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Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Matters: Wretched Excess On The Language Front

July 26, 2009 by Doug Ramsey

• Overkill word of the day, perhaps the decade: Absolutely.
This week on The News Hour on PBS television, nearly every person interviewed began answers to a total of approximately 150 questions with, “Absolutely. ” That frequency, from educated people discussing policy issues, is typical at all levels of public and private life.
Perhaps we can bring back “yes.”
• Inapt phrase of the day, perhaps the century: No Problem.
Ask for more water in a restaurant and the waiter says, “No problem.” Tell the supermarket cashier “Thank you,” and she says, “No problem.” Extreme example: the other day I wished a passerby a good morning. He replied, “Hey, no problem.”
This is getting out of hand.

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Comments

  1. jack reilly says

    July 26, 2009 at 2:26 pm

    Great post on the use of overkill words that have absolutely (oops!,used correctly), no relation to what was said by another commentator.
    I lost the rest of my hair when everyone was using (they still do), the once-useful adverb “hopefully” meaning “with hope”, distorting it and misusing it to mean “I hope” or “it is to hoped”. If I say,”Hopefully my wife will arrive home on time”, do I mean she will arrive in a a hopeful state of mind? Of course not! “Hopefully” offends the ear of many who do not like words dulled or eroded especially when it leads to ambiguity, softness, or plain nonsense!
    Some greetings or substitutes for ” goodbye” ring false and empty of real feelings are: “have a nice day”; “love you”.
    More of this Doug. Hopefully(oops!) you’ll assign the “Elements of Style” by William Strunk jr. and E.B. White to the uneducated!

  2. Alex George says

    July 26, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    Hi Doug:
    If I may add my two cents worth… one of the things that gets my proverbial goat is people saying the word “literally” when usually they mean the very opposite, e.g., “I was literally beside myself with fury”, etc.
    And don’t get me started on the misuse of apostrophes.
    OK. Must stop now before I disappear in a cloud of self-righteous huffiness. Thanks, though – great post!

  3. Jack Tracy says

    July 26, 2009 at 7:52 pm

    I offer one phrase and one word that should be scrapped. The phrase, “The fact of the matter is…” should be avoided as assiduously as “At this point in time.”
    And let’s stop with “legendary”, please.

  4. Leo J. Teachout says

    July 27, 2009 at 2:41 am

    “Hello” and “Good-bye” seem to confuse people. That’s why I use them.

  5. Brew says

    July 27, 2009 at 8:37 am

    Although I’m German, I absolutely agree with your hopefully effective article, which literally means, that I wish it many readers.
    May I wish you a nice day? When you’d say ‘absolutely’, I would literally love you for that, absolutely!°
    Hopefully still yours truly,
    Brew

  6. Ted O'Reilly says

    July 27, 2009 at 9:50 am

    I remain bugged by the phrase “I mean…”, especially to start a remark. (“Are you going to the game tonight?” “I mean, yes, I’ll see you there.”)
    Slightly off-topic is the over-pronunciation of ‘often’ as off-ten. They don’t say liss-ten for ‘listen’, or hace-ten for ‘hasten’, so…???

  7. Alex George says

    July 27, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    One more, if I may, coming from the father of an eight year-old son. The use of the word “like” as ubiquitous substitute for all other verbs of expression. As in: He was like, “What does that mean?” and I was, like, “Huh?”
    OK, now I’ll stop.

  8. Mickey Horwitz says

    July 27, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    My current pet peeve is when people say, “it’s very kind of…” or “it’s very sort of…”
    Which is it? Very? Or just sort of? Pick one.

  9. Ted O'Reilly says

    July 28, 2009 at 11:28 am

    You shouldn’t have started this topic, Doug. I’m going around railing at things…
    Why do so many broadcasters use ‘ahead of’ instead of the perfectly apt “before’, as in “The president will sign the bill ahead of going away for the weekend”?
    And another slightly off-topic: using the plus sign (+) in place of the ampersand (&) when they mean ‘and’. Plus is NOT a substitute for And! It’s usually architects or design firms who do it, so obviously it’s because it *looks* better.
    The English are bugging me with the use of ‘brilliant’ when they mean something such as ‘wonderful’. I suppose it’s not truly offensive, but they’ve taken away a specific meaning (re: diamonds or sun-on-water) that doesn’t really have a substitute.
    I feel better now.

  10. Ken Wilson says

    July 29, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Jack Tracy rightly complains about “The fact of the matter is…” and “At this point in time.” But the one that really bugs me is “Going forward . . .” instead on “now” or “in the future” or just plain beginning with the rest of the sentence.

  11. T.M.Martin says

    July 31, 2009 at 11:18 am

    Regarding the phrase ‘No problem,’ when it becomes ‘No probs,’ then it becomes a problem.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

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A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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