It Was A Very Good Year

May 6, 2008, The Washington Post, A Section: "This week, to mark the one-year anniversary of the bag ban, Modbury is planning a big beach cleanup."

Some days, Livia just wants to put her head down and cry. Other days, she wants to get out her little vial of poison... Take out your dictionaries, please.

Anniversary: from the Latin words annum (year) and verso (turn). Commemoration of an event that comes around every time the year turns. Same day every year. "Anniversary" includes "year." See? Come on, come on: make the connection; you can do it.

Bravo! X-year anniversary is redundant! You win the fur-lined bathtub! Amazing what you can find out when you think. What the Post writer should have written was "... to mark the FIRST anniversary..."; that is, the first time that the year has turned since the event happened.

Appearance in printed periodicals, on broadcast media, or in the largely illiterate world of Internet communication does not make this usage correct. Nor does it absolve you for perpetuating it.

Yes, yes, I know--everyone else does it. Well I'm not everybody else's mother-- oh wait, wrong crowd. Anyway, stop it! Don't make me stop this car!

LIVIA DRUSA