I have heard it as a dialectic form here in the Deep South. My father used to tell me I was "only sweet when you're 'sleep." I never thought of it as anything but baby/sleepy/love talk, i.e., "You 'sleep, sweetie?" I can't imagine it leaving the realm of late nights and lullabies.

Jealousy is the "green-eyed monster," so if someone calls you "green eyes," they probably mean you've behaved in a jealous manner.

Ok, I was speaking in the legal sense. I suppose I should have said "Are not allowed to."

And that's what I was told when I worked for one of those "hybrid" postal service places. We had to have separate forms allowing us to accept packages from other places. But we weren't USPS, so we were allowed to do so.

Wow, you folks are bigger pedants than I am.

Oh, I'm going to have fun here.

This question is easy, in the specific: Following American usage and style, the period goes inside the quotation marks. Again, that's emphasis on "American," but in American, that's strictly correct.

However, there are technical situations where that might be confusing, and I can see where usage might be adjusted for that. In my job, where meaning and structure often struggle together, the suggestion is usually to rewrite the sentence to avoid the conflict.

But Brad, putting the comma outside the quotation marks is just appalling to me. Quit it.

P.S.

"UPS and FedEx will not deliver to PO boxes."

Minor nit: It should be "cannot." The Post Office boxes belong to the USPS and cannot legally be put to any other use.

Wow, this is a great question. Given the examples, I guess I tend to think of them as a way I think of as "mathematical," in which "un" =0. Uninterested, unloved, unfounded. Nothing happened there. The state of this being is NOT interested, not loved, or not founded. It hasn't changed, perhaps because the subject is UNfamiliar with the object.

DIS, however, seems to imply a vector, or change in state. If you are disenchanted, for example, disliked, or disemboweled, there's the sense of actively moving, or having moved away from enchantment, being liked, or having bowels.

It takes a little bit of willingness to "hold your mouth just right," but you can even think of "disinterested" that way, as in the above example, because the judge has to maintain an ACTIVE level of disinterest. It's something she has to do; she can't just take a nap.

Oh, right, one more: "Unorganized": No one has ever organized my bookshelves. They are unorganized.

"Disorganized": I dumped my purse on the floor in a desperate search for my keys. Now the contents are disorganized.

I haven't researched this, but it's how I keep them straight, and it seems to work.

I don't know, you must live in Crazyland, from my point of view.

I live in the greater metro area, and when they say Mailing Address, they mean, Where the Post Office/Government thinks you are, and when they say Street Address, they mean, We're shipping something; where do you want it to go? Everyone knows how this works, don't they? I can't imagine how your world hasn't ground to a screeching halt.

Seriously, what you are saying should be completely correct. If someone gets confused, simply be very patient with them and rest smug in your knowledge that they are complete ignoramuses.

If you can ASK questions, though, the shortest way to find out what they want is ask what they want it FOR. Good luck.

It reminds me that they say, in German (or at least they did when I took it in high school, lo, these many years ago), "Now you will hear the news," rather than "Now we will present the news." It has much more directness, but struck me the same way, "You can't help but comply, and if you get into trouble, it's your OWN fault. We TOLD you."