Blogging Memes I Have Had My Fill Of

Time to shut these tropes down, fast and hard

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In the spirit of Christine Stevens’ classic post “Can We Please Stop Saying “Can We Please Stop?” I’m bringing the cudgel down on these overused article tropes. The pencil-in-mouth girl wrote me to say these are beyond stale.

Pencil in Mouth Girl says “Already Enough” — Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash.

Stop saying ______ use _______ instead

It is as though we are subjected to a run-on sermon loop on language policing in these articles. If I wanted to be saved, I’d tune in to a televangelist. But, you have no business policing my choice of words for a country that gets its info from TV.

And by the way, no, I will not wholly re-engineer my use of language for the one in a zillion chance that I make a mistake about the gender of the person I am speaking with. So take your pronoun merry-go-round and try brainwashing someone else with your modern-day version of Catholic guilt.

This could be your signal to chart a new career in establishing a new language along the lines of Esperanto. Wonkish has a nice ring to it. Maybe you can start your own linguistics thesis or home study course. What’s the…