A word about words.
Few things derail my concentration faster than a malapropism. The moment someone says "for all intensive purposes" or "should of done", a small part of my brain quietly disconnects from whatever they were actually saying and starts composing a correction it will never deliver.
It's not snobbery - or at least, I tell myself it isn't. Language evolves, rules bend, and plenty of pedants are insufferable. But malapropisms aren't evolution. They're inherited mistakes, passed along unchecked, often by people who would be mortified to know they'd been saying something nonsensical for years.
The real damage is reputational. I've watched otherwise brilliant people lose authority in a room the moment they said someone is "chomping at the bit" or promised to "nip it in the butt". Heroes have fallen. Presentations have unravelled. Job interviews have, I suspect, quietly ended.
This page is my attempt at a public service. Learn them, share them, and for the love of all things good - stop saying "the proof is in the pudding."
Friday Facts
A weekly digest of things worth knowing.
It started sometime around 2014 as a Friday morning email to a small group of colleagues - a handful of facts with your coffee to make the end of the week feel a little less like the end of the week. The kind of things that make you say "huh, I didn't know that" and then immediately tell the nearest person.
Nobody asked for it. Nobody unsubscribed either, which I took as encouragement.
The email list has grown and shrunk over the years as colleagues came and went, and friends and family joined in, but the Friday ritual stuck. What you're reading now is the archive of what I could find - every edition, every fact, every rabbit hole - going back to close to the very beginning. If you have early editions, I'd love to add them. Forward them to my email address, or pop 'em in the Comments tab.
The archive runs from to the present - of mostly unbroken Fridays. Some editions have words of the week, puzzles, quotes, and other curiosities alongside the facts. Browse by category, search for something specific, or just hit Random and see where you end up.
If something's wrong, outdated, or you know a better fact - the Comments tab is there for exactly that.
A personal obsession. Language is a precision instrument and malapropisms are like using a spanner as a hammer - it sort of works, but it makes everyone uncomfortable. The Malapropisms tab is a running collection of the ones that grind my gears the most.
Friday Facts works just like a regular website, but it can also live on your phone's home screen or desktop like a proper app — no app store required, no installation fuss. It's lightweight, fast, and works even when your connection is patchy.
Android: Tap the three-dot menu in Chrome and choose Add to Home screen. Friday Facts will appear in your app drawer — long-press it and drag it to your home screen like any other app.
iPhone: Tap the Share button (the box with the arrow) in Safari, scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen. It'll sit on your home screen and open full-screen, just like a native app.
In Chrome or Edge, look for the install icon in the address bar — it looks like a small screen with a download arrow. Click it and Friday Facts will open in its own window, separate from your browser, with its own taskbar icon. Perfect for a Friday afternoon distraction.
Want to embed a random fact on your own site or blog? Drop this snippet wherever you'd like it to appear:
<iframe src="https://fridayfacts.tonysplace.xyz/widget.html" width="340" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border-radius:10px"></iframe>