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

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.

"Agree to disagree" is fine to my ears, it means "mutually accept for the moment that we disagree, rather than continuing to debate and to fail to sway each other from our opposed positions"

I consider "agree to disagree" to mean "agree that this is getting us nowhere, so let's stop", except it is shorter and easier to say.

I don’t know when I hear this it’s less “we’ve reached an impasse” and more “I am unilaterally ending this rather than concede your point.”

There a great Curb where Larry refuses to agree to disagree.

Usually in an agree to disagree moment, the person who suggests it is trying to assert power over the other person.

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.

― mick signals, Friday, March 29, 2019 12:27 PM (seventeen minutes ago)

there's gender dynamics in play but I respond much better to orders than hints

like "Do those need to be there?" I don't know the answer to that question.

this is a boring thing to say but probably when it comes to requests different ppl respond to differently to different approaches maybe

we shd call this "winsing the thread"

best if we all check in w each other

Silby dear, let's just talk about this at home

we shd call this "winsing the thread"

there's a poorly formed example in the post immediately preceding

Is it a recent trend to blurb or review a book by calling it "wise"? Have people always done this? Really annoying, usually at the end of a list of compliments like "this was heartwarming, funny, down to earth and wise".

probably not that recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Wisdom

"you deserve better"

You deserve better than 'you deserve better'.

"funds" instead of "money" (eg "please send funds for my upcoming book project")

Prefer dosh.

Lettuce

Filthy lucre

Lorne Greene

spondoolies

this was the response to a recent work request: "this will be efforted"

gross

here's one i've heard around the office a few times: "i just ran out of time"

oh you mean you never got around to it. gotcha

"this will be efforted"

Like "have a good one," calls to mind literal defecation

whoops here comes another efforting

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

How come you have to strive if it’s easy to use?

tippy toes

More silly than annoying...The sports call-in was handicapping the Raptors-Magic series. One guy kept bringing up Orlando's "length"--must have said it three or four times. I'm only a casual basketball fan, but does this mean they have a deep bench (i.e., good players lined up down the bench)? Or does it mean they're a tall team? Depth and height are good words. They're quite enough.

I'm going to back away from any other possible meanings.

In the context of professional basketball, "length" refers to whether a player has longer arms than would be average for a person of their height. A common way to phrase this desirable abnormality would be to say, for example, that a 6' 10" player has the "wingspan" of someone 7' 2".

agreed but i personally hate referencing forwards/centers as 'bigs' even more

had a date this weekend and was asked "oh, so you like sportsball then?"

and put a foot out the door : /

I compiled these commandments for student writing, negotiable if they write sentences pleasurable in themselves and/or they prove their arguments.

Like "have a good one," calls to mind literal defecation

― mick signals, Wednesday, April 10, 2019 1:43 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I once worked with a guy who loathed this expression. I found this baffling because it seemed to me like such an inoffensive thing for a person to say. But now think I get it.

this doesn't really annoy me -- the noun is too weird a concept to normalise really -- but i just encountered "veritable cornucopia" in a manuscript i'm editing and it did make me myles-na-gCopaleen at it a bit

what nature does the cornucopia always share with la scission dans l'internationale (situationniste understood)

both are VERITABLE

What other generous quantity is veritable?
The plethora.

smorgasbord

feasts too

strunk and white advises that the editor substitute "motherfucking"

ha

as someone whose mood on any given day is almost entirely defecation-dependent "have a good one"'s applicability on this front is only one more argument in favor of its high seriousness