Let me make something very clear before I delve into this post. I don’t really mind when people mis-speak, or mis-pronounce, their words. In fact, I don’t even mind typos. Typos are like falling down on the ice. They’re completely unintentional, there’s usually very little you can do to stop them from happening, and sometimes they’re hilarious. Try replacing “friend” with “fiend” in almost any context and the result is usually much more fun.
Furthermore, let me make clear that there are words that I mispronounce all the time. I went through a brief but humiliating period of being totally incapable of saying “exorbitant”, because my tongue would get confused with “extortionate” on delivery and produce some sort of weird hybrid called “extorbitant”. I’ve got a cream for that.
There was a whole class period in college where I was unable to express my opinion because I had no idea how to pronounce “hegemony”. And “hierarchical” has baffled me more than once in a pinch.
No, this particular garbage stuck in my craw is of the written variety. If you’ll permit me to put on the snobhat I keep at close quarters at all times, I cannot stand written mis-use of the English language. Let me indignantly present three examples.
1. “The Most Addicting Show On Television!”
No. NO NO NO. We have a word. Someone, somewhere, grappling with language in the darkest depths of, let’s say, the Middle Ages or maybe the 1960′s, came up with a perfectly suitable word. A perfectly lovely little adjective. ADDICTIVE. That little adjective, it jumped into the world ready to be used to describe the state of something to which one gets addicted! Like drugs! Or 24! Or your mother! I am ADDICTED to drugs. Drugs, they are ADDICTIVE. It’s almost too easy.
When I ask my Oxford American Dictionary for “addicting”, it reaches out from the computer and smacks me roundly about the face. Do you know WHY? Because the word doesn’t exist, that’s why. Don’t let your dictionary smack you in the face, People Who Create Graphic Splashes For Popular TV Shows. It’s never a good sign. Unless it’s a sign of the impending linguistic apocalypse.
2. [at the end of a letter] “Respectively, ________”
Respective to what? The other people who didn’t write the letter? I, so-and-so, and this other person who is not mentioned, RESPECTIVELY sign this letter. No. NO! It is not RESPECTFUL to mangle the English language in an attempt to sound pompous or professional. You sound neither. RESPECTFULLY! Krissa.
This little demon is particularly insidious because falling into the wrong hands, it’s almost viral. It’s close enough to the truth of the word that your eyes pick it up and deem it acceptable and people, it is so not acceptable to not use the correct word when the correct word is so ubiquitously simple! Respectfully – full of respect! Respectively – in the order already mentioned!
Stop! Think! Tylenol Then Write! Is my new motto.
3. “…waiting on baited breath”
Let me get this straight. Your breath, you attached some sort of worm, or shiny dangling object, to the end of it, in an attempt to lure fish or lousy politicians? How can one have baited breath?
And moreover, how can one wait ON it? Is your breath, with its shiny dangling object, some sort of magic carpet that you are RESPECTIVELY sitting on, waiting for something to come along?
No. NO! I will not tolerate this. Your breath, it isn’t baited. You are not respectively signing a letter. And that television show is not ADDICTING.
And lord, help us, these are just three that come to mind. There are so many, many more. By people who should know better when they’re creating something for publication. Did some very specific plague come along and kill all the proofreaders? Did all the dictionaries in the entire world suddenly and fantastically combust, leaving us all helpless in the gaping, snarling maw of terrible grammar and atrocious word usage?
Please feel free to leave your outrages and indignances in the comment box for me to RESPECTIVELY stew over. And you! Kids! Gettoffa my lawn.

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