Oh yes, and words that really need some sort of qualifier like “quality” and “change.”

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.

We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership.

Obamessiah. So articulate, you know.

Phew, I feel better.

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).

1) Starting every sentence with “basically
2) Ending every sentence with “know what I’m saying.”
3) Using “uhm” between every word.

We’ve been assimilated

you know…

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!

It makes people sound like Mike Myers in the first Austin Powers movie. “Allow myself to introduce myself…”