February Shout Out: Sayings that drive you mad!

I hate the following----- By in large.----- on the whole. —this point in time.---------- I myself personally, speaking for myself.–here and now —and heard on BBC today ---- more better than !!!
what sayings drive you mad .
nuala:mad:

hi Nuala,

I see you’re getting “stuck in” to GC already :spf: that’s great!

Hmm, sayings dont really bother me - i do prefer originality, it can be freshing but it’s hard not to use some of those usual sayings :confused2 - i usually just put my own spin on it, or make it sound a bit funnyish :goof:

You know what absolutely drives me bonkers?

“For all intensive purposes…”

Nooooooooo!

I hate any saying that replaces the word ‘have’ with the word ‘of’.

eg I would of said that

I love this thread SO much that I am now going to make it February’s official Shout Out.

Let’s see if we can identify some of those phrases that really need to disappear.

Thanks for the brilliant thread, Nuala :smiley:

“Oh well, I am only human.” (what else?)

“Every opinion is valid.” (ugh)

“They are only doing this for profit”, while in the same breath saying: “I would like to win the lottery.” (haha)

Moving forward … at the end of the day … AWESOME!

A favourite office game here at SPHQ is to see how many times you can say awesome before Kelly makes a face or tells you off.

Do you mean you don’t like the phrase “for all intents and purposes”, or people who get it wrong and say “for all intensive (or intense) purposes”?

One of my pet peeves is when someone’s outlined a problem and then ends with “Thoughts?”

@raena - Awesome

I can’t stand it when people say, “Dead set” or “literally”…

I literally died last night!

I’m gonna kick his ****, dead set.

I passionately hate “[insert market leading product here] killer”! It drives me nuts! It’s the result of hackneyed journalism or blogging. As an aside, have a look at Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (I cannot post a link because of forum rules). His very first rule of essay writing is pertinent to this thread.

(raena edit: here’s a link!)

I agree with many already posted, especially “literally” and “awesome”. I once heard a news reporter say “people here in this small town are literally bursting with pride that this young man from their hometown has won a Gold Medal…” Wait! Did you say that people are literally bursting? Like a whole town is full of exploding people? Shouldn’t this be front page news?

I also once heard a waitress say that the tortilla soup is “awesome.” Not it’s not. It might be really good. But save the word “awesome” for a volcano or the Grand Canyon or a cure for cancer.

So here’s my contribution. Redundancy phrases get to me:

ATM Machine (because the M stands for Machine)
PIN Number (because the N stands for Number)
VIN Number
Hot Water Heater (it’s a water heater, not a hot water heater. Why would you want to heat hot water?)

Oh there are so many!!

“Literally” is pretty high up the list.
“Like” used after every third word is very irritating.
“At this time” Why not just say “Now” or “currently” - why use three words when one would suffice?
“You know what I mean?” at the end of every sentence.

Oh - I know - people who say “Nucular” instead of “Nuclear”. ARRRRGGGH!

“personally speaking”,!!! I’m so glad everyone is enjoying this thread.
Thanks nuala

I just remembered one of my all-time verbal pet peeves. I work on salary, but many of my co-workers get paid hourly, and must punch in and out. The device they use to clock in is usually referred to as a “time clock”. Why is this? Isn’t every clock a time clock?

I hate the way people use “To be honest…” and then state something as if it’s fact because they are being honest!

vintar, even worse is “to be perfectly honest with you…” !!
nuala

We get this one in the US a lot:

“It’s a free country.”

Strangely, we are much less free than we were 10 years ago.

I hate it when people say “don’t reinvent the wheel”.

Probably because I just had a big discussion on the forum, where I couldn’t get help because people didn’t want to evaluate the problem, but rather wipe it off with this simple, well used, and extremely obnoxious phrase.

And it seems like its only developers that use it as well.

“To be honest” is pretty high up there for me.
“Your mum”.
“as a matter of urgency” - someone at work uses this for everything, even things that aren’t urgent
“ethnic food”
“To write someone” - No, it’s “to write to someone”! I realise this is American English, but it’s starting to permeate in Britain and it’s horrible to my ears

This is one of those things… I know there are loads more that annoy me immensely, but I can’t remember them at this moment in time. :wink: