Top 10 Most Annoying English Phrases

Just released is a book called Damp Squid, written by Jeremy Butterfield, that lists the most often-used and irritating phrases in modern English. This is not specifically about grammatical errors, although some do show signs of illiteracy, but those tired lame phrases that have grown almost meaningless. The title itself gives one example of those linguistic accidents where homophones are confused. In this case it should correctly be "damp squib" which is a firework that fails to ignite and has nothing whatsoever to do with slightly bored cephalopods.

The authors compiled the list by monitoring the use of phrases in a database called the Oxford University Corpus, which tracks language use across many online and offline media.

Top 10 are as follows (with my comments)

1 - At the end of the day (deserves to be top of the heap, has a certain gravitas which what follows rarely deserves)

2 - Fairly unique (oxymoron)

3 - I personally ("The linguistic equivalent of having chips with rice." BBC Radio 4 presenter, John Humphreys)

4 - At this moment in time (Now)

5 - With all due respect (I think IMHO is the internet equivalent. Both often used disdainfully, but the sneer is difficult to convey within the text)

6 - Absolutely (probably not)

7 - It's a nightmare (cliche)

8 - Shouldn't of (I haven't seen this much. It is just illiterate rather than just annoying, and probably comes from saying "shouldn't 'ave" quickly)

9 - 24/7 (lazy, but very irritating when it isn't actually true)

10 - It's not rocket science (again, just shows a poverty of expression)

I am surprised that "the fact is" didn't find its way into the top 10 - for me it would be right up there with the worst of them.

Do you have any other suggestions of over-abused phrases? Anything that seems to be popular (or rather, unpopular) I may write another article. I was going to add suggestions to the poll below but discovered that doing so would wipe out all the current votes. Below is a poll of the top 10 plus my own favourite, just to see if anybody else agrees. 

Although this is a bit of fun and designed to raise a smile, anybody who writes seriously should be bored themselves of trotting out the same lame phrases. Sometimes a particularly good turn of phrase may pop into your head at unexpected moments. Good to either write it down or dictate it into your mobile phone before you forget it completely. Unusual turns of phrase can make your writing fresh and your written voice stand out from the rest.