Don’t get me wrong; you will never see me wearing a t-shirt or drinking from a coffe mug emblazoned with:

“I’m silently correcting your grammar.”

Really, I’m not that kind of English major/teacher.  Simply listening to 5 minutes of conversation around my dinner table is enough to assure anyone that I’m okay with less-than-proper English.  But–what does grate on my language nerve is trite, cliched phrases that are repeated ad nauseam in a conversation. . .” Literally!”

This is my list of some of the worst offenders. Repeating any one of these more than once in a single conversation will cause cringing among your audience:

“Yeah, so yeah, then that happened.”

People who are older than high-school seniors who address me (!) as “Dude.”