Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

jeez

coolly high hermione

✓

lol

i'm reading these fucking books with my kids and there is no way [redacted] NO WAY

ah fuck i’m not up to that bit yet

lol sorry it might just be a fake-out i dunno. i will get a mod to remove in case it's real??

Tracer's reading slash to his kids

I was wondering why my copy was just a sheaf of papers printed out in a dot matrix monotype font

fucking “pooch”, fuck that word to hell, it makes me gag

pooch out

*snigger*

Companion for my recent whining about "deep cuts": "deep dive." "Detailed," "thorough," "exhaustive," these are perfectly descriptive words. I may throw it when I write my last set of report cards, though: "Johnny took a deep dive into pulleys and gears for his science project, and I haven't seen him since."

"Deeply" has been pretty bad for a while, as in "Deeply disturbing." Agree with all the above, clemenza. "Deep cut" is a little different, since it's been around for a while, whereas "Deep dive" seems invented out of whole cloth all of a sudden. but I had to catch myself from referring to an obscure movie as a "Billy Wilder deep cut" the other day. going on about Stereolab or whoever "deep cuts" isn't noxious to me.

I had to catch myself from referring to an obscure movie as a "Billy Wilder deep cut"

what did you say instead?

I'm going to just start referring to things as "lesser-discussed works"

Still better than 'neglectorinos'.

haha I think "an obscure Billy Wilder movie"

Watched a Wilder I'd never heard of last night; looked it up later & found it had four Oscar noms.

The Fortune Cookie?

yah

Judging from its appearance several times recently on ILX, "at this point in time" seems to be making a comeback. It shouldn't. It's just a pompous way of say "now" or "at present". Ditto for substituting "at that point in time" for a simple "then". These abominations gained a foothold in the public psyche during the Watergate hearings, when members of the Nixon administration used them constantly during their testimony.

My dad always used to blow his top when he heard "at this moment in time".

mine would for 'rate of speed'

That’s me and ‘as yet’.

“At this point in time” is the kind of dumb bullshit cops say

"the individual exited the vehicle..."

as of the present point in time

came across "at a more rapid rate" in print today

in most cases you don't need "then" or soon" in sentences or, fuck, "going forward." The verb tense indicates when the action takes place.

fuck a “going forward”

Much of this stuff consists of the bad or sloppy habits we pick up from the various influences that always float around us, but even if these constructions are technically forgivable, the basic message should be "Resist!"

at work, I usually write every email by writing what comes into my head, spending a second draft revising and usually overcompensating by bloating up the thing, then pausing, re-reading it, and stripping every fucking unnecessary word, phrase or modifier out of the thing , and it usually shrinks by 33%.

“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree”
WHAT ?

lol

Biopic doesn't rhyme with myopic, ppl.

It's "BUY oh PICK." Just like if you said "bio" and then "pic" right afterwards.

Not "by YOP ick".

Please.

This has been well-covered

also it's funny to say it wrong

Increasingly bugged by people increasingly prefacing all requests and demands with "I need you to" or (a million times worse) "I'm gonna need you to"

IS there a way to issue commands like this that doesn't rankle tho?

the very worst is obviously "how busy are you right now?"

but there's a whole spectrum of badness.. "if you could (x) that would be graaaaaaate"

Good old "Can you clean the bathrooms before you leave today?" or "Please clean the bathrooms before you leave today" do not rankle. "Make sure to" is okay. "It's your day to clean the bathrooms." "The bathrooms need cleaning; do it before you leave."

Directness is a virtue.

"If you get a chance, can yo wipe the toilet clean with your tongue? Only if you can. Thanks!!! xoxo"

Directness is a virtue.
otm, viva plain language for most immediate communicative purposes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_language

my mom is a proponent of 'how would you like to _________?'

i, of course, would prefer not to

my partner and her sister especially ask "Are you going to ____?" when they'd like me to do something and I try not to be deliberately dense but like, I don't know the future!

these requests are couched in politenesses because it beats getting their heads bitten off for asking directly
still, usually the "politeness" is excessive and unneeded, reading to the receiver as passive aggressive
it's a tactic that is not particularly effective in doing what it sets out to do if it lands the speaker in here :(

If the task is clearly not one of my many recognized responsibilities, my wife usually opens with "would you do me a favor?" to which my standard reply is "it depends on what it is". Occasionally she'll substitute, "can I ask you to do me a favor?", to which my standard reply is "of course you can ask, but I'm not sure if I'll do it". I now accept this little dance as standard operating procedure and it doesn't irk me as much as it used to.

mick's bathrooms example suggests they are thinking of a professional situation tho, where yr boss in fact expects automatic compliance w these sorts of requests but chooses instead to phrase them as if you are a pair of yeoman farmers moved only by their own wills, and whether it's to assuage some personal discomfort of their own or to chip in on the maintenance of a superstructure it is annoying.

wait no i was conflating mookieproof's mom w mick's bathroom owner. rly what i want to complain about is "do you want to".

I was indeed thinking of professional bathrooms, where the boss-peon power dynamic makes any indirectness sound passive-aggressive, as LL said.

In personal relationships, there's more leeway in phraseology. If my spouse said to me, "I'm going to need you to not leave your shoes on the kitchen counter," the formal tone would sound hostile, while "Do those need to be there?" is fine.

Depends I guess on whether you fundamentally like or hate each other.