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Subject:Most annoying words From:"Henry Meyerding" <hwm -at- goomba -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 2 Mar 2006 07:13:06 -0800
I can't believe it wasn't mentioned: utilize
Using "utilize" when you mean "use" this used to always be in the top 10 words
that make you cringe lists on techwr-l.
Also, one of my personal hates is the use of the word "quality" as in "quality
product." I have received several documents from ESL locales that included
"s/he" and "him/er" in a vain attempt to achieve gender neutrality.
Finally, I have fought the good fight for many years against "statuses" as in
"We verified the statuses of the objects." It is defensible to say that one
collected the status of all three systems several times and compared these
statuses (although I'd prefer that you compared the status data - and please
don't even mention "datas"). At other times status should be status, not
statuses. Nobody bats an eye when you say "I took the temperature of the
apple, the orange, and the pear" but they get confused by status and feel they
need to make the plurals agree, as in "I determined the statuses of the apple,
the orange, and the pear." Sheesh
---
Henry Meyerding
hwm -at- goomba -dot- com
360-793-1564
360-665-0730
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