<p>self esteem
bonding
connection</p>
<p>“we bonded” arggghhhh</p>
<p>mixing up “good” and “well,” especially in professional settings. adjectives do not equal adverbs, people, and they are not interchangeable!</p>
<p>also, alright is all wrong. all right is correct.</p>
<p>your and you’re</p>
<p>then and than</p>
<p>“definitely” spelled incorrectly</p>
<p>already said, but mixing up i and me, as in “this is a picture of Jim and I” when it should be “this is a picture of Jim and me” (you wouldn’t say “this is a picture of I”)</p>
<p>double negatives</p>
<p>mixing up past and past participle tenses</p>
<p>basically, i’m a grammar stickler. and i prefer to spell things correctly.</p>
<p>Proper capitalization. :)</p>
<p>Someone in another thread posted a YouTube link to a slam poetry performance by a teacher called “What Teachers Make.”</p>
<p>This is another performance about the way people speak: [YouTube</a> - Like_youknow](<a href=“http://youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4&feature=related]YouTube”>http://youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4&feature=related)</p>
<p>I know someone who uses “to make a long story short” all the time in conversation. Drives me nuts…</p>
<p>I recently heard someone refer to the events of 9/11 as tragical. I didn’t know this was a word (= tragic). When (or why) would you use tragical instead of tragic?</p>
<p>I don’t know: parallel structure to comic/comical? Is This how new words are coined? I don’t like this one!</p>
<p>This is more a spelling problem than a rhetorical tic: “publically.” I’m giving up hope on principle/principal.</p>
<p>Irritating phrase: "Have a nice one! (a nice what?) Worse: “Have a nice one on me” (Are you paying?)</p>
<p>There’s a good rant in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine about the misuse of “of”. <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13wwln-safire-t.html?ref=magazine[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13wwln-safire-t.html?ref=magazine</a></p>
<p>It starts:
</p>
<p>So which rhetorical tic/mistake/abuse shoulda, woulda, coulda been a contender for the worst offense?</p>
<p>I’ll add:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Kids using “i” and “u” in their CC posts (instead of “I” and “you”).</p></li>
<li><p>“Affect”/“effect” misuse</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“to be honest” - makes you wonder why they’ve been lying to you up to that point.</p>
<p>“Having said that” and “too much/a lot on my plate” make me cringe. “Having said that” seems a substitution for “I’ve been boring you with a tale that even I don’t believe, so here’s the point I am really trying to make.” </p>
<p>The “too much on the plate” phrase reminds me of the early days of feedback. The New Yorker printed a cartoon (must have been 25 years ago) of a man pushing a wheelbarrow with large bags of feedback in it. It’s just a short trip from feedback to backflow and before you know it, you’re into septic systems. The imagery is too vivid for me.</p>
<p>As long as we are being picky about words, the word feedback is much more than twenty-five years old. It may have taken until the early 1980’s to attain popularity in some business circles, but it was used by control theorists at least as early as the 1920’s and by behavioral and cognitive scientists by the 1940’s. The concept of feedback goes back well over 2000 years, with the Greeks and Romans using float valves to regulate water clocks by the year 300 BC.</p>
<p>“based in”–“Jane Smith is a writer based in Seattle.” Or “Jane Smith, a Seattle-based writer. . .”</p>
<p>Do writers not LIVE in places like ordinary people?</p>
<p>Maybe writers are flighty people. They’re based somewhere but they really live in their imagination; once they’re done, their books land in bookstores while they themselves go on book tours. So think of them as one-person, one-plane aviation company, working out of a hub and spoke system.:)</p>
<p>Another thread to make me laugh! </p>
<p>I’m annoyed by “up talk” – saying statements with a “spoken question mark.”</p>
<p>My post would be longer, but I’m too afraid of committing one of the many sins previously mentioned!</p>
<p>
That could be a cultural thing - it’s a very common usage among Yiddish speakers. It’s part of the “Jewish dialect.”</p>
<p>I’m guessing that CBBBlinker’s refering more to the Valley Girl, everything’s a question? Kind of up talk.</p>
<p>(“My name is Sandy? I’m going to be your waitress? these are our specials?”)</p>
<p>Yes, that is what I mean by “uptalk” - different from “What are you gonna do, shoot tha svans? These lovelies?”</p>
<p>Got it - yes, those annoy me too!</p>
<p>
Or, as my bubbie would say, “So you vant I should shoot the svans?”</p>