See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/3394545/Oxford-compiles-list-of-top-ten-irritating-phrases.html
- At the end of the day (it’s a great song though, from Les Miserables)
- Fairly unique
- I personally
- At this moment in time
- With all due respect (usually insults follow)
- Absolutely
- It’s a nightmare
- Shouldn’t of
- 24/7 (not uncommon in database-speak either ;-)
- It’s not rocket science
We all use some of those phrases… go on, admit it already! And because we need to get it out of our system, your challenge for today is: use them all in a single grammatically correct sentence…
“At this moment in time I personally think, with all due respect, that the fairly unique situation we find ourselves in is a tragedy – It’s not rocket science, It’s a nightmare that, at the end of the day, absolutely shouldn’t of happened in our 24/7 environment.”
the ones that really piss me off are the mis-spellings and malapropisms and bad grammar. like “shouldn’t of” rather than “shouldn’t have”. it’s almost as annoying as spelling the two word phrase “a lot” as one pseudo-word “alot”.
“Fairly unique” is annoying too, as annoying as “very unique” – it’s nonsensical when “unique” is a binary attribute – something can be either unique or not unique. you can’t be “fairly unique” any more than you can be “a little bit pregnant”.
the others don’t annoy me so much because cliches can actually be a useful shortcut if you use them as a communication tool rather than as a substitute for thinking.
Just reading these made my eye twitch. My office is full of them. And our own personally over-used phrase: “Be Across“. Shudder.