UIP, the link you listed is interesting, but everyone should be aware, it is really part of a list of a particular college professor's pet peeves, not an authoritative grammar reference. Yes, he is an English professor and much of his complaints are valid, but many of them are questionable.

Oh, and as for using S Lanka instead of Sri Lanka (which means "beautiful land"), in Sanskrit, "Sri" is also used as a title with surnames, like Mister, Master, Lord, etc. It's possible that abbreviating the Sri to S is analogous to using Mr. instead of Mister.

It is a normal and natural progression that, over time, when an acronym becomes commonplace and simply recognized as a word in its own right, it ceases to be capitalized. Words like radar, laser, scuba, and fax, used to be written as RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging), LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), SCUBA (Self-Contained Undewater Breathing Apparatus), and FAX (FAcsimile X-mission [transmission]). These words have become fully integrated into the lexicon, familiar to all, and are no longer capitalized. Most people can't even tell you what they stand for. Some don't even realize that they're acronyms. It's similar to a dead metaphor. This is an evolutionary process. If a particular writer or organization views the examples you mentioned as common, he/she/they may decide that they no longer need to be capitalized.

Patrick, the tilde is used to mean approximately equal to. So is the wavy equal sign you mentioned (like two tildes one on top of the other). A third way is to write a normal, straight equal sign and put a tilde on top of it. All three mean the same thing. Also, a tilde can be used to indicate a range, like 1~5 meaning 1 to 5.

Bob, if you use ALT-xxx to make characters, you should always put a leading zero, e.g., ALT-0128, not ALT-128. In some cases it doesn't matter, but in others, it won't work without the zero. Also, to repeat what you already said, you must use the numeric keypad. The numbers above the letters will not work.

OK, here's an idea that I'm sure many will disagree with. I'm going to posit that any single letter can be a complete sentence. I'm suggesting that through verbification, with the proper context, any letter can be used as a verb, then stated as an imperative. At the risk of incurring the wrath of both prescriptivists and descriptivists alike, I am further suggesting that as long as the context makes the meaning clear, verbifying any noun is always grammatically correct, even if the verb form is not listed in any dictionary anywhere, even if that particular noun has never been verbified before in human history by anyone ever, even once. I'm putting it forth that the rules of English, no, of all language, allow this, and that verbification is simply a flexible communication tool that is allowed and that its free use is just a normal part of English.

Here's an example:

"Gee, you look tired."
"Yes, I was up all night grading papers. The pen was flying. I was A-ing and B-ing all over the place, occasionally, C, D, and F-ing."
"Really?"
"Yes. I did have one paper I wasn't sure of, though. Here, take a look. It's very good, but should I A or should I B?"
"Hmmm. Oh, this is really quite exceptional. You should A."
"A?"
"A."

A bit silly? Perhaps, but grammatical. Note, at the end, "A" does not refer to the grade itself. "A" is used as a verb meaning "to write an 'a' on a paper as part of the grading process."

Joe, I could be mistaken, but I don't think John needed to have "manglish" defined. When John said "what is manglish?", he didn't mean "what is [the definition of the word] manglish?" I think what he meant was "what [exactly is it about the phrase in question that you think] is manglish?" Of course, I could be wrong. Only John knows for sure. John?

To "conflustered": you said that you could only imagine the command, "go", being written as a quote when said by some character in literature, and, therefore, always needing quotes when written. Here is a simple and obvious scenario where "go" would be used without quotes. How about using "go" in written directions? Not quoting someone, but actual written directions that, at some point, simpy command the reader to "go"? OK, probably not common, perhaps even awkward, but certainly imaginable. Example:

"How to Steal 2nd Base"
Get ready to go from 1st base to 2nd base.
Wait until the pitcher's not looking.
Go.

Andy, I'm not sure what your point is when you said:

"The singular of data is datum. I never hear anyone say 'datas'."

You don't hear "datas" because data is already plural (although it is often used as a mass noun with some controversy). Did you mean to say:

"The singular of data is datum. I never hear anyone say 'datums'"?

Josh, I would disagree with your suggestion that "so right you are" is ungrammatical. I think that turn of phrase is similar to the following. Imagine a child who is a finicky eater. After devouring a nutritious meal, one of his parent's says "My, how well you have eaten, Johnny!" as opposed to "You have eaten well, Johnny!" I suppose one could make a case that the former is a fragment and should be "Look how well you have eaten" or something. The "look" could be considered to be elided.

furthermore, I would like to propose the following etymology (is this the right word for origin of pronunciation, rather than the origin of the word itself?) Please note, this is pure speculation on my part.

Nuclear is a relatively recent word (middle nineteenth century) with a rather technical origin. It probably didn't enter common usage right away. It is also somewhat difficult to pronounce with its compound consonant, a bit unusual in English.

I've actually heard recordings of Harry S Truman saying "nucular". Considering that he was president when the first atomic bomb was dropped, I would guess that the word "nuclear" and the pronunciation "nucular" was suddenly under great public focus.

Clearly, the "nucular" pronunciation is simply an example of metathesis, like when a child says pasketty instead of spaghetti, but when someone of such great influence does it, it can have great impact on the language. I would suggest that it is in deference to Harry Truman that the use of nucular, especially by politicians, has become somewhat common (personally, I suspect that calling it "widespread" is a gross overstatement on M-W's part).

If I may relate an event that happened when I was in college. I was taking a course in communications theory. English was not the professor's first language, and he had trouble pronouncing the word "facsimile" (fack-si-mi-lee). Instead he would pronounce it as "fack-smile", two syllables, where the second syllable is said like "smile for the camera". He was certainly an intelligent and very well-respected faculty member, but just had a little trouble with the language. Wouldn't you know it, a few students in the class actually started pronouncing the word "fack-smile" (only when in the class), I guess, to spare embarrasment (his and/or theirs), or perhaps in deference.

Imagine this same phenomenon on a presidential scale.