Sunday, November 2, 2008

Strange words and phrases

I think, before too long, American English will no longer have the rules scholars and teachers thought it had.  It is played with so often that people will forget what is (or was) technically correct.  

For two days an ad in the Salt Lake Tribune claimed an automobile dealership headline had all their "Suburu's on sale."  

On the radio, a jewelry store is having a "pre-anniversary event."  Does that mean they will have a real anniversary sale later?  Could there be a post anniversary sale?  They can't have a sale without a reason?

A store has several "lighting professionals."  Exactly what is that?  I guess professionals get paid for performance skills, so these people must have lighting skills.  That's different from being proficient or knowledgeable sales people?  Do I need a professional to buy a lamp?

Then there are the clever ways we play with words.  Another dealership was celebrating "Trucktober,"  and a retail store was advertising a "shopportunity."  People just think up these things, but I wonder if youngsters find it at all confusing.  

In a later post, I'll likely carry on about redundancies and--again--the misuse of adjectives as adverbs and nouns as verbs.  I guess I am definitely old school.   I kind of liked the order of the way it used to be.


5 comments:

Great Grandma Lin said...

have you discovered the local newspaper The Spectrum? everyday there is some headline that my husband chuckles over and lots of words spelled incorrectly. lol

Jo, a retired teacher said...

Yes, Lin. I have to say that it is a very poor excuse for a newspaper.... but good entertainment?

wispy willow said...

I remember the Spectrum being so unbelievably full of mistyped and/or misspelled words. It was generally amusing, occasionally irritating, but definitely consistant.

In the Northern part of Utah, we had what was not altogether affectionately referred to as the "Ogden Standard Exagerator".
It had all the typo's along with misquotes... and their very own language. I've never seen so many made up words. Always interesting.

I'm not a student of grammer... I'm always just a tad nervous that Jo is going to think I'm illiterate. Oh well... as long as she remains my cyber pal.

Rambling Woods said...

I agree...it seems that anything goes and I wince frequently...

Sheila Keller-Powell said...

I was listening to NPR radio and they were talking about how the U.S. economics were affecting people..they refered often to "incomeability"...

eeh gads!!