Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 178
- 4
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Much ink has been spilled here over the dreaded em-dash and other hallmarks of AI writing. But what other linguistic pet peeves do you have?
I ask because I just found myself fuming over the widespread confusion between "jealousy" and "envy." People tend to use them as synonyms (more often simply using jealousy for both terms), but the two words describe emotions that I think deserve to be distinguished. Jealousy is felt over things that rightfully belong to you, while envy is felt over things which do not. God is jealous; you are envious. Being jealous is still generally bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as envy. As a child who was bad at sharing but generally pretty good about being happy about the good fortune of others, it has always bothered me how few people seem to grasp the distinction.
For some reason, overuse of ellipses is as big a giveaway of someone's age as overuse of em-dashes is for ChatGPT.
Many people I know over the age of fifty seem constitutionally incapable of writing "I'll buy some milk on Monday" or "I'll buy some milk on Monday.", instead feeling this weird compulsion to jazz it up with "I'll buy some milk on Monday..."
I'm far from the first person to notice this peculiar generational touchstone. I have no idea what this is intended to convey but it creeps me out.
Even worse is those people who haven't realised that an ellipsis contains three full stops, no more, no less, so you end up with even weirder constructions like "I'll buy some milk on Monday.." or "I'll buy some milk on Monday............."
I remember distinctly having issues with this use of ellipsis when writing comments on forums back when I was but a wee lad in ye olden dayes of the World Wide Web 20+ years ago. No matter what sentence I wrote, it just felt better to end it with an ellipsis than a period, and I couldn't tell why. But when I encountered other comments using ellipsis like this, I could tell how terrible it was for readability and forced myself to just end sentences with singular periods even if every cell in my body was telling me to add 2 more.
I think it's the same sort of phenomenon as uptalk, where someone who isn't confident in what they have to say and wants to hedge their bets makes a declarative statement in the same tone as if it's a question. The ellipsis gives the sense that there's more to it there than what the person has stated, something left unsaid that shows that the person is still thinking and unsure about the contents of what they wrote. And I think that's more common among young people (and women, to allude to Skeletor's response below) than the alternative, which is why people notice it as a a phenomenon among them. So whatever generation is the youngest generation at the time will probably be seen as doing this.
I think the typical way Millennials and Gen Z signal uncertainty in their declarative statements is by dropping punctuation entirely ("Trump is a Nazi." sounds a lot more definitive than "trump is a nazi"), peppering them with Internet initialisms (likewise "trump is literally a nazi lol, but w/e idk") or textual recreations of uptalking ("umm, did you miss that trump is literally a nazi??"). I agree that this a phenomenon more closely associated with women and gay men than with other demographics. But in my experience, I haven't really encountered young people using ellipses in this context so far as I remember: with only a handful of exceptions I can recall, they're always used by people significantly older than me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link