THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I would add “couldn’t care less” solely for the number of people who say “could care less.” That is a major pet peeve of mine.

I agree, Mike, although I am not crazy about being part of the grammar police.  I think that one of the mistakes that these “Oxford Researchers” made is mixing up “annoying” phrases and words, and ungrammatical ones and malapropisms.  For example, is “shouldn’t of” really “annoying” to many people?  For one thing, I don’t think many people even say that. It is just that it often sounds like that.  And if they do say that, who the heck cares or even pays attention?  I don’t.

“Annoying” is when a teenager (and sometimes adults) say “like” every third word.

At school, we used to laugh every time this kid would say “as such”.  We’d wait for it.  It was coming, and then, boom, he says it, and we laugh.  Since then, I consciously stop saying or writing “as such” even if it is perfectly appropriate.  A few times, I think I let it slip.

In his first few years of posting, Tango used the phrase “as well” (meaning “also") quite a lot. I began to find it it mildly irritating, since I had never heard that before. (Is it a Canadian phrase?)

MGL is certainly “right on” about the word “like”. But is also works the opposite way a bit. If you never use the term in casual conversation, you sound like an stiff old fogie.

Some of “like” is “bad”, man. Mos def.

To be honest, I always assumed “shouldn’t of” was, in fact, “shouldn’t’ve”.  That is, a big contracted version of “should not have”, which is perfectly acceptable English, even if no one seems to be able to spell it properly. 

“Fairly unique” is something I find somewhat irritating in print, though in speech I let it pass without comment (and, I’d bet, without noticing, at least some of the time).  Same goes for “mostly perfect”.  Unless the user is shooting for a joke, then the phrases don’t make much sense.  Something is perfect or unique, or it’s not.  That’s it.

“I personally” is a bit of an overused phrase, but it can make sense in a lot of grammatical contexts.  Namely, when an author is trying to distinguish his thoughts from a general view.  It’s possible, even likely, that the phrase is used in a context in which the author/user couldn’t possibly be doing anything but expressing a personal opinion, in which case, I can understand why some grammatical anal audience member may become exaggeratedly irritated.

Google:
site:www.tangotiger.net tangotiger “as well”

That comes back with 147 hits (though they are not all necessarily from me).

site:www.tangotiger.net tangotiger “as such”

29 hits, though again, not necessarily all (or any) from me.  The first one I looked at wasn’t from me.

I agree with “at the end of the day.” 3-4 people I work with have beaten that phrase to death. It makes my ears bleed to hear it now.

"and whatnot” drives me crazy.

Gramatically, “anyways” drives me up the wall.  Annoying-figure-of-speech-wise, “It is what it is” has to be the worst.

It’s a mixed bag. Things can shift quickly. Our increasingly irony-heavy (bordering on nihilism, since “irony” was supposed to point do some deeper truth, not just emptiness) society can find an annoying phrase, then use it mockingly for laughs, then suddenly we find ourselves using it and not really being able to tell whether we’re just using it for laughs or not. Cf. the “That’s what she said” revival.

It depends on where you live or are from, too. “Whatnot” is something I never said in my life, until I heard Hank Hill (one of my favorite TV characters) use it, as well (shout out to Tango) as one of my good friends who used to live up here in the GTA.

“Hot enough for you” drove me nuts as a teenager carrying groceries in long sleeves and jeans all summer, but I can definitely imagine it entering the “That’s what she said” zone very quickly.

“In my opinion” drives me nuts. It’s redundant. If one is asserting something, it is obviously in your opinion.

Context matters, too. On another blog, I find myself using “fair enough” and “agreed” so much in comments that I’m embarrassed. But I’m not the only one.

At the end of the day, I personally believe that this research fails to make its case because each region and context of discourse is fairly unique. With all due respect, at this moment in time further research is needed to account for such differences. It’s a nightmare scenario, redoing all this, but does it need to be done? Absolutely. It’s not rocket science.

"Where are you at?”

Pacifist Viking is always good for this kind of criticism, and he focuses on sports writers, which is fitting, as they must be the least literate members of a newspaper’s staff outside of the art department (and perhaps that’s being unfair to the art department):

pacifistviking.blogspot.com/2008/03/chronicle-of-cliche-peter-king.html

What’s annoying to me is how some people, mostly in my age group, express a greeting.

Examples: “What’s up dog?” “Hey Homie?” and of course my number 1 fav. “What’s up fool?” Ohh yea, I can’t forget about another common one. “What’s up N***a”. 

When will these type of greeting expressions R.I.P.?

When something great or tragic happens, someone around you will usually say this, annoying know-it-all, phrase.  “Well, it probably was/wasn’t meant to be/happen.”

In the article, these phrases, etc. are from written sources, which makes a big difference.  Writing “shouldn’t of” is much different--and much worse--than speaking it (since, as TC says, when spoken it’s probably just a double contraction anyway). 

But all these, when written, show a lack of thinking on the writer’s part.  And when the reader doesn’t even notice them, it shows a lack of paying attention.  Obviously, a good read dealing with all this is Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” Equally as good is David Foster Wallace’s “Tense Present”: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html

Now I have to go proofread this comment before hitting submit…

I find “Oxford Researchers” annoying!

Here in New England the whole “It is what it is” has become very annoying, but we are so used to hearing it we cannot figure out what else to say.

A lot of these expressions are really context-dependent. Usually, they’re just a coordination game. People feel comfortable when others use similar expressions to them, so people tend to mimic each other’s expressions. divining a larger meaning from them is largely pointless.

To the extent that the above argument permits being really annoyed by any expression, ones that are based on skewed world views or implied (lazy) assumptions are a bit annoying, like “Well, it probably was/wasn’t meant to be/happen.” Who meant it to happen? What you really mean is GOD wanted my loved one to die or for me to have my heart broken etc. The speaker’s heart is in the right place--they’re really just trying to express sympathy/empathy--but whenever I’m faced with it I always find that I have the urge to say something like, “there probably is no god,” which would be rude. Instead, I say nothing to avoid being an ungrateful jerk. having been exposed to the silly phrase in the first place, though, i’m a bit annoyed. wouldn’t it be better if people just used a phrase that didn’t carry so much baggage?

"I say nothing to avoid being an ungreatful jerk”

I agree J, that is the best thing to do ,IMO, in those kind of situations is to zip it.  More importantly, is to not take it personally, or seriously when someone chooses to communicate with others in that fashion. For me, to characterize those type of expressions as being annoying, was way over the top. That said, I have all the respect on how people choose to express themselves, how’s long there is no ill-will or hate that’s being epressed towards one another. So if I offended anyone, my bad.  I appreciate your response J (I really do).

In the future, I will marinate on my thoughts before I hit submit.  I will probably type something unthougtful again, not on purpose of course, all I can do is correct myself (hopefully like I’m doing now) and learn from it.