Graduation tip of the day: Stop saying “like” and “you know”
Generational verbal tics are hard habits to break. I’m guilty myself:
“Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough has a suggestion for what young people can do for their country.
“Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation,” McCullough implored Boston College’s class of 2008 at commencement ceremonies Monday….
He said he’s particularly troubled by the “relentless, wearisome use of words” such as like, awesome and actually.
…Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.”
Other verbal crutches that need to be thrown in the garbage compactor:
“Frankly.”
“At the end of the day.”
“Impacting.”
And the noxious:
“My friends.”
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“Didn’t” is not properly pronounced “didunt.”
Couldunt.
Isunt.
Wasunt.
Et ceterunt.
My votes:
Dude
Neocon
Ebonics
Irregardless
Guestimate
chicagojedi - I am guilty of that will try to get myself to call them leftists.
If I forget, feel free to correct me.
I am totaly for banning the use of the expression “public service” by professional politicians when they are, like, talking about their, you know, career.
I hate when people say “absolutely” instead of “yes.” News flash - it does not make you sound more articulate!
What makes me want to tear out my last bit of hair, is when I hear someone described as “the gentleman”, who just murdered, raped, molested,robbed, highjacked,terrorized or set something on fire.
I’m guilty of just about every single grammar/usage faux pas listed above. But I would NEVER use them in a professional setting!! My dad is a bit of a grammar nut (and apparently I inherited that nuttiness), and he made a point of constantly drilling this into our minds: You can use whatever language you want when you’re just hanging out with your friends. But if you are writing, or are in a professional situation, you need to speak like an educated person, not a valley girl.
As far as “should of, would of, could of,”… In Alabama, due to our slow speech patterns, that’s what should’ve, etc. sound like. But I’ll agree that when written “of” instead of “‘ve,” it just looks ignorant.
Y’all forgot the word “Liberal”, heave that in the pile as well
My husband uses this everyday and I just want to slap him every time it comes out of his mouth:
“It is what it is.”
I think I’ll go smack him with a pillow just because he may be dreaming of saying it.
One that bugs the hell out of me:
“I’m all about [whatever]”
gaaah!
fo’ shizzle
Gosh - this is totally awesome-really-like English is used here -ya know!!!!
PS Anyone ever heard of a Valley Girl?
This post is so out there, dude!
It’s kinda like “wow” you know!
/snerk
Yo, Christian Soldier, I have heard about valley girls!
And they would say, dude, that John McCain is “grody to the max!”
Valley Girls.
Ahh - ahem - yes.
The continuing curse of Frank/Moon Zappa.
The one that really gets me is when people say “me and” as in “Me and Jim went to the movies.”
Most of the common errors bother me
totwotoo.LGM
“Myself” Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. For example, “Bill and myself…”
It makes people sound like Mike Myers in the first Austin Powers movie. “Allow myself to introduce myself…”
Mine is AXXED… Especially when I hear a supposedly educated person say it, such as a news anchor or sports figure. “HE AXXED ME TO GO WITH HIM TO THE GAME…
Oh hell! I’m so flipping guilty of these.
I remember a George Carlin routine, “Jammin’ in New York,” where he goes off on the butchery of the English language by adding words to make something sound more important, or in some instances, dehumanize it. For example, going from “shell shock” (the sound of which invokes the images of shells going off) to the more clinical “post-traumatic stress disorder.” Or, less importantly, “shower activity” or “rain event”. Or my favorite, where he starts dealing with the airlines:
Airline Employee: Get on the plane. Get on the plane.
Carlin: [expletive] you! I’m getting in the plane! Let Evel Knevel get on the plane!
Frankly, you know,
We’ve been assimilated
you know…
If I hear any of the following from someone speaking to me, I immediately tune them out and stop taking them seriously. These phrases are:
1) Starting every sentence with “basically
2) Ending every sentence with “know what I’m saying.”
3) Using “uhm” between every word.
Oh please, get rid of “basically” peppered throughout every sentence.
Liberal: call it by it’s real name please. Marxism.
////-American: Either you’re an “American” or you’re not. Ethnicity is obvious, and it’s irrelevant(or should be).
How about banning Larry the fake cable guy and “git er duuun”
“Shower activity.” It’s called “rain.”
Incorrectly using “I” to sound smarter. The lights were hung by Mary and I. Argghhh. And someone mentioned earlier about appostrophes. Drives me crazy. “He get’s along with employee’s….the car’s we drive…”
Phew, I feel better.
Obamessiah. So articulate, you know.
“Fact of the matter” - usually is said by someone trying to convince you they really do know what they’re talking about, when they obviously don’t.
stupid interjection: “, I mean,”
Incorrectly using “I” to sound smarter. The lights were hung by Mary and I…
Sorry to seem pedantic (occupational hazard - I home schooled my children through all twelve grades, and I’m a writer :p), but I is the correct form of the personal pronoun in that sentence; it’s the sentence form (passive) that makes it sound awkward.
The active form is Mary and I hung the lights.
A simple rule to follow is to drop the other person or persons from the sentence, and see which form of the personal pronoun fits. But I do agree that the incorrect use of the personal pronoun - either way - is annoying, especially when misused by supposedly educated people.
Personally, I mourn the death of the adverb.
Oh yes, and words that really need some sort of qualifier like “quality” and “change.”