Reader Elizabeth recently paid me a great compliment:
If by language of your own, you mean the unique “voice” that authors are supposed to have…..ohh yeah you totally do. I feel like I could recognize something you write a mile away.
This comment made me very happy and inspired me to compile a list of my trademark words and expressions, a.k.a. words I grievously overuse:
- screeching
- endless
- vile jerks
- all kinds of fool
- crazed religious fanatics
- those stupid XYZs
- so (at the beginning of a sentence)
- Ah!
- irredeemably
- quasi-
- pseudo-
- the whole process
- this is torture
- has the gall
- as much as the next person
- move on already
- creepazoid
I just remembered more:
- buddy – to signal annoyance
- my friend – to signal that I’m smiling when I write it
Feel free to add any other verbal constructions or linguistic peculiarities that you associate with me. 🙂
Hysterical!
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Haha!
This post reminds me of when I was teaching 12-year-olds, and one day one of them remarked on how I let sentences trail off and use “so” all the time to start sentences, both of which they found funny! “So” is my standard go-to prompt when they’ve only given half an answer, though; what else are we supposed to use?
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hey sweet, I get my own post! Not bad at all. Your language is definitely harsh (not in a negative way) and very decisive. And like many people who have thoroughly mastered English but not as a first language, you sometimes have ways of saying things that are thoroughly correct and yet not quite the way native speakers expect to hear it. It’s very charming, altogether!
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Buddy… I afraid to comment here now, my friend. You do have a distinct and recognizable style.
🙂
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I haven’t been reading your blog enough yet to comment on your distinct style–hell I don’t even recognize my own, although I’ve been told by a good friend that I do have a style that he instantly recognizes. It has always surprised me to hear that. This is interesting though and that you notice words that you tend to use. I can’t say that I’m observant or that I pay much notice to my own style of word choice–patterns. It’s like hearing a recording of my voice–it doesn’t sound the same as when I hear myself speak. My focus has always been more on clarity and if I’m getting my point across or evoking the type of response I’d like.
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How could you have written a glossary of Clarissa Speak and missed the word “egregious”?
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Exactly! I actually searched for this post by entering “egregious” in the search box. I was so sure it had to be there.
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