Showing posts with label Top Ten Irritating Phrases. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Top Ten Irritating Phrases. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Top Ten Irritating Phrases

What I'm reading: Tripwire, by Lee Child

First -- the "after shot" taken one day after yesterday's photo from Colorado Springs. We had quite a variety of weather conditions over our 5 day visit.


As I start thinking about editing my WIP, I found this a timely tidbit:

Oxford University complies list of top 10 irritating phrases:
"I personally" made third place – an expression that BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphreys has described as "the linguistic equivalent of having chips with rice." Also making the top 10 is the grammatically incorrect "shouldn't of", instead of "shouldn't have". The phrases appear in a book called Damp Squid, named after the mistake of confusing a squid with a squib, a type of firework. The researchers who compiled the list monitor the use of phrases in a database called the Oxford University Corpus, which comprises books, papers, magazines, broadcast, the internet and other sources. The database alerts them to new words and phrases and can tell them which expressions are disappearing. It also shows how words are being misused.

And here they are:

1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7

10 - It's not rocket science