Expression, phrase or idiom...

I hear you on that. I recently read an article that made me "itchy"....lol I wanted to take a red pen to it.
Exactly! And it detracts from the enjoyment of reading it. My niece who does webpage design once asked me to critique a website that she had built, and I found typos and errors. She was glad that I had pointed them out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Benway and Debi
Guilty of use. It started for me as my husband is very hard of hearing and refuses to use hearing aids. I started using "Soooo" to get his attention before I started a sentence and he could turn down the TV and face me to read lips better. This then has transferred over into my writing on occasion. I shall try to watch it here! lol
So I use it depending on context, changing the subject, following an awkward pause or if I'm resuming a story after an interruption or digression, or just if it's jarringly silly to do so and I haven't done it in a while (as in this case). Probably other reasons too. I wouldn't do it constantly.
 
Last edited:
"At this point in time." Why not just say at this time? It means the same darned thing. And I don't know why, but the word "App" drives me crazy. Why not say application? It sounds better. We have so many beautiful words in our language, and they are being slaughtered, lol. Also, I get irritated when people post things like blogs, riddled with typos that they are too careless to fix before publishing.
I've always said 'at this point in time' and never 'at this time'. I think it's a local thing. People don't really use the latter around here so that's the one that sounds wrong to my ears.
Ap absolutely gets on my nerves though! It just sprang up some years ago like a verbal weed.
 
I thought this had gone away, but I read a newspaper article which used it again recently and almost yelled at it! A few years back this phrase suddenly flooded the media. Everything which had more than one cause was a perfect storm! So were many other things.
'This year's budget was a perfect storm of lies and incompetence'
'The government faces a perfect storm'
'Breakfast was a perfect storm of cornflakes and toast'
It's not even a good metaphor! How does a particular kind of storm relate to things with multiple causes? What is a perfect storm? Storms are either terrible or not that bad. Are there weather review sites out there?
'The lightning was quite good, but the wind was frankly overblown. Hoping Storm Beremy will be better. ***'

Professional writers: make up your own damn metaphors. If you must re-use someone else's at least pick a good one. This one is a my dad's stew of awfulness.
 
Last edited:
Moving forward

At the end of the day

"So" (As the first word in every sentence. When did this crap start?)

'Kay, So" (A variation on the above that always reminds me of cheese.)
You should've heard any interview with English (soccer) football mangers after a defeat a while back. It always went:
'Yeah, see it looks bad but at at the end of the day the lads give it 110% and it just didn't come off, but moving forward they'll be givin' it 120% and we'll see some results. At the end of the day the boys done good. Next time? They'll do more gooder.'
You can add '110%' to the list.