What phrases most irritate you?
AT RANDOM ON LANGUAGE
Dimwitticisms do major injustice to the language
By Nathan Bierma
April 15, 2004
To be perfectly honest, when you're submitting entries to a dictionary of so-called dimwitticisms -- expressions that are neither fresh nor witty -- it helps to be as unoriginal as possible.
. . . dull our reason and dim our insight. The more we use them, the more we conform -- in thought and feeling -- to everyone else who uses them."
Marla Landers of Ottawa, Canada, sent more than 50 examples of dreadfully overused phrases to Oak Park-based publisher Marion Street Press. They were so lame that Landers won the publisher's contest for identifying the dimmest of the dim.
"From the hundreds of entries we received, it's hearteningly clear that many people are as appalled as I am by dimwitted English," said Robert Hartwell Fiske, who judged the contest and compiled
The Dimwit's Dictionary: 5,000 Overused Words and Phrases and Alternatives To Them.
You could say, then, that Fiske wrote the book on tired expressions, but he won't like it. You'll find "wrote the book on" listed in the dictionary as a Moribund Metaphor.
Fiske, editor of the 5-year-old online journal
The Vocabula Review (www.vocabula.com) in Lexington, Mass., also has compiled
The Dictionary of Concise Writing.
Each "shows how to make the turgid crisp," wrote
New York Times language czar William Safire.
Winning phrases
But the contest's goal was showing how people make the crisp turgid. Among the entries that won her a $250 bookstore gift certificate, Landers nominated as Ineffectual Phrases: "with regard to"; "at any rate"; "all talk and no action" and "first things first."
In the Wretched Redundancies category, Landers, a freelance writer and contributor to Google Answers, contributed "I myself"; "a tad bit"; and "my personal opinion."
Runner-up Jenna Glatzer, editor of the Web site
www.absolutewrite.com, added
"no rest for the weary"; "overnight success"; and "don't get me started," among others. Third-place finisher Bill Dawson, a reporter at the
San Diego Union-Tribune, offered "sooner rather than later"; "when the dust settles"; "24/7" and "a work in progress." ("Who isn't a work in progress? A corpse," Dawson wrote.)
Dawson also identified "at the end of the day," which is already in
The Dimwit's Dictionary as a Moribund Metaphor. That phrase was voted the most irritating phrase in the English language in a poll last month by the Plain English Campaign. The Britain-based organization said it surveyed 5,000 of its members in 70 countries.
Respondents to the poll also were weary -- very weary -- of "at this moment in time," "with all due respect" and "to be perfectly honest."
"When readers or listeners come across these tired expressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message -- assuming there is one," said PEC spokesman John Lister in a statement.
Sadly, finding enough dimwitticisms to fill a book was no challenge, Fiske said in an interview.
"Dimwitticisms are unbearably omnipresent," he said. "To my mind, it indicates how little people think about what they're saying. . . . People are not necessarily sincere in what they're talking about."
Making life boring
"Part of the reason I'm so upset about this is that by using the same words and phrases repeatedly to describe experiences in life, people think and feel in a certain way," Fiske continued. "[Life] becomes increasingly monochromatic."
It lifted Fiske's spirits slightly to see there were dozens of dimwitticism watchdogs eager to send entries for the contest. Ed Avis, publisher of
Marion Street Press (www.marionstreetpress.com), found the response encouraging, too.
Founded in 1993, the small publishing house is devoted to books on journalism and writing, including
The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well, Math Tools For Journalists, and
Pen & Sword: A Journalist's Guide to Covering the Military.
"Our mission is to help journalists and writers do their job better," Avis said.
"By publishing Robert's books, we are hoping that journalists and writers learn more about the language they're using and use it more effectively."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
