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Now, on to enjoy. The word, I mean. I'm starting to think that enjoy, in an unfortunate context, can be one of the most annoying words in the English language. And the annoyance happens so innocently, too. Here's my (insert whatever item here). I hope you like it. Enjoy!
Sounds friendly enough, right? But... it's used so often without thinking that it starts to sound like a command. Enjoy! Enjoy, dammit! You'd better effing well enjoy this!
It can also come across as a monstrous guilt trip if a person's not careful. I did this for you, you know. Enjoy! It took up some of my valuable time. Enjoy! I hope you appreciate these things I do. Enjoy!
Yeah, I'm probably a little Enjoy! oversensitive. I'll freely admit it. It's just that the word can so easily become a meaningless bit of nothing tacked on to the end of a statement when you've run out of things to say, and enjoy deserves better than that. It's a happy word that shouldn't be filler. And it shouldn't ever become annoying.
It does, though.
There was someone on I'm-sure-you-know-which-site whose video offerings I was checking on a regular basis for a while, but I don't anymore. I couldn't take the Enjoy! she tacked on to the end of every. single. blurb she wrote for them. It starts to get a person's back up after a while, you know? It's almost a challenge: I'll enjoy it it if I bloody well feel like it, thank you very much. And if I don't... none of your business.
Enjoy! overkill can be downright amusing too, of course. One of our local television news teams (or as local as they get since Canwest Global killed our local station. Can't say I'm mourning the demise of that particular television empire) put out a collection of family recipes for the holidays, and as I was flipping through it I couldn't help laughing at the reflex Enjoy! ending almost every recipe write-up. Copy editor, anyone?
Ah well. I guess what I'm saying here is that I wish people would give the easy Enjoy! a bit of a break for a while. Call it a New Year's resolution, if you want to. I'll even take a needy I hope you like it! over Enjoy! at the moment. Yes, even with the artificially cheerful exclamation point.
We'll have to talk exclamation points at some time or other as well, I think. There are far, far too many of them roaming around the internet, as far as I'm concerned. I'm only one person, though. I can only do one snit at a time.
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Well, what with some upcoming chilly weather and a few days off, I'll just say that blogging may be a little hit and miss from me in the next while. I'll probably be around, but just in case something unexpected comes up I'll warn you that things should be back to normal after about the second of January.
Warn you, yes. Everybody deserves a chance to run for it.
2 comments:
That made me laugh, it does seem to get everywhere and does feel like an enforced cheerful command.
As for exclamation marks!!! I have acquaintances who overuse the exclamation mark and I'm convinced it's a sign of low self-esteem or something. One of them uses them incessantly in her status on facebook and in her blog, it's as if it's saying 'Look at me! I'm so happy and carefree! and I live such an exciting life!' Grrrr.
I have a habit of getting a bit too easily annoyed over certain language things, I'll freely admit. Just ask me about the overuse/misuse of unique. I can go on for pages about unique.
That's... kind of sad, now that I think of it.
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