I know it’s a small complaint from an old man screaming at clouds, but the one that bugs me, especially when it is used by sportscasters and frequently so, is the phrase “at that point in time”. Like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. A “point” in time is gone before you can utter it, and the phrase is superfluous– use one or the other please. It may on very rare occasions be necessary to differentiate between a point in time and a point on a plane, but otherwise the meaning of “point” is readily inferred from its usage. I hope I made my point.
From the Department of Redundancy Department: Not long after I moved to Arizona many years ago a sportscaster actually was bemoaning some team’s performance by saying they “have lost their last five straight consecutive games in a row”. I kid you not.
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Now watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal
Won't you sign up your name? We'd like to feel you're acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.- Ulysses S. Grant, 18th US President.
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