Verbal diarrhoea is rife today. It’s huge and it’s everywhere.
Sorry, it’s not everywhere.
It’s mainly in the electronic media, where it seems that as many words as possible are used in order to make any statement just that little bit longer.
- The current situation. If it’s not tomorrow or yesterday it has to be now so “current” is not needed.
- The flood rescue was successfully carried out. Is there any way a flood rescue can be unsuccessfully carried out? If that was the case the rescue would be a failure, not a success, but hey, the use of that word adds four vowels to the sentence, making it slightly longer when said out loud.
- Jack Timms won second place. There is only one winner and that’s the person who crosses the finish line first, before all the others. What is wrong with saying “claimed second”, “finished in second place”, ”placed second,” etc?
- The decision impacted many people. My dictionary says impacted means the effect of something hitting something else really hard, whereas the old-fashioned word affect means to act upon or influence , especially in an adverse way. Impact seems to have taken over, which has downgraded its original meaning.
And don’t start me on commas, not verbally obviously, but they are ridiculously over-used in books, sometimes in newspapers and magazines, nearly always in front of “and” which is just wrong. Commas are supposed to indicate a pause but they are often used for no discernible reason. Those bastard commas are known Oxford commas, but that doesn’t make it right.
I’d be interested to hear from any readers who have more instances of the bastardisation of English.
–Grumpy Old Bloke.
