Uber- historian and novelist David McCullough gave the commencement speech at Boston College earlier this week. His advice to graduates: speak properly! Here’s a snippet:"Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually," he said.
Also, Shannon, who sometimes does transcription as part of her job at a law firm, and I were just talking about how many times the average person says “um.”
I’m guilty of plenty of “ums,” so I can’t cast too many stones there. I would like to take McCullough’s advice, though, and eradicate at least the over use of the word “like” from my conversations.
What about you? Do you have annoying speech habits? What do you hear that drives you nuts? I, for one, could live without ever hearing people end sentences with the word “at.”
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
David McCullough is, like, actually totally awesome.
at 2:57 PM
Labels: Bibliophile, Everything else
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7 comments:
I could definitely use some practice on not using 'like,' but I DESPERATELY need is to stop cursing like a sailor! I'm the worst! I'll try to take his advice. He's, like, totally right, ya know??
I think it would be very hard to stop using "like." My sister and I sometimes have whole conversations that consist almost entirely of the phrase, "like, you know." But I HATE seeing "like" written in dialogue in novels.
I use the word "Wow" too often. And it's actually laziness because I simply can't come up with anything else in response. But, yeah, my younger brothers and sisters drive me up a wall with the overuse of "like" and "totally" and "he goes/she goes/they go" as opposed to "he said/she said/they said."
Ending sentences with "at" and especially, and specifically the question, "Where you at?" drives me nutty. As does the misuse of the word hence. And in one of Alanis' songs (Ironic, maybe?) she says "figger" instead of "figure" and I want to bend time and space around my CD player and reach back to her in the recording studio and punch her.
I tend to talk around issues and use weasel words. It makes me look duplicitous.
But, "like" and "you know" get me buggy. I think that if one uses them it really makes it hard to make a good impression, or an impression that one is smart. But, that goes for any "non-word," like "um" or "you know." I had professors use "you know," which is annoying because if I did know I wouldn't be sitting in the damn class.
It's comforting to know that literate speech as a blog topic is *almost* as popular as the "which celebrity would you sleep with" item.
I can't say anything here because I have way too many illiterate speech habits so begin to address.
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