It goes without saying
Posted on June 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm by Scott Stein
As soon as you say or write, “It goes without saying,” it no longer does.
“It goes without saying that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever.”
It did, until you said it.
It would make more sense to say or write, “It should go without saying that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever.” He’s so good, we shouldn’t have to say that he’s the greatest ever — everyone should already know it. It should go without saying. But once we say it, it no longer does.
It goes without saying — that is, it should go without saying — that “needless to say” doesn’t make much sense, either. If it’s really needless to say it, why are you telling me?
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Absolutely. I have harped on both of these in the past. The amount of unnecessary verbiage people throw into their sentences is amazing. So when those extra words are actually contradictory to the point of the statement, it’s even worse.
Slightly different, but the one that is driving me crazy these days is doubling the word “is.” As in “The thing is…is that we don’t know…” I am astonished at how often people say that, now that I am noticing it every time.
My personal favorite for many years has been “irregardless.” As in “Irregardless of what you believe, I am going to get that review in on time.” I heard it every day in corporate America. My Mac has a great definition for it. It basically says it is a word that is not a word at all & that it should be avoided. My second favorite- which I always called people out on- had to due with the fact that in my last job my department handled orientations. The conversation, I kid you not, went like this:
Me: “Tylere has an orientation from two to six.
My Boss: “How many people is he going to ORIENTATE today?”
Oh, that one made me nuts. Again it is in my Mac dictionary as an evolution of the word orient. Make it stop. I don’t want things to “evolve” into crap. When I would correct someone I would say: “Well, if I said I was doing a presentation today, you wouldn’t ask me on which topic was I going to presentate- would you?”
My grammar isn’t awesome, but I can only take so much.
V
Those are great, even the comments were good. It reminds me of George Carlin’s stand-up about airlines and airplanes.