I saw an article a few weeks ago about people’s most despised words. Apparently, ‘whatever’ was voted the most annoying word by about 50% of respondents in a US poll. I don’t have a problem with it, but I have got in trouble for using it when I couldn’t be bothered finishing an argument before (oops – must try harder).

So to follow up my words I like, here are some (or their uses) I don’t:

1) ‘Of’ used incorrectly. It’s should have, or should’ve, people. Not should of. I know it’s a common dislike, but I don’t always have to be different.

2) ‘Gay’ to mean something someone dislikes. It just annoys me.

3) Most business speak. This includes words like ‘synergy’, ‘moving forward’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘strategic development’, and dozens of others that make me twitch.

4) ‘Literally’ when people are exaggerating or using metaphor. You’re literally starving? Someone call World Vision! You literally died of embarrassment? Aaaah! Zombies!

A lot of people I know hate the word ‘moist’ (mind, meet gutter) but I don’t really. It makes me think of cake, and I like cake. Especially moist chocolate cake.

I love this. Thank you, twittch.com

As well as living and breathing words, I’m now finding that I have to eat them too. After all I’ve said about Twitter being ridiculous, I have now taken a deep breath, started an account, and begun to use it.

I decided that, as social networking is a big part of my industry, it would be unhelpful for me to deliberately ignore one of the major players. No longer the domain of giggly schoolkids, I’m noticing more and more industry professionals have hopped on the Twitter bandwagon, and there’s no point in me trotting behind it, trying to keep up.

I’ll do my best to keep my tweets relevant though, and not tweet for the sake of it – which I suspect is where all the ‘vacuous drivel’ I’ve railed against has sprung from. Even I’m not that interested in what I eat for breakfast, and I’m sure you aren’t, either.