oh my word!

We all have idiolects, the set of phrases and words we habitually use. Some pepper their speech with “you know”, others needlessly start sentences with “so”.

I am not immune. Whenever something is very unlikely, the phrase I reach for is “statistically invisible”. I can’t remember where I first heard the term, but I think it is expressive. Similarly, my adjective of choice to express the notion of something bigger or better is often “hugely”. I will say a meal was hugely enjoyable, or a mountain is hugely impressive. It’s a bad habit to use the same word all the time, and I try to resist. But it is something I do automatically.

If you think about it, you’ll recognise words and phrases that make up your own idiolect. You also learn the idiolects of friends and family, and either love or hate them.

Instead of “yes”, when he agrees, one of my colleagues will say “splendid”. Which makes me want to say “spiffing” in return. And I know a woman who expresses the concept of “lots” by putting a number on it. She’ll say: “I’ve told you this 40 million times” or she’s seen an old movie “40 million times”. It is quite amusing.

On the other hand, I know a man who starts an awful lot of his sentences with the phrase: “At this present moment in time” when he means “now” – although in most instances he doesn’t need a time-qualifying precursor at all.

I have another colleague who, if she agrees with what you are saying, repeatedly says “totes” (this is short for “totally”, I think). I totes hope this is a habit she can totes break, totes soon.

Now you might think this is all harmless. What’s wrong with favourite words and phrases you return to again and again? At times it can be quite endearing.

When people are speaking it largely doesn’t matter, but you cannot let your idiolect dominate when you are writing. You should have your own style, of course, but if you expressed everything in the same way again and again your prose would be ridiculous.

A newspaper reporter shouldn’t use many adjectives, but they certainly should not use the same adjective repeatedly. A story about a hugely dangerous journey in a hugely remote country with hugely ferocious animals would be hugely badly written.

Steve Finan in defence of the English language