Which is why you should say “nominate” instead, since “appoint” might mean “automatic selection” in many settings.
“There is no such word as ‘cannot’” is certainly an error. And as my waste of electrons proves, “cannot” removes doubt that “can not” raises.
Yet no one seems to have any confusion distinguishing a first-rate performance from a third-rate performance.
I disagree (with DrDeth) that they mean exactly the same.
“I cannot go to work today” = “I am unable to go to work today.”
“I can not go to work today” = “I have the option (or the ability) to avoid going to work today.”
Admittedly, it’s a quirk of English that “cannot” is all one word while “are not,” “will not,” “should not,” “do not” etc. are two-word phrases.
I never claimed that.
And no it doesn’t since the two have identical meanings, it’s just two different spellings.
For what very little it’s worth, I side with Thudlow and against DrDeth on this one. IMO “cannot” and “can not” are two very, very different concepts. As Thudlow’s examples make perfectly clear. At least to me.
verb
1.
a form of ·can not.
*Definition of cannot
: can not
*
*cannot
Pronunciation: /ˈkanɒt//kaˈnɒt/
CONTRACTION
Can not.
Example sentences
Usage
Both the one-word form cannot and the two-word form can not are acceptable, but cannot is more common (in the Oxford English Corpus, three times as common). The two-word form is better only in a construction in which not is part of a set phrase, such as ‘not only … but (also)’: Paul can not only sing well, he also paints brilliantly*
I can go on, but every dictionary I have found sez that cannot= can not. A “form of” a “contraction” etc.
I know that cannot means can not or can’t.
However, can not does not always mean cannot. So, to prevent confusion over what is meant, cannot is far superior.
Your cite loses credibility when it uses this sentence as an example:
The two-word form is better only in a construction in which not is part of a set phrase, such as ‘not only … but (also)’: Paul can not only sing well, he also paints brilliantly
In that case, the verb is can and the “can” followed by “not” being used isn’t even the equivalent of “can not” or “cannot”.
On the other hand, I have heard it used in exactly this way, by African-American co-workers.
If you think you are more credible than Oxford, then … well… I have no words. :rolleyes:
Enuf of this hijack.
Written another way, that sentence is:
Not only can Paul sing well, he also paints brilliantly.
It is not an illustration of the definition of cannot/can’t/can not. I’m a fan of the OED too, but this is not valid.
I hate it when people say, “To be honest with you”
because it means that sometimes they are not …
Donald Trump says that a lot … “To be honest with you”
I’m hearing it from African-Americans as well, and I’ve never heard it used about a house or apartment that the speaker owns or is renting - it’s always someone else’s house or apartment they’re “staying” at. And not their spouse’s or SO’s - those people always use “live”.
Maybe my examples made it unclear, but when people tell me they’re “staying” at someone else’s place, there’s an unspoken or sometimes a spoken “until” - until I get my own place, until I get a job, until my sister gets tired of me and I go stay with my cousin. It may be for months , it could even turn out to be years - but it’s not intended to be a permanent situation from the get-go. Perhaps it’s a regional difference.
Actually it’s a marker phrase that for most speakers most times means “I’m about to start lying, so listen up.”
What a remarkably wrong and condescending response.
The % in C is called “mod”. That’s what it’s called. If I’m reading C code out loud for some reason and I come upon a % I will call it “mod”.
Whether the actual arithmetic result it has when applied to negative numbers is more accurately referred to as “remainder” instead of “mod” is irrelevant to what the operator itself is called, in general parlance.
Now, if you want to start a campaign to rename it to something else which you think will protect poor innocent programmers from the ravages of incorrect code, knock yourself out. But don’t act like calling it by its common name is a “fact” that people “get wrong”.
Dick.
Leave the name-calling out of this thread and forum, please.
This is a weird misconception in Canada, too. I suspect it’s universal to countries with progressive income tax brackets.
I tend to get more pedantic about lending objects, rather than money.
“Can I borrow your Kleenex?”
Absolutely not! You may take a tissue and I’d rather you throw it away when you’re done. Please don’t give it back to me. :eek:
I could care less, but doing so would require greater effort and I’m not inclined to do more than utter the first phrase of this sentence. 
No, no: I’m eating cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the roof leaks, the walls are cracked; the wife does nothing but nag me, the kids are always screaming and fighting, the dog uses the main hallway for its toilet, and not a night goes by without hearing a gunshot in the neighborhood. Nobody in their right mind would call that living! :mad:
My irritation is the increasing use of *purposefully *when intentionally is the correct term.
Jane intentionally left the car lights on throughout Tuesday night because she didn’t want to go to work on Wednesday morning. [COLOR=Navy] Therefore the battery drainage was not accidental; she let the battery die on-purpose so the car wouldn’t start in the morning. [/COLOR]Then on Thursday, when he was striding purposefully into the HR manager’s office, we all knew she was filing a long-overdue greivance against her manager, Carl.
[While on-purpose is a coloquial equivalent of intentional, it is erroneous to make the next shift to purposeful, which has a different meaning.]
I realize, however, that the dictionary is updating (or has updated) purposeful to follow popular misusage. 
–G!
When I was in school, our English teachers drilled into us the fact that “lend” is a verb, and “loan” is always a noun.
That’s a good example of a little fact your teachers got wrong, since loan is often a verb.