Words we hate

[ImperviousJackson]

The worst word I've ever heard is deplane.

[Doug Shaver]

"Traditional" to mean "habitual" or "customary."

"Vowed to _____" to mean "promised he would _____" or merely "said he would _____."

[Chris Wienandt]

"individuals" instead of "people"

[Matthew Crowley]

I'm with Impervious. I hate deplane. When I hear it, I always feel as if I'm trapped in the opening credits of a "Fantasy Island" episode -- "Deplane, deplane ..."

m.c.

[thryn]

"Traditional" to mean "habitual" or "customary."

"Vowed to _____" to mean "promised he would _____" or merely "said he would _____."

But "vow" is such a useful headline word!

[Stu Kelly]

"Bolster" has started to annoy me.

[Mike O'Connell]

Reuters:

The pilot was a Federal Flight Deck Officer, permissioned by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to carry a firearm.

[HCFeldman]

I'd like to hear someone refer to a bar sometime as a drinkery.

Back when I lived in Baltimore, there was an awesome old dive of a 24-hour diner downtown called The Buttery. Good lord, I loved that place.

[(sic) 'em]

Using "due to" where "because of" is needed. This is wrong almost 99 percent of the time, and it aggravates the hell out of me. OK, maybe it's just that I know if I try to explain it, I'll get a vacant stare and the words "I still don't understand why it's wrong."

[JoyTipping]

I really hate "position," when you're talking about a "job." Again, three little words will do. And one of my journalism professors at the University of North Texas used to say "position" always sort of brought up ... erm, sexual connotations ... when he read it. So now I always SNICKER when I see it in text. Not a good reaction.

[Mike O'Connell]

I really hate "position," when you're talking about a "job." Again, three little words will do. And one of my journalism professors at the University of North Texas used to say "position" always sort of brought up ... erm, sexual connotations ... when he read it. So now I always SNICKER when I see it in text. Not a good reaction.

Proof of how pernicious peeves can be.
You wouldn't very well substitute it in this sentence: His job is vice president.

[Tim Sager]

Using "due to" where "because of" is needed. This is wrong almost 99 percent of the time, and it aggravates the hell out of me. OK, maybe it's just that I know if I try to explain it, I'll get a vacant stare and the words "I still don't understand why it's wrong."

There's a reason you get the blank stares.

The long Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage entry on this topic concludes with:

"... due to is as impeccable grammatically as owing to, which is frequently recommended as a substitute for it. There never has been a grammatical ground for objection. The preposition is used by reputable writers and is even officially part of the Queen's English -- the OED Supplement gives a quotation from Queen Elizabeth II. There is no solid reason to avoid using due to."

[Paul Ybarrondo]

The long Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage entry on this topic concludes with:

I love that book. I used it so much the cover fell off.

[Doug Shaver]

I was recently reminded of another phrase that drives me up the wall, when I heard a BBC reporter refer to a power plant producing so many "megawatts per month." I just googled it and got over 1,000 hits. I started seeing it occasionally during the last couple of years I worked on the desk.

"Megawatts per month" is exactly analogous to "knots per hour." A megawatt is a rate of energy consumption or production -- so many units of electrical energy per unit time.

If it should ever be relevant to a story to say how much energy a plant produced, or its customers used, in a month's time, the answer will be in joules. A 500-megawatt plant running at full capacity is producing 500 megajoules of energy per second. Actual production at any moment will depend on how many electrical devices are plugged in to the plant's grid at that moment.

[Tim Sager]

If it should ever be relevant to a story to say how much energy a plant produced, or its customers used, in a month's time, the answer will be in joules.

Not in any newspaper I've ever seen.

A "kilowatt hour" is also a measure of energy (power x time) and will do quite nicely for those who are not physicists. And "megawatt hour" will suffice to describe the energy produced by a plant.

I'll vote for switching to "joules" the first time I get an electric bill indicating that I've used 3.6 x 10 to the ninth joules in the previous month.

[Doug Shaver]

A "kilowatt hour" is also a measure of energy (power x time) and will do quite nicely for those who are not physicists.

Mea culpa. You're quite right. I don't know what I was thinking.