Most Annoying Phrases

Got an article to write, and need a way to pad out your wordcount while annoying readers? Check out the list of most annoying phrases, as assembled in the UK, so not only will you be annoying readers, you'll have that British Isles flavor that makes you seem smarter. The majority are either absolutes used as generalizations, or a combination of absolutes with generalizations, such as "fairly unique" — 'unique' means the one and only; being 'fairly' unique would indicate it's not unique, but the phrase lets you expand out the word 'rare' to two, and up goes your wordcount!

I'd like to include "literally" on the list: literally means exactly as said, as opposed to 'figuratively', but when you're interviewed on a Discovery Channel show about ghosts and say, "it literally scared me to death", people will be wondering how you're still up and walking around despite your fear-induced demise. Using literally to indicate hyperbole is making the word mean the exact opposite of its original meaning.

Play's, Waltz's, Polkas

Went thrift-shopping Saturday (as we often do), and books and records were about all we found. While I didn't buy it, this was such a language trainwreck that I had to take a picture:

OK, I think they were going for "Joe Tishmack Plays Waltzes and Polkas". Let's break it down:

• Joe Tishmack: No punctuation failures, but no difficulty: zero points
• Play's: an apostrophe with a verb doesn't work -- "play is"? "play was"? A common apostrophe mistake, since 'plays' is a valid verb; minus ten points.
• Waltz's: As a plural, Waltzs doesn't work: it is waltzes for either a verb or a plural noun. Again, as with above, was their intent "Waltz is", or "Waltz was"? Wifey suggested it was a posessive contraction: Waltz has. Sadly, in context, they're all wrong. Since there's no way to accidentally use an apostrophe this way, minus thirty points.
• ...and Polkas: What, they suddenly checked Strunk & White for apostrophe usage, but couldn't go back and fix the others? They get a plus, because it could be either a noun or a verb in context (...Plays, Waltzes, and Polkas), so I'll give them +10 for getting it right despite their past efforts.

So, the net score is negative thirty. It makes me wonder if the graphic designer just took Tishmack's hand-scribbled title, put it on the album cover, and never bothered to look at what he wrote.

Spelling Errors In Paradise

Two men who have devoted their spare time to fixing grammatical errors are now banned from the national park system after pleading guilty to defacing public property. The pair's vigilante group, the Typo Eradication Advancement League, have gotten attention from NPR for their noble cause, but once you've defaced a 60-year-old irreplacable work of art by Mary Coulter, you should expect to feel wrath upon your picky endeavor. via.

Do You Mind If I Go Blogging This?

Language Blog writes about a strange lingual abberation, embodied by the sentence "Would you mind go checking on the laundry?" My first thought was, "what's wrong with that?" as it's completely understandable if spoken to you -- I probably would look at it more than once while editing, but would attribute it to colloquial style and let it go. However, if you look at it, word-by-word, it's a mess of tenses and posessions, missing 'ands' and adding superfluous suffixes.

My second thought, while I appreciate the language analysis of such sentence and its relatives, is that the ability to construct proper sentences is not the same part of the brain that speaks. Oh, they do cooperate, but writers and speakers are not the same ilk. Writers benefit from self-editing (writing, then re-reading what was just inscribed) and editors (who aren't watching for content as much as mechanics) to make sure their sentences are accurate within the Rules of American Language. When you're speaking, it's a cascade of proper words quickly grabbed off the shelf and placed in as close a proper order as possible; people often aren't sure how they're going to end the sentence when they start it, hence the mixups of tense and action. If it works, and people understand it, then that assembly of words gets put back on the shelf, intact, for quick retrieval later. This is part of why people say "um" instead of pausing, and use the word 'like' as an all-purpose word and punctuation. It works, so the unconsious word-assembler keeps using it. Writing and proper english requires consious assembly, which takes longer than speaking. It's almost suspicious when people speak too properly or correctly; it's assumed they're reading off a script, like those so-called "real customer testimonies" on the toothpaste commercials. Nobody uses words and contractions like that. Real sentences are full of misplaced contractions, invalid suffixes and prefixes, ums, and restarted sentences.

So, I generally forgive improper language (although I annoyed the girls more than once for picking on the whole "can I" or "may I" thing) when spoken -- otherwise, you'd spend your entire life annoyed. Remember people's words are coming out of their head faster than their internal editor can keep up, and start feeling a little sorry for real-time subtitlers.