I don’t like grocers’ apostrophes, misuse of there/their/they’re, two/to/too, affect/effect etc but I accept that I cannot correct every incorrect usage I come across. On the other hand, anyone at work who asks me to proof-read their document will find as many mistakes as I spot corrected!
However, what really annoys me is management-speak: “we want to grow the business” and other such phrases. I know what they mean a lot of the time, but their use of the language doesn’t feel right. It is tempting to take a “business jargon bingo” card to some of the senior management presentations!
Mitzi you are right - “management speak” the one that drives me up the wall is the phrase best loved by the social workers I have worked with “I hear what you are saying” Jargon bingo sounds great.
Some years (like about 20) back I had a Mission Statement Generator for my computer of the time.
It picked at random from a set of meaningless phrases, and cobbled them together into a “Mission Statement”. Said Statement lookd and read just like any other Mission Statement. Just imagine the fun you could have in a school English class: “Now class, I want you each to write down a sentence using the phrase ‘enhancing end-user benefits’ in any context”.
Back in the mid '90s, it was a requirement at Cal Poly, Pomona (Southern California), that all Senior year students had to deliver an essay (they did have a choice of subjects), that was a) handwritten, and b) marked for correct grammar. This was a university response to the widespread (yes, even then) use of grammar and spellcheck software.
I was marking first year essays at the time, in this country, and noticing the decline in English year-on-year. What the student wrote was officially more important than how they wrote it.
Oh, I used to have a boss whose favourite was: “I hear what you say” (and I’m not, and never have been, a social worker - thank God!)
Whenever he came out with this, you could mentally add: “…and I’m not going to do a thing about it.”
However, I don’t think those things are bad English or bad grammar, they’re just clichés - often masking that the person has nothing original to say. It’s not always easy to tell when a useful phrase has become a cliché, though. Most of them probably sounded quite catchy and refreshing when they were first used, but it’s precisely because so many people liked them that they became clichés.
As an aside, I had a therapist once, who had obviously been taught to repeat everything back to the client to confirm she’d listened/understood. It was so irritating - like being in the room with a bloody parrot! I kept wanting to say (and probably should have): “Unless you didn’t hear or understand something I said - in which case you’ll query it with me - couldn’t we both just take it as read that you did?”
We used to play THAT form of Bingo in our endless office meetings - phrases such as “cascading down information”, “pushing the envelope” and “blue skies thinking” all used to feature quite heavily. Personnel ( sorry - Human Resources - oops, sorry - Human Capital Managment ) were the worst offenders, I remember.
Yes, I agree. I’m fed up banging the drum on this one as it seems to have little little effect. I refer to Steve Lowe/Alan Mcarthurs book, 2005 - 'Is it just me or is everything s**t?
Tinga, in our place they’re known as Human Remains. The term came in to use around the time the deparment was outsourced. I read recently about someone who gave a lecture and managed to avoid using any of the phrases on the bingo cards held by some members of the audience. They were apparently disappointed but the rest of the audience found the lecture refreshingly interesting.
We were not allowed to refer to a child’s ethnicity as mixed race - new thinking “dual heritage”. The little lad I fostered said he was a mixed infant (took it from his school sign!). Ahh the innocent little guy thought he would then become a primary. Took some explaining.
In ten years as a Moderator on these forums I have seen more spelling and grammatical errors than I could ever count. In the early days I would scream at my computer screen. I have been forced to turn off my pedant switch. No matter how often I have told George about the correct use of Sassenach he still insists on trotting it out (the longer-term users know what I mean).
However I also read a lot of books. My pet peeve is the misuse of complIment/complement.
Human Remains!! Aaahh, that’s made me chuckle as I’m about to commence battle with some of these reprobates!! Human Remains will remain stuck in my head now, hahaha… bring… It…on…!!
Just read this lengthy post and replies. Mobile phones have certainly attributed to making us lazy. And very few of us actually sit and write a letter anymore.
What did stand out to me in the original post was ‘distruct from the fact’ instead of distract from the fact.
l still have not learnt how to use punctuation when texting with my mobile. Which makes me a lazy, sloppy texter.
l know my husband , who was a director of a large company, would not consider any ‘graduate’ whose application for a job was full of grammatical errors. But when l was on the board of governors, at my daughters school, l found applicants for teaching positions often came over so well from reading their CV - then disappointed when met in person for an interview. Quite often, the most highly qualified failed to be able to string a sentence together. l always looked for applicants who were interesting to listen to and kept you interested. These, l could imagine, would keep the attention of the class.
My lap-top - like most of them - only knows American spelling. And when emailing it tries to correct any English spelling.
As long as we can read - and get the drift - l suppose that is all that matters.
The nearest town to me - l have seen three roadsigns with the towns name spelt incorrectly. Now how many people were involved [or is that envolved] in the ordering/manufacturing/ and erecting of these signs.
l had a letter from the highways dept of our county council regarding a blocked bridleway. The heading on the page was PUBIC HIGHWAYS. When l mentioned it to them they soon acted on clearing the bridleway - as l did threaten to send the letter to the media.
FYI, Laptops (…and most new PCs for that matter) tend to default to using a US dictionary to check spelling …presumably because Microsoft - which supplies the majority of operating systems - is a US company.
You can set your laptop (…or any new PC) to use a UK dictionary instead, but that’s something you have to specifically select as opposed to accepting the default settings.
Surely the ‘…As long as we can read - and get the drift - ! suppose that is all that matters’ approach is just a way of saying ‘…You don’t have to be completely correct in anything …as long as we know what you mean’.
When did that become acceptable? How lazy does someone have to be before someone says "…That is simply unacceptable’?
When did having standards become so unusual?
(A good number of years ago, we had a maths teacher who had very high standards. So much so, that he wouldn’t accept any exercise or homework with even one correction in it (…you’d be called to the front of the class and physically punished). It had to be spotless all the way through.
Probably through sheer fear, but it taught his pupils to have high personal standards …and that value spilled over into other subjects )
Yes, it annoys me too, especially when highly educated people on television get their grammar wrong. What annoys me even more is the way many people pronounce the as ffe.
One that gets me is the use of the word “of” instead of “have” I’ve seen it a lot on documents at work eg “This should not OF been…” and “I would OF done so…” It really winds me up!
I get annoyed when i hear WAS instead off WERE ie We was standing at the gate ,when the correct phrase is,We were standing at the gate,and vice versa.
It make me want to shout at them to speak properly,and as i live in Yorkshire my children have grown up saying “am off t toilet” always annoyed me,and always told them to speak properly and being called a snob for wanting them to speak properly.
On forums and on social media (Facebook etc) I try not to let mistakes wind me up. I know one of my friends is dyslexic and she tends to spell phonetically; she’s probably not the only one among my friends with a recognised learning issue, and likewise on a forum like this I don’t know if a person has dyselxia or just never learned to spell. Besides, I know I make the occasional mistake, especially when I’m on my tablet, so a “live and let live” attitude makes life easier for everyone. The important thing is that I can understand what someone is trying to say.
At work, on the other hand, I will very happily proof-read and correct my own work before I send it out, and I will review my colleagues’ work if they ask me. Spell-checkers at work are of limited use due to the amount of technical terminology - and my observation is that a large minority of spelling mistakes aren’t picked up by the spell-checker because they are things like “form” instead of “from” or “thee” instead of “there” - words that are correctly spelled but not the one that was intended to be used.
To quote from Mitzi:
“… on a forum like this I don’t know if a person has dyselxia or just never learned to spell. …”
There is also the problem of the MS-assisted typo.
Typically, the key next to the correct one is struck, or the correct key is not struck hard enough.
Either can produce some typos that look like old-fashioned spelling errors, but are really the result of “fumble fingers”.
Does make you wish we had a spell-checker (other fora manage this).
