Top 10 Most Irritating Phrases

No one wants to teach grammar because it's not fun: Kim Brooks

(NEWSER) - Sometimes, while Kim Brooks is grading essays by her college composition students, she cries. "Not real tears, exactly—more a spontaneous, guttural sob, often loud and unpleasant enough to startle my husband or children," she writes in Salon . Why? Because many of these students "simply ... cannot write." They don't have basic skills, like knowing how to organize paragraphs, how to write a thesis statement, how to outline, how to proofread or edit, or even "how to make sure their sentences contain a subject and a verb." Is this the fault of the traditional high-school English class, full of class discussion but little writing and almost no grammar education? More»

US bishops replace chuckle-inducing word with 'spoils'

(NEWSER) - No longer will young Catholics snicker in Sunday school every time the word "booty" comes up in a Bible verse: In the newest translation of the New American Bible, Catholic bishops have ordered the word "booty" replaced with the word "spoils." It's just one of many changes that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops says will make the Bible more precise, more poetic, and easier to understand. Other changes: "Holocaust" will be replaced with "burnt offering," and the ode in Proverbs to "the Ideal Wife" will now be called a "Poem on the Woman of Worth." More»

'Whatever' is worst; 'like' also highly irritating

(NEWSER) - “Whatever” is, like, the most annoying word in the English language, a poll finds—for the second year in a row, notes Reuters. The Marist survey of more than 1,000 Americans found that almost 39% think “whatever” is the most annoying English word or phrase; runners up were “like,” with 28%, and “you know what I mean,” with 15%. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, “like” was considered the most infuriating. More»

I am so above all the drama. Literally.

(NEWSER) - If you haven't said at least one of these, oh, at least 128 times in casual conversation, you should check that you still have a pulse. Because most of us can't avoid uttering them time and time again, and it just needs to stop, writes Alida Nugent on her Frenemy blog.

• “If there wasn’t (insert person or obstacle here) I would have kicked her ass.” Seriously? When was the last time you got in a fistfight? What's that? Never? Thought so. Furthermore, "I don’t believe you because you are wearing pink and the only thing on your record is a big smiley face stamp."

But India's Koro is in danger of becoming obsolete

(NEWSER) - Two linguists have discovered a language new to science, spoken by only about 1,000 people in the foothills of the Himalayas, the LA Times reports. Koro, as it has been named, was found among residents in a remote area of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Instead of being a dialect of the dominant local language as long thought, it contains unique grammatical and syntactical features and thus could provide insights into the mechanics of language itself. More»