Wednesday 14 January 2009

LTC Blog » Ten most annoying phrases in academic technology

LTC Blog » Ten most annoying phrases in academic technology:

Read full post on this Macquarie University blog.
"From the blog Accidental Pedagogy comes one of the best posts of 2008: the ten most annoying phrases in academic technology. Inspired by this article where Oxford researchers from identified the ten most annoying phrases currently in the English language (”at the end of the day” and “fairly unique” and “I personally” receive top billing), Glenda Morgan created “a list of words and phrases that folks in academic technology regularly use but which make my teeth all get up and run around my mouth.”"
This link will take you to an article about another list.

"The researchers who compiled the list monitor the use of phrases in a database called the Oxford University Corpus, which comprises books, papers, magazines, broadcast, the internet and other sources.

The database alerts them to new words and phrases and can tell them which expressions are disappearing. It also shows how words are being misused.

As well as the above expressions, the book's author Jeremy Butterfield says that many annoyingly over-used expressions actually began as office lingo, such as 24/7 and "synergy""

My observations: I use some not all of these terms. Several can create a conversation that is inclusive since they have such wide currency and form the basis of a common language. Maybe they can be exclusive too, since they may only be used by a niche group.
Those that are simply grammatically incorrect, well that's a different story, requiring re-education.

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