BS: Irritatin' phrases....

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Musique174
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:34 PM

My personal pet peeve is: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Others include:
"Get over it"
"You'll live"
"You're so mature for your age"
"Wow, you're so old for your age"
"wow you're only __ age, you seem so much wiser than that"

~Nat

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:28 PM

"Here's a quarter . . . ".

I'm in Canada. It's $.35, idiot!

Feel better now.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:32 PM

I have grown to abhor the passive voice, especially in business communication, because its vagueness often leads to misunderstanding. Passive voice says something will be done without saying who will do it. People read things like "The files will be backed up weekly" and think, "Is he promising he will do it, or telling me to do it, or—?" That's assuming the readers are bright enough, and responsible enough, to ask the question.

My boss recently wrote a lot of policies and procedures for our internal web site. They were meant describe the kind of work we do in our department, and to be read by people in other departments, so they would know what to expect from us. I found she had used passive voice repeatedly. I tried to explain why passive voice was undesirable. She said she liked passive voice because it sounded "less directive." In other words, she thought it sounded more polite to suggest that something might be done rather than tell someone to do it outright. In every case where she wrote in passive voice, she wanted the reader to understand that she was describing something the reader was supposed to do, but she didn't want to come right out and say that!

When I pointed out the possible misunderstanding—people might think we were promising to do the very thing she wanted them to do—she agreed to let me make the changes.

My grammar checker is set to flag all instances of passive voice, and it does a pretty good job. For example, it flagged "will be done," "were meant," and "might be done." It missed "will be backed up" and "was supposed."

The classic passive voice cop-out: "Mistakes were made."

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:06 PM

I'm with you on that one, Jim.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: GUEST,Dave'sWife w/out cookie
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:24 PM

Jim.. one of my degrees is in Linguistics - I taught a University course in Socio-linguistics for a time. I have found that people who habitually rely on passive voice often cmomunicate through other cues that they fear blame, failure or fear confrontation. I realize that doesn't seem to apply in the case you mentioned, but if you look at other subtle cues within the sentences, you may see that the person is attempting to deflect attention away from themselves, for whatever reason.


Passive voice has come into common business usage as a result of public acceptance of 'spin' speak. It has seeped into daily usage and become the norm. It's a sympton of the larger lack of accountibility that has become tolerable in our culture. it has its place in legalese and in literature, but has become over-employed in common usage.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: gecko
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 10:31 PM

As I see it, the only good thing about 'catchphrases' is that they go out of fashion eventually - though not soon enough for me.

Four that currently drive me to distraction are:

whatever
level playing field
it's all good - Dave's wife beat me to that one, and
not a problem.

Don Watson's recent book 'That Death of the English Language' should be mandatory reading for all politicians and bureaucrats, to mention just two groups who regularly indulge themselves with mis-use of our beautiful language.

YIU
gecko

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Ron Davies
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 08:28 AM

I think it's great that "cool" is still around.

But it's sure true thet folks shuld proofrede anything afore they let it go.   An they sure don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: GUEST,guest pedant
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 10:14 AM

The use of the word "panties" in books enrages me. Especially if being worn by a mutilated corpse in a good thriller.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 02:17 PM

Passive sentences. Governmentese. Jim Dixon, I hear you!

I'm sure that the passive voice is de rigeur for government documents in particular because nobody has to accept responsibility for anything. "A mistake was made" allows everybody to tuck their heads between their shoulders and mutter, "Not me!"

During the late Eighties I worked for a couple of years as a technical writer, writing up residential weatherization inspectors' reports for the Bonneville Power Administration. In a six page report, about two of those pages were boilerplate that was downright opaque, mainly because of long, convoluted sentences in passive voice. One afternoon when no data had come in yet from inspectors and there was little for me to do, I took a 120 word paragraph out of the boilerplate and tried to suss out what it was really trying to say. I managed to rewrite it into two fairly short, clear paragraphs totaling 90 words. In my next report, I replaced the boilerplate paragraph with my clear, more concise paragraphs. I naively thought that I was doing the BPA a favor and whenever I had the opportunity, I'd go through the whole document, clean it up, and make it readable.

Guess who got his hand slapped and told to replace the original paragraph?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: kendall
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 03:01 PM

Phrases such as "Her and me went downtown". Worse yet, "me and her went..."

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: GUEST,mick
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 09:50 AM

I personally think that "I personally" is the most irritating phrase .

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: DMcG
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 01:38 PM

I recently heard an account of a football match where one side had many advantages over the other - better funding, more support etc. The losing team complained they did not have a level playing field.

Well, I can see how that wouldn't have helped...

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Peace
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 03:58 PM

"I myself . . ." ranks right up there, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Firecat
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 04:01 PM

If one more person says "At the end of the day" to me, I can NOT be responsible for my actions.

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Peace
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 04:20 PM

People who use an English expletive and then say, "Pardon my French."

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: kendall
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 04:20 PM

Gnome sane?

Subject: RE: BS: Irritatin' phrases....
From: Peace
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 05:05 PM

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky."