Here are some of my generation's linguistic tendencies which bother me:

The word "aspect." Teenagers use the word "aspect" as if it were going out of style. They also use it as if it were a wild card that they can force into any sentence and make to mean anything they want. Listen, my fellow young adults: the word "aspect" has a very specific meaning. Please treat it as such.

The word "amazing." The problem I have with "amazing" is not the superfluousness of it - if you will look up and to your right, you will see that I am, after all, the Queen of Hyperbole. My problem with "amazing" stems from the fact that the people who use it can't seem to find any synonyms for it. Extraordinary. Remarkable. Grand. Super. All of these would work. But instead they click their tongues effeminately and call everything "amazing" with a wide-eyed earnestness that makes me want to vomit.

The word "fake." Fakeness is not a personality trait. Just about every passing period, I hear at least one girl referring to another girl as a "fake bitch." Is she a mannequin? What the hell do you mean by fake? Basically, words like "fake" and "poser" are words that teenaged girls can use to call other teenaged girls bitches without sounding like bitches themselves.

The word "real." Referring to oneself as "real" requires that you believe in the concept of "fakeness." See above.

Not knowing how to use apostophes. E.G. "Your totally stupid." Anyone who writes the phrase "your stupid" or anything similar should have to pay a fine. Of $1,000. To me.

posted at 6:12 PM by Alison

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