That's not the correct idiom!

In my free time, I teach test prep courses for the SAT (college admissions test) and the GMAT (business school admissions test). Of course, since I'm working, that wouldn't really be considered free time anymore, huh?

Anyway, I've always been a "corrector" of written and spoken English, much to the chagrin of my family. I'm not trying to be mean, I just don't want my mom to say K-Marts or Wal-Marts. Not that she does this regularly, but if she slips, I let her know. I think only old people pluralize store names, and she's not old, so she shouldn't say it.

So I just finished reading a very interesting book called The Secret Life of Lobsters. It chronicles the history of lobstering in New England from the perspective of both lobstermen and researchers. I learned a lot and was especially interested since my husband and I recently took a vacation to New England. My only problem with the book is the catch phrase of one lobsterman. When things weren't going his way, he would say, "There is no need of all this nonsense." That's how I remember it anyway. I might be a little off, but the point is that he used the phrase "need of."

I'm not sure I ever learned about idioms in school. But then again, maybe I shouldn't have. Idioms are basically just how we speak. There are no hard and fast rules. You just have to know them. However unimportant they may seem, idioms are an important part of my GMAT class, as they are a common error in the sentence correction questions.

Well, "need of" is not the correct idiom. It should be "need for." And as much as I don't want it to bother me, it does.

There's no need for all this nonsense.