of place" quotation marks, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark

especially the paragraphs on irony, signaling unusual usage, use-mention distinction, and emphasis (incorrect usage).

Blake, while "list of tags" is singular, just "tags" is plural. For brevity, with contraction, it should be "here're your tags", not "here's your tags". I've noticed that this particular case mismatch has become very common, though I wouldn't call it standard English just yet. Even the strictest grammarians I know do this all the time (they don't even realize it and vigorously deny doing so:). I try not to, but even I do it sometimes. I see it much less frequently in writing than in speaking,

Make that:
"...This subject has already been beaten to death in the descriptive vs. prescriptive debate in other threads on this site..."
(Darn that cut and paste.)

Nigel, "me and her" sounds awkward because the convention in "standard" English is to put "me" (or "I" when appropriate) at the end. You'd probably find "her and me" much less objectionable and wouldn't even notice it. As far as I know, every schoolchild in every English speaking country and every ESL student in every other country is still taught that "me and her", "me and you", etc., is both ungrammatical and actually rude in its lack of deference. The descriptive vs. prescriptive debate in other threads on this site has already been beaten this subject to death, but suffice it to say, while "me and her" is becoming less uncommon, it's not considered standard English.

In many but not all cases, "we" and "us" make reasonable substitutes, but you must consider that they are often ambiguous. Does "us" mean her and me? him and me? you and me? you, John, Mary and me, but not Ed and Alice? Let me illustrate by putting the sentence in question into a possible context. Let's say you and I are sitting together along with a few others, and my friend, Jane walks over:

"Everyone, this is my friend, Jane. She and I traveled to Kansas together. We had a great time!"

Note the transition from "Jane" to "she and I" to "we". Perhaps you or someone else in the group might have gone to Kansas with me then or at a previous time as well. Not everyone in the group would have knowledge of everyone else's travel history. n my example, "she" can only mean Jane. Later, "we" can only mean Jane and I. The specificity of "she and I" would be wholly appropriate and stylistically preferred.

In spite of etymonline.com's description, if behead is really the only privative use of 'be-", then let me offer an alternate etymology. The "be-" in behead is not privative at all. It is actually intensive, just like every other use of "be-". I would posit that, in this case, "-head" means to remove the head. This would be similar to the process of boning. When you bone a chicken, you take the bones out; you don't put them back in. While there may not be a word, "heading", meaning "to remove the head", "beheading" could still be an intensive version expressing the same sentiment. Now, this is pure speculation on my part as I haven't researched this, but it certainly sounds plausible to me, especially if there are no other unambiguous examples of "be-" as privative.

Oops, I meant euonymus, the plant, not euronymous, the heavy metal guitarist.