The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #132499   Message #4094761
Posted By: Steve Shaw
25-Feb-21 - 05:59 AM
Thread Name: BS: Language Pet Peeves
Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
I often think that many of these little linguistic foibles should be let go when they're spoken but should be more inclined to cause a raised eyebrow when put in writing. I simply can't be judgemental about all the little strategies people use in order to get their point across in conversation. After all, in this age of faces glued to phone screens we should be encouraging each other to talk more among ourselves. Little slips or grammatical solecisms should maybe be excused...

A newsreader one that I have trouble picking the bones out of is "a half of one percent."   I know they can't really say "0.5 percent" and that "half a percent" and "a half percent" are just nonsensical. I think we have a clumsiness here that humanity has yet to elegantly resolve. Most of the time we can just say "one in two hundred," I suppose. Not so easy if it's a quantity that can't be rendered in discrete numerical entities: "half of one percent of a pile of manure" can hardly be put into numbers...