> I went back and forth with my ex-girlfriend about this (no, that's not why we split up.) She used "irregardless" in a sentence, and I corrected her, because I, too, hate that word with a passion. She swore it was a word. Her mother backed her up, and said that "of course" it was a word. I explained exactly what you said, that "regardless" is a negation in itself, and "irregardless" turns it back into a positive--they wouldn't hear it. Irregardless was correct, and that was that. I challened them to look it up. They did, in *two separate dictionaries*. And to my extreme horror, it was *there*, in *both* dictionaries, and it wasn't even listed as slang or anything.
>
> So I've just given up on crap like this. I can't fix it, and apparently, I can't even fall back on people who should know better (those who compile dictionaries) for help, so why bother?

BTW, this is somewhat off-topic, but did you know that the spell checker in MS Word 97 lets you get away with misspelling the word for a thousand-year period as "millenium"?

All of the dictionaries I've got say it must be spelled with two n's to be correct...

Hm, it usually seems to work the *other* way around.

-- codeman"and we'll be seeing that word WAY too much within the next few days"38