<p>There is a professional woman in our community who is active in many public pursuits. Until recently, every time I have seen her speak in public it made me cringe. Every sentence contained multiple insertions of “you know.” I am sure she had no idea how she sounded. However, I recently saw and heard her speaking to a crowd, and she has completely eliminated this unfortunate verbal tic . She sounded professional, articulate, intelligent.</p>
<p>One of my high school teachers used to refer to every man he mentioned as “this particular gentleman.” We used to count the instances in class every day.</p>
<p>Are you certain you don’t do something similarly annoying when you speak? Would someone tell you? Have you ever told someone else about their bad habit?</p>
<p>A guy I worked with this summer would insert, “You know what I mean?” after most of his sentences. Then I noticed that <em>I</em> started doing it! I’m concentrating on avoiding that phrase now. I still say “you know” and “like” too much. It’s a good thing I don’t have to speak in public very often.</p>
<p>My son recently started saying “Here’s the thing:” before many statements. I did point it out to him. Really, you don’t notice these things unless somebody points them out.</p>
<p>MaineLonghorn: I hadn’t thought about whole sentences, but you’re right. I’ve known people who ended every paragraph with, “Does that make sense?” That gets old fast.</p>
<p>In my field, potential clients often had longstanding business relationships with the number one provider at the time. Their reps had deep and broad (and even close) contacts at the potential client.</p>
<p>The thought was [Big Company] is embedded in [Client Company.]
It morphed to - and this is all I heard, never the correct phrase- * Big Company is in bed with Client.*</p>
<p>Well, whatever.
Umm, I’m not sure I know what you mean.</p>
<p>(More seriously, I get driven mad when I hear people make statements into a question by using a rising inflection at the end of a sentence. “The answer is four” can morph from a certainty to a statement about the speaker’s insecurities in just a few syllables.)</p>
<p>Ever since moving to NJ my DH and I keep saying “Yeah-Yeah!” It’s so annoying. Someone told DH it’s from CT and he does work with some people from there. It’s like a virus.</p>
<p>There’s an interesting lecture series by Deborah Tannen on Conversational Styles (or something like that) in the Modern Scholar series. It has a lot of stuff about inflections, pauses, etc., that can make other people have misconceptions about what you mean. For example, dmd77, that rising inflection may just be a style of speech that doesn’t mean anything, although you (and I) may interpret it as meaning that the speaker is unsure of what she is saying.</p>
<p>My H’s best friend says “in other words” several times in every conversation. At one dinner, I counted 23 times that he said it. I find the man rather pretentious so I of course interpret this saying as "you are too dumb to understand me so I will rephrase the statement using simple words so an inferior being such as yourself can comprehend my great ideas. As you can probably guess, I am not too fond of this guy so I have not said anything to him but I have stopped my husband who has started the habit. I figure that it is his friend and he can say something to him if he wants to.</p>
<p>I came across some of that freebie wisdom when in hs: that, “in other words” means, “I know I wan’t clear the first time.” So, in all the years since, it made me nervous about using the phrase, except when summing a point in an argument. </p>
<p>I still finding myself saying, “Cool!” I usually get a funny look back from my kids.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that women do this far more often than men. Which is why I warned my daughters years ago not to develop this style of speech, since turning all their statements into questions might make them appear to be weak or constantly uncertain - not a good thing in the workplace. </p>
<p>Of the very few men I’ve known who speak this way, a couple of them were Canadians - which makes me wonder of it’s a Canadian manner of speech as well.</p>
<p>As for other verbal tics, one guy I know begins nearly every sentence with “Actually,…” It drove me crazy after I noticed it one day.</p>
<p>The phrases that I love are, “Well, to be perfectly honest”, or “I’ll be honest with you”, or
“honestly, xyz…” or other variations. Does this mean that at other times the speaker is less than honest./truthful?</p>
<p>I had a boss who started everything she told you with “what you need to know is…” And I’m not just talking about work related stuff. A conversation with her about *anything *became a lecture about “what you need to know.”</p>
<p>A rather highly placed administrator at work who says, (Example) “pacifically, how would you handle that?” Each time he says it, I look around the room to see the reactions of other people, but no one else seems to notice- it bugs the heck out of me!</p>
<p>I worked somewhere once where the director used the word ‘really’ in every sentence. Everything was ‘really’ something. Once I started paying attention, I noticed how many times it was used.</p>
<p>I also cringe at the use of the question inflection for statements, especially by women. The problem is that I am now starting to see it used more by women and men, and even older women and men who should know better! That includes me! It is amazing how quickly one can pick up bad speech habits!</p>
<p>When I was a teenager I said ‘you know’ in almost every sentence. My father would hold up his hand and count each finger every time I said it… took me about 3 conversations to kick that habit!</p>