Forbidden Words

As an English teacher, I am ex officio a senior officer of the English Inquisition (no one expects the English Inquisition, least of all in the semiliterates' Utopia known as the Web).

And while I don't expect uniformly brilliant and original writing on blogs and other sites, I would be a happy inquisitor if people would only avoid some unfortunate words and phrases. If you go to Buzzwords, you'll find a highly therapeutic array of terms to avoid.

Among them are "Forbidden Words 2003," which disses (and dismisses) "blogosphere." I'm guilty of using it once or twice, I admit, but really, it was just for recreational use. I can take it or leave it. Really. Never again.

But I'd love to see bloggers give a rest to a number of over-used expressions. Put any of them in Google along with "blog" and see how many hits you get. Then draw your own conclusions. Some of the most forbiddable:

random, rants, musings, meanderings, rambling, chaotic, neurotic, pundit, insights, viewpoint, thoughts, thinks, babble, right-wing, and left-wing.

Any others that you'd like to see dropped from bloggers' vocabularies?

Comments

[kevin]

"fisking" - Its a silly word for a silly idea.

[Crawford Kilian]

I've seen "fisking," and I gather it comes from a Brit journalist who's anti-Bush--didn't he write a lot of articles from Iraq before and during the war? Can anyone give me a definition?

[Outer Life]

Definition of "fisk":

verb. To deconstruct an article on a point by point basis in a highly critical manner. Derived from the name of journalist Robert Fisk, a frequent target of such critical articles in the blogosphere (qv).

Usage: "Orrin Judd did a severe fisking of an idiotic article in the New York Times today..."

Source: Samizdata.

[Mel]

"And while I don't expect uniformly brilliant and original writing on blogs and other sites, I would be a happy inquisitor if people would only avoid some unfortunate words and phrases. If you go to Buzzwords, you'll find a highly therapeutic array of terms to avoid."

Elegantly put. May all buzzword users cower.

[David Tiley]

"blogosphere". Anything with "digi" in it. I use them both all the time, but they always grate. .

Actually the word 'blog" is pretty bleaaach as well.
And the terrain has already broken into several different pieces. How can you, for instance, be compared with a sixteen year old girl agonising over her lipstick to her friends? (Don't answer that if you secretly agonise over your lipstick to your friends, purely on the grounds that it is private).

All you have in common is the software and the use of the calendar, which Tammy Arqueslettiya is not using as a discipline anyway. Who wants to posit a new taxonomy of blogdom?

PS - Fisking is a nasty use of the name of a journalist who has made some embarrassing blunders - like predicting the Iraqi army would stand up to the Americans - but has written some fabulous war reportage as well. But then this last year has got us all sadly used to nastiness in public discourse.