Why, oh why…
Posted on | March 8, 2010 | Comments Off
Why, oh why do people use language like this:
A spokesperson would only confirm that six jobs “were impacted.”
I pulled it from a story I found over at the CBC website. What happened to plain speak? I’m sorry, the jobs were not impacted! This useless verbiage is nonsense. Check the definition from Oxford dictionary:
• adjective 1 (of a tooth) wedged between another tooth and the jaw. 2 (of a fractured bone) having the parts crushed together
Yes, losing your job is painful, but I’m reasonably sure the person(s) did not have their parts crushed. People who use phrases like “were impacted” show a couple of things: a woeful ignorance of the meaning of the words; a ridiculous desire to make themselves sound intelligent. Sorry, but the use of impacted here is idiotic.
How about six jobs were affected? Or is clarity to simplistic?
Tags: english language > impacted > stupid use of english language > unclear language > verbal nonsense
Comments
Catpaw’s Declaration of War
Not all comments will be approved. Abusive and rude comments will end up in the trash with all the spam so moderate your language.
If you post the identical comment over and over, I will assume you are a useless waste of spam space and send you & your comment to spam purgatory. Enjoy the trip.
Whining and complaining I delete your spam and/or rude comments will just encourage me to do so again so go ahead and make my day.
Catpaw - diary of an angry cat by catpaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at catpawsblog.com.
Recent Posts
Things for the cat to play with
