What is Your Biggest Pet Peeve

by Attila on October 14, 2005

regarding abuse of the English language?

I know some of you are engineers, and unlikely to be upset about overuse of “hopefully.” But certainly you’ve come across some copy that refers to statistical changes in populations, and makes little/no sense. (“Incidence of blankety-blank dropped by 150% over two years.” “Rates increased by two-thirds, to 120 over the previous 100.”)

{ 7 comments }

buzz harsher October 14, 2005 at 11:48 am

“The death toll is expected to rise.”

As opposed to?

Byron October 14, 2005 at 12:12 pm

How about describing something as “10 times smaller” when they mean to say “one-tenth as large”? Argggggggggh!

Stephen Macklin October 14, 2005 at 3:59 pm

Totally Destroyed.

It’s either destroyed or damaged.

k October 14, 2005 at 4:13 pm

–“Percent” when one means “percentage points” – eg., “unemployment has increased two percent from 5% to 7%.”

–“In terms of…”

Although I have no business criticizing, really, since I love to amuse myself abusing the English language. Dangling my participles about, left and right. And such like that.

Watcher October 14, 2005 at 6:59 pm

“Let me axe you a question.”

Attila Girl October 14, 2005 at 10:39 pm

Well, now, I know “axe” doesn’t connote a high level of education. OTOH, I grew up saying “warsh” for “wash” because my family is from the Lower Midwest, and I was 17 or so when someone pointed out to me that there is no r in that word.

So I try to be humane about regionalisms (including “nucular,” which was apparently okay when Jimmy Carter was saying it, and then wasn’t a few decades later).

Seth Williams October 19, 2005 at 3:35 am

I teach ESL, so I hear painful abuse of the English language all the time. However, the one that really makes my teeth itch is:

“I ever (did something)”

They mean they “often did it”, and it’s traceable back to a bad translation in a popular Thai-English dictonary.

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