Fill in the blanks

Very often, in our everyday conversation, we tend to use nonsensical words or phrases to fill up the gaps in our speech. This could be because of many reasons: awkwardness, nervousness, a limited vocabulary, or a sort of mental laziness that prevents thinking and makes us use such fillers or clichés.

Sometimes, it is just a habit we pick up from others. The most common filler is perhaps the combination You know…like: “I thought…you know…that it was…like…your holiday today, and you would be…like…bored all alone at home. So, I…like…came over on my bike. We could…you know…go for…like…a picnic.” It’s really worth paying attention to our own ways of talking so that we become aware of using such fillers, and thus stop using them.

However, you know can be used very effectively in conversation. “You know, it’s about time you thought of changing that habit.” Here the phrase lends a polite sharpness to the statement. We also often misuse like. In formal English, like cannot be used as a conjunction. We should avoid saying, “You should do it like you did last time.” The right way to put it is, “You should do it as you did last time.” Similarly, “He ran like he was mad” is wrong, and should be “He ran as though he were mad”.

Other fillers are sort of, this and that and stuff like that. Sort of can also be used, in special instances, to draw attention to a particular way of putting things, or to gently highlight an unusual phrase — as in “a sort of mental laziness” in the first paragraph. Sorta or kinda are colloquial forms, and are unacceptable even in moderately formal writing.

Write out kind of and sort of, although “It was rather good” is always preferable to “It was kind of good”. “It was kinda good” is horrible. This and that and stuff like that are clumsy ways of saying et cetera or and so on, and are best avoided entirely.

The important thing is to listen to ourselves and think hard. It is perfectly possible to change these habits of speech.

Comic or comical?

Something is comic when it is meant to be funny. The adjective is usually applied to plays, songs, films and other kinds of writing or performance. “Chaplin’s tramp is a comic creation.” But something is comical when it is funny unintentionally: “It was cruel of me to find his falling off the chair comical”. Similarly, the adjective related to irony is ironic, and not ironical. “It is ironic that the inventor of the gas mask died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.” Ironically can be used only as an adverb. “I’ve put you down to work all Saturday.” “Well, thank you very much!” she replied ironically. Think about the difference between economic and economical, or historic and historical. In English, some adjectives end in - ic and some in - ical, and there are no rules for this. Phonetic, semantic, despotic, pedantic, but ecological, tyrannical, musical, typical. Only in a few cases are both forms permissible, as with rhythmic and rhythmical. The adverbs in both cases are formed with – ically: musical, musically; pedantic, pedantically. The only exception is public, whose adverb is publicly, and not publically. Nobody knows why.