Words get used, then overused, then diluted, and then, finally, emptied of all meaning.

When I was coming up in the personal computer software industry, oh so many years ago, some software person came up with the phrase "User Friendly" to describe a software product. Suddenly, or so it seemed, every single software product was declared, by its producers, marketers, and sales people, to be "user friendly."

And those words ended up being a joke. Stripped of all meaning.

These days it’s "outside the box." Everybody, without exception, everybody is now thinking outside the box. That one, people, is done now. Stop using it. Whatever or wherever that box is, there’s nobody left inside it.

Nuances of language. The fine touch here, the slight rephrasing there … that interests me.

For example: the use of the "over at" phrase.

The annoying person on the phone, who had weaseled past our receptionist but was just cold calling selling stocks, identified himself as "John Doe over at XYZ." Not "John Doe of XYZ brokerage." Am I crazy, or is that just another subtle spin on reality?  That change to "over at XYZ" sounds like he’s just across the street, at some close and familiar place, instead of the stiff and formal — but correct — "John Doe of XYZ brokerage."

I don’t mind "over at" the way it gets used in blogs, mentioning Steve King "over at Biz Labs," or "Pam Slim over at Cubicle Nation."

But with the cold caller selling stocks, I notice the nuance. It’s not just random, it’s studied and practiced.

Maybe this is just me, and if you don’t give a damn about grammar, then I apologize, please skip the rest of this post. This is about a grammar rule that should change.

The proper English grammar is to put the period inside the quotation marks at the end of the sentence. But what if the quotation is something to search for, or type, like a password. For example, this sentence:

Your password is "password."

In this case, do you type "password" or do you type "password." before pressing the Enter key? That’s confusing. Grammar is supposed to relieve confusion, not cause more confusion.

Here’s another example:

Just search for "business plan software."

What do I type into the search engine, before I click? Do I type "business plan software" or do I type "business plan software." and there again, the grammar confuses the issue.

The solution is for us to get together with editors and style guides and establish that the quotation marks used to set off the keystrokes counts more than the normal quotation convention. So it should be

Your password is "password".

Search in Google for "business plan software".

And for those of you who couldn’t care less about grammar technicalities, I apologize again. I realize most people couldn’t care less. But some of us do care, and in my case I’m going over edits for my latest book, and this comes up more than once.