Pet peeves in English:

You're, your

They're, their, there

It's, its (I've even seen the non-existent its')

Lose, loose

The use of "fortuitous" to mean lucky...it means by chance

The use of "fulsome" as in fulsome praise to mean high praise...fulsome means excessively stagey or gushing

The use of 24/7 sets my teeth on edge

I had to email the venerable BBC today to berate them for using the following on their website "It wouldn't of bothered me..."

What is the world coming to? Aaaaaarrrgghhh!!!!!!!!

Islamic fundamentalists raging in our streets and we argue about grammar and syntax!

So to add to the fiddling while Rome burns:

Et al. is short for et alia (and all)

Can you explain the distinction?

Something can be unfortunate but still happen by chance. I suupose I mean the connotation that fortuitous means "with good luck". Though I note the OED now accepts fortuitous with the informal meaning of fortunate. But I'm a stickler for the old ways

In my experience, "fortuitous" is only ever used to mean "with good luck"... if someone got struck by lightening, I don't think any speaker of English, educated or not, would understand that event being described as "fortuitous" as being anything but the most egregious shaudenfreude!

This expression is used for people, not for 'things's. When it's about people in general, the male form is always used. The nominative male plural of 'alius' is 'alii'. So the expression is 'et alii'.
Unless 'et al' is for other things used than persons, then it depends on what you mean with 'al' is plural or singular.
Plural would be 'et alia' as you say, singular would be 'et aliud'.

Just to let you know.

Trying to speak German?

SHAME on all US newspapers for not printing the cartoons

Why the hell should we spread Europe's problem to America? Let's allow Europe to revel in their own issues for once.

Unless, of course, you want them to start their violent protest in America, so you blame it on President Bush. :rolleyes:

In my experience fortuitous is mostly used incorrectly... :p

You know, there are a lot of jokes out there that start out " A priest, a minister and a rabbi go into a bar......." I don't get offended about that, in fact it's good for a laugh. How offended would Muslims be if a joke started "A priest, a minister and an Imam went into a bar......" Bet that would start a riot. (Please don't start a Jihad against me. Thjis is only a what if, and not necessairly the opinion of anyone else.) LOL