An entry in Facebook caught my attention only yesterday. One of the “friends” (members) on the social network listed words that ought to be avoided in academic writing: “interesting,” “basically,” “got,” “firstly, secondly . . .” and “etc.”

But before we parse away, let’s explain the idea of social networks like Facebook, where “friend” has become a verb, as in “I’d like to friend you, my dear.”

Facebook probably does much more than I’m able to express here. It doubtless has some capabilities, such as posting songs and film clips that the friends and friended ones can enjoy. It’s truly a marvel, something that made one of its founders, Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire and all that before he even reached puberty (almost).

Two of my siblings have friended me; a third one declares, “I would never touch the stuff,” meaning Facebook. We friendly siblings try to argue that there’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of social network; rather, the evil, if there is any, might come from the friends themselves.

Facebook gives friends the chance to post items — often laden with spurious points and specious arguments — in a forum that spreads the information rapidly. I’ve mentioned in previous columns that the idea of forwarding a message to 20 people seems to have some people addicted. If we forward it to sufficient numbers of friends, we become rich in three days, or so the promise goes; fail to do so, or delete the message and you’re an impoverished traitor to the country.

It could be true that every word we put on the Internet, whether it be by simple email or Facebook, might come back to haunt us. I say “might,” as I don’t know enough about the subject.

Facebook has allowed me to “friend” almost 200 people. I hesitate to refer to them as friends, as I don’t believe I have more than a couple of friends. Acquaintances? Yes, I have many.

But firstly, let’s return to one word in particular: “etc.” When I taught school, a representative from what was then the department of education would come over about once a month to give workshops on effective teaching. “I can make scholars out of students in any class you have,” he once boasted. Then he provided examples of miracles he’d performed in a math classroom, the English classroom, etc.

Now “etc.” began as a Latin abbreviation for “etcetera,” meaning “and so forth,” a tidy way of saying “I don’t need to list them all, but you get the picture.” It is used to continue a line of thought toward an assumed direction. So rather than listing all 50 kinds of animals on your farm, it’s sometimes helpful to insert an “etc.”

But the trouble was that our educational scholar-maker concluded every list with five etceteras. It become tedious, as the rest of us teachers already knew what one use of “etc.” means. Why bless us with five? As is common at some faculty meetings, we get so hung up on tallying the many times the friend uses the “etc. times 5” habit that we forget the message.

Closely related to “etc.” is the expression, “the list goes on.” And sometimes, if the writer or speaker is especially angry or emphatic, “the list goes on and on.”

Notice the attack ads on TV. They invariably involve Martin Heinrich and Heather Wilson. One of the spots features ordinary folks who accuse Heinrich or Wilson of committing political atrocities. Many folks in the attack commercials assert, after providing a skimpy litany, that “the list goes on …”

Well, that list that goes on and on requires us to fill in the blanks. On Fox news a few months back, a commentator charged Obama with remaining silent while Obama’s minister, Jeremiah Wright, railed against white America. In addition, the speaker said, Obama increased the federal deficit by $2 trillion. He concluded with, “and the list goes on and on.”

Now isn’t the “on and on” routine actually another way of admitting we don’t really have a third item to add to the existing two? When my students, the would-be scholars where I taught at Cuba High School overused “etc. or “on and on,” I simply required them to write (in the composition itself) the justification for their use.

It was amazing how quickly their writing improved, once they were weaned of that word that tried to show we know more than we do.

A number of years after my high school teaching days, a former student from Cuba showed up in one of my classes at Highlands. He reminded me of our little etc.-removal policy and said he’d purged it completely from his writing. He had been an intern with the Albuquerque Tribune for two summers.

He proudly showed me a number of his clippings on city government, cable TV and the police beat, and the list goes on and on.

• • •

If ever there were an argument for bringing back the first team, Monday night’s Green Bay-Seattle football game proved it.
On the very last play of the game, with Seattle behind by five, the quarterback, Russell Wilson, threw a Hail Mary pass to Golden Tate in the end zone. But a Packer defender, M.D. Jennings, got there first and appeared to have an interception. It took 10 minutes for the replacement refs to declare it was a touchdown for the Seahawks, not an interception for the Packers.

Don’t ask any in the Seattle hometown crowd to settle the argument: What they saw was a touchdown. Period. Wouldn’t it be great if the locked-out regular NFL refs were back on the field?