Thursday, October 29, 2009

Phrases and Words in the News
That I Hate!

I blogged a few weeks back about being sick and tired of the word sustainable.  While reading the news this morning I came across another phrase that I'm truly sick of finding in stories:  not so much.

A Google News search found 8,481 uses of it in news stories and blogs. Do I like this phrase?  Not so much.

Often it is used correctly as part of a sentence.  For example, from a Boston Globe story: Hence, the tendency among not a small number of Bostonians and Philadelphians to define themselves not so much by what they are as what they're proudly not ...  That's okay.  It's when it pops up as a sentence by itself that the once-clever phrase gets old and tired.  Here's a headline from the Daily Kos blog: Coburn is Concerned about Garage Doors -- Rape, Not So Much.

Blah.

Does this affect what people know?

Not so much.

 

2 comments:

Karen Miller Russell said...

Sorry, but I don't believe this post is sustainable.

Hollander said...

Sustainable? No. Not so much.