Probably Goes Without Saying, Or Maybe Saying Twice
There is a reason I didn’t build a search engine (public or administrator) into Efendi. I am afraid I would come to realize my self-redundancy so sharply I would collapse in some kind of Conrad-esque horror-fit. Plus, if I don’t write things on this blog, I don’t exactly articulate those random daytime thoughts much of anywhere else most of the time, and my mental state would probably suffer for that.
Anyway, or shall I say forebodingly and flippantly say “any way,” I noticed something for probably the hundredth time that really drives me nuts. Just because a pair of words has a compound word associated with them doesn’t mean you can substitute the conglomeration willy-nilly. The compound word generally has its own meaning in the cases I’m pointing out here.
“Anyway” turned out to be an excellent example.
The correct: “You can walk there any way you want to go.”
Versus the awful: “You can walk there anyway you want to go.”
The second would be better punctuated, in terms of meaning, as: “You can walk there! Anyway, you want to go.”
Some are close calls, like “anytime.” It’s almost a draw here:
“We could see a dolphin at any time during this ride.”
“Anytime works for me.”
I think “anytime” is an actual single point in time, just not defined. If you’re saying any number of points of time, it’s “any time.”
I see in the online dictionary that “anytime” is defined as “at any time,” which seems to confirm my hypothesis.
But attention must be paid.