Things That Make You Sound Stupid

Numeric Value Conversion

There is a real problem of people not knowing how to convert digit-numeric to semantic-numeric values. This used to be taught extensively in schools, but I notice a boomers forward have a hard time converting something like 9,459,165 to "Nine million four hundred fifty nine thousand one hundred and sixty five".

Fiscal vs Physical

fiscal (adj.)
1560s, "pertaining to public revenue," from French fiscal, from Late Latin fiscalis "of or belonging to the state treasury," from Latin fiscus "state treasury," originally "money bag, purse, basket made of twigs (in which money was kept)," which is of unknown origin. The etymological notion is of the public purse. The general sense of "financial" (1865, American English) was abstracted from phrases fiscal calendar, fiscal year, etc. Related: Fiscally.

Intellectual Property Confusion

People often confuse these three distinct types of intellectual property protection:

Patents

Patents protect inventions and processes.

Trademarks

Trademarks protect names, likenesses, logos, word marks, and slogans.

Copyrights

Copyrights protect books, movies, music, and websites.