| Quotables |
"Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. ... I felt
very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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"On the surface, it sounds irresponsible, but to flourish in a rapidly changing world, you actually need to make more mistakes. Fail quickly. Fail often. If you do something and it
doesn't work, just recover in a hurry and try something else. ... Help develop a culture that is willing to fail its way to the future."
-- Price Pritchett, Culture Shift |
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"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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| What Not to Say |
| Thursday, June 18, 2009 |
A new semi-regular feature here on Numb Trolleybus, it's bound to become a favorite... What Not to Say.
Coming from a guy with an English degree, this can't be a surprise.
What Not to Say: Ending sentences with "so..."
Because it doesn't complete the thought, and on top of that, it makes you sound flippant and presumptuous. "Yeah, he didn't feel like coming, so..." So what? So he stayed home?
What to say instead: "So he fucking stayed home."
What Not to Say: "Off the beaten track."
Because there is no beaten track, there is only a beaten path. That's the phrase: off the beaten path. Paths are beaten, whereas tracks or laid or paved, usually with asphalt, concrete, or that horrible rubber surfacing stuff they use in track and field events.
What to say instead: "Off the beaten path," dumb ass.
What Not to Say: "5 a.m. in the morning."
Because it's redundant. The term "a.m." indicates morning, so the phrase "5 a.m. in the morning" is the same as saying "5 this morning in the morning."
What to say instead: 5 a.m. today, or 5 o'clock in the morning.
What Not to Say: "Midnight tonight."
Because there is no midnight tonight. Midnight is a.m. and is therefore in the morning. And while we're on the subject, the new day begins at straight-up midnight, not 12:01. Check your watch, your computer's clock, or Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve if you don't believe me.
What to say instead: "Midnight."
What Not to Say: "Irregardless."
Because it isn't a word, period. The prefix ir-, in this context, means "without," and so does the suffix -less. So "irregardless" would literally mean "without regard without."
What to say instead: "Regardless" works every time.
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posted by N.T. @ 11:55 PM  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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I actually write a internal blog where I work, and I've been collecting a similar list of pet peeves. Irregardless is on my list too. So is "supposably" -- morons.
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Yeah, I knew as I was writing this that there were a bunch I was leaving out. There will be more installments... there's no shortage of source material.
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everytime i hear someone say 'supposably' i think of the Friends episode...cracks me up!
i am embarrassed to say that i used 'irregardless' for YEARS before i asked you if it was a word or not. for YEARS i sounded like an idiot...oh well, can't win 'em all! :)
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I actually write a internal blog where I work, and I've been collecting a similar list of pet peeves. Irregardless is on my list too. So is "supposably" -- morons.