Grammar Moses: Please enjoy this weirdly normal column

Andy Warhol famously said, "I am a deeply superficial person."

I not-so-famously say, "Hon, this soup is awfully good."

Oxymorons are wonderful little contradictions that flavor your language, provide emphasis or simply elicit a smile.

You all know about jumbo shrimp and military intelligence (I make no judgments here), but I imagine you employ oxymorons more often than you realize. In fact, it's a sure bet.

Have you described something as bittersweet?

Have you told your kids to bundle up because the temperature is going to drop up to 10 degrees today?

Did they look at you as if you were clearly confused?

Could you accurately describe the sweater your Aunt Jean knitted you for Christmas as pretty ugly?

If you had done so within earshot of Aunt Jean, you probably would have been met with deafening silence.

I have a million of them. They're unusually common in daily parlance.

An oxymoron is a contradiction in terms. Its origins are Greek, meaning "keenly foolish."

What are your favorites? Send me an email.

What a champ?

Norbert Majewski is not a horse person. This much I could tell from his question: "Which expression is (more?) correct, 'champing at the bit' or 'chomping at the bit?' I have heard/read discussions, arguments for and against each and cannot sort it out."

"Champing" is the correct word, Norbert. That's the traditionalist's answer, and the one I'll always give.

A horse that is eager to giddy up grinds its teeth on its bit. Translated into human terms, it means you are either nervous or eager to do something.

It's a very specific allusion.

"Champ" is a variation of "chomp."

It's widely understood that if you're chomping on something, you're actually eating it. When you're champing, it's just a nervous grinding. The horse never eats the bit.

But misuse of "chomping" has taken a foothold, so those who like to think of language as an ever-changing thing will tell you that's fine simply because enough people say it - whether it's a result of ignorance or poor hearing.

I think it's a waste of a perfectly good idiom to mess it up, so my response remains: "Horses chomp on carrots but champ at the bit."

Why not everywhere?

I just had an interesting chinwag with Eric Peterson, one of our veteran reporters. He asked me whether, because the goal of this column is to promote clarity in writing, I am chagrined by the seemingly random combinations of words and symbols that populate people's social media posts.

I told him that in addition to using horrid spelling and syntax, people often fail to make a point or exhibit manners befitting a vertebrate. You know, the sort of stuff you pay attention to in conversations with your kids or a co-worker or in snappy party repartee.

Eric's response was profound: "If these things are going to be exercised anywhere, why not everywhere?"

Let that sink in. Facebook is where the world can see whether you're a feckless, nasty boob ... or not.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.