re: #125 sattv4u2

my short list for annoying phrases

“irregardless” makes my ears bleed!

Me too. I hate it. And yet, I have at least one extremely smart friend, who also has all the best (and advanced) degrees we could mention, who habitually uses ‘irregardless’ in casual speech.
He’s very aware of it too, and tries to guard against it. It mostly only comes out now when he’s drunk. (partly because I helped train him on this).
But he’s certain this speech pattern has affected some of his academic job prospects in the past. And it probably did, sad to say.

Anyway, I think of him as a useful example whenever we’re tempted to infer that certain errors mean someone isn’t smart or isn’t educated, and we are tempted to draw conclusions about people’s intelligence based on those errors.