Words you HATE

[Clueless Morgan]

My boss uses "at the end of the day" so often it's like a verbal tic.  It drives me crazy.  And a drinking game based on it would result in certain death.

The introductory "so" --

"What'd you do last night, Bill?"

"So, we went to the bar and ..."

So has no place in that sentence; it is a conjunction that expresses a causal relationship.

Well, if we're going to start in on bashing particular idiosyncrasies of people, then I'll add a couple of my own irritations:

I had a coworker who would pepper sentences with the phrase "And that..." "I was talking to the mechanical contract and that..." "I was working in my yard and that..." "I signaled a lane change and that..." Drove me bonkers.

My sister also ends sentences with "so..." "The customers that come in are always doing that, so..." "I just got off the plane, so..." It makes it sound like she's never completing a thought or always has more to say.

I've often wondered what my own speech idiosyncrasies are. I'm a little more aware of my idiosyncrasies when I write then when I talk - when I write I tend toward pompousness and being long-winded, and I think I over use commas. (Not as badly as my sister does, though. I'm editing her grad school papers and she has the worst understanding of comma and semicolon usage I've ever seen!)