Word world

I have something that annoys me more than anything else. I know, I know I'm trying to be positive, but I need to get this off my chest.

I hate it when people say stupid things. When they're obvious, or just make no sense at all. Technical jargon, manager-ese, cliches. Use any of these and I'll probably tune you out. There was a whole article in the paper yesterday about cliches and this kind of thing so I wont re-hash that.

An example though of what makes me shudder usually comes out of the mouths of sports journalists. You know the "I think the team who scores the most points tonight will probably win the game" type of stuff. Well derrrrr! At the beginning of the Australian Open, I heard a journalist say that a certain player was really hoping not to get beaten in the early rounds. Well, jeez and here I was thinking that most tennis players actually wanted to lose their matches.

There are also a few things I would like to see banned from the English language. Basically if any sentences have the words I've mentioned below as their beginning you know what follows isn't going to be good:

No offense, but...
Don't take it personally, but...
With all due respect...
I'm not rascist/sexist but...

I kind of find it funny that saying 'No offense' is like a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can be as offensive as you like, as long as you say 'no offense' beforehand.

"No offense, but you are a complete moron and I hate being on the same planet as you. No offense though."

It sometimes feels like people just open their mouths and let the words dribble out without really thinking about their saying. They don't realise how powerful words can be and just want to fill dead air.

Words are the most powerful weapons and tools of life we have. Sometimes, though, the sound of silence can be all we need.