I love words.
I love the feel of them as they roll out of my mouth. I love the nuances and subtleties that words can convey. I choose my words very carefully. I don't say "cheap" if I mean "inexpensive". I don't say "skinny" if I mean "thin". I don't say "love" if I mean "sex".
That being said, I'd now like to take umbrage (another good word) with copy writers for commercials.
A few of my pet peeves...
"A few pennies..." Couldn't everything be broken down to pennies? Sure, it might cost 7,643,214 of them - but heck, it's just pennies, right?
Same concept:
"Just minutes away..." Sure, 3,464,100 of them...
How about those geniuses that create word and phrases?
How can flammable and inflammable mean the same thing?
What does "almost late" mean?
Who gets to decide to make nouns into verbs? When did "party" become a verb? Or my favorite - add - 'ing' and voila - instant action word! For example: "hot-tubbing"!
I also like how vernacular works its way into our language. This is never more clear to me than around Valentine's Day - when the conversation hearts come out. They used to just include sweet things like - "you're cute" and "hugs" - now they say things like "fax me!" When we were kids - that would have had a different meaning altogether!
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2 comments:
Ain't it funny how people speak? You'd think they never went to school or nuthin. Now, me and my friends...we speak proper and stuff. I swear, most people are idgits. :-)
I loved all my journalism classes in college too...the powers that be were constantly lowering the grade school level to which we were to be spouting off our advertising...I think it started with a 6th grade reading level and shot down to a 4 in the years that I attended!
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