This is the first of what will probably be multiple posts on linguistic devices that annoy us. Do these things sound familiar? Do they annoy you too or are you guilty of using them?
1. "Actually," misuse of.
'Actually' should only be used when correcting someone. If I ask you if you had a good night, I am not implying anything about the quality of your past 24 hours. I am not passing any judgement as to whether the night was good or bad. In other words, I am not saying anything that could be corrected so don't reply, "yes I did, actually." It actually makes you sound like a bitch. See what I mean?
2. "In terms of," misuse of
No, using 'in terms of' to join every word to every other word in a sentence doesn't make you sound cool or smart, it just means I can't understand a damn thing you say. "We need to synergise in terms of our top-line deliverables to maximize our output in terms of success." That is not English, that is a terrible language called management-speak where only one word in a hundred means anything. I don't know what terms the top-line deliverables are measured in, so how can I synergise in terms of these vague, probably non-existent terms? How are we measuring success when it has no terms in and of itself? Just to clarify, 'in terms of' is a completely legitimate phrase in plenty of circumstances. For example, from Bartleby.com: "We measured sales in terms of the number of units sold per year, rather than in dollars taken in per year." Spot on. The rest of you: if you can't use 'in terms of' in terms of correct use of in terms off, sod off and get a new catchphrase like 'neato'.
3. Marking anything as a scandal by adding '-gate' to the end of it.
From a friend of UUJM:
I saw a nice joke on The Mitchell and Webb Show on BBC -- "This is the biggest scandal since Watergategate", because David Mitchell points out it was a scandal about the Watergate Hotel and not water, and everyone knows that to label something a scandal we merely add "gate" as a suffix."
It's a wonder that September 11 isn't referred to as "Boardinggate."
I'm guilty of the first two...
ReplyDeleteYou'd be better just emailing this directly to John Key(s).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI hate having so many Google accts. Damnit. That post above is not the Google account I use blogger on.
ReplyDeleteAnd all I wanted to do was say something about how fucking obsessed I've been with That Mitchell and Webb look, lately.
Everything is tragedy. I'm going to make some relevant, meaningful comments on this outstanding blog when I have something better to say and I'm not in such an adjectivey mood.
Jesus wept.