Thumbs Down on “Like”

Ms. Picky doesn’t like“like.” It has become a ubiquitous word used by speakers who can’t be bothered to think meaningful or original thoughts and express them in a coherent sentence. Isn’t it time we all stood up and said, “We don’t like ‘like’ anymore”?

We don’t like “like” instead of “said.” 

We don’t like “like” instead of “as if.” 

And we don’t like “like” as a way of expressing our opinions on everything from politicians, to movies, to retail stores. 

The overuse and misuse of “like” are symptoms of a paucity of vocabulary and a lack of imagination. Thumbs down on “like!” 

Like Instead of “Said”

“Like” instead of “said” is a ridiculous usage that began with fourteen-year-old girls (for whom Ms. Picky will cut a little slack, because she was once a fourteen-year-old girl). Unfortunately, however, it has now spread to boys, to parents and other adults, to businesspeople, and to our media. One of its usages allows its users to quote themselves in a tentative, self-deprecating way that is intended to temper the obnoxiousness of quoting oneself, but its other usages are just as annoying: 

Meaningless Babble:
When I saw him, I was, like, “What are you doing here?” And he was, like, “I don’t know; I, like, just wanted to see you.”


Coherent Sentence:
When I saw him, I said, “What are you doing here?” 
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just wanted to see you.”

Like instead of  “About” or “Around”

Incorrect:

The Jaipur Polo team made, like, ten goals in the first chukker.

Correct:

The Jaipur Polo team made about ten goals in the first chukker.

Like Instead of “Somewhat”

Incorrect:

The weather tomorrow will be, like, on the humid side.

Correct:

The weather tomorrow will be somewhat humid.

Like Instead of “As If”

Like can be a verb, as in "I like chocolate truffles.”  Or it can be a preposition, as in “He is like his father.”  But like is not a conjunction. It cannot conjoin two clauses. Ever.

Incorrect:

It’s like the world has gone mad.

It’s like you are driving your own car.

Correct:

It’s as if the world has gone mad.

It’s as if you are driving your own car.

Also Correct:

It’s like driving your own car.

(In this example, like is not being used as a conjunction, because “driving your own car” is not a clause; driving is a gerund—a verb form used as a noun—and so like is perfectly correct in this usage.)

  

Like as a Means of Voting

“Like” as a means of voting (by clicking on a “thumbs up” icon) is a way of forcing us to reduce all our complex thoughts and feelings to binary pass/fail functions. We are invited to “like” Web sites of retail stores, movies, politicians, and drycleaners.

Do you like a retail store’s Web site? Most likely, you never thought about whether you like or dislike it. It’s just something you use to order electronics, or clothing, or ebooks. If you were forced to put your thoughts into feelings, you might say, “I like that it saves me a trip to my local shopping mall, but I don’t like that I have to register and enter a user name and a password for a site I might never use again, yet that will send me email for the rest of my life.” Does that add up to a “like”? Ms. Picky thinks not.

So, Web site, don’t push your luck. Don’t ask me if I “like” you. You might not “like” my answer.

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Journalism Wall of Shame

The Journalism Wall of Shame displays errors in grammar, punctuation, or language that have appeared recently in the press. Submissions are welcome. Please include the publication's name and date, the story title, and the reporter's name. The publication of these errors in no way places blame for them on a particular person. Sometimes it is the reporter, sometimes an editor, sometimes a headline-writer, but—somewhere in the system—somebody should have known better.

Another disturbing trend in English misusage is emerging: The use of “couple” as an adjective, as exemplified by the following excerpt:

A couple hundred eager shoppers from around the country lined up Friday outside Apple’s newest retail store in New York’s Grand Central Terminal when the store opened at 10 a.m.  
—“Apple Opens New York Grand Central Store,”  online.wsj.com, Dec. 9, 2011

The word “couple” is a noun, not an adjective, and, as a noun, it cannot be used to modify the noun “shoppers.” The correct usage here would be “a couple of hundred. . . .”

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