Walt spent some time over the weekend with someone who uses "filler words". Those are words or phrases like "basically", "really" and "y'know", which are inserted in simple sentences, seemingly at random, to give slow talkers (or slow thinkers) pause for breath or for thought,
And of course there's the now-infamous "like"... "Like, my kid goes... y'know... how much is, like, two and two? Like he's basically stupid, y'know..."
Agent 17 complains, rightly, that the abuse and misuse of "like", which seems to have originated in California as "Valley talk", has crept into the parlance of supposedly intelligent and educated people, like bank managers and government spokesthingies.
And journalists! Like, duuhhh! Zoë Triska, writing in The Blog on Huffington Post's site, admits to this annoying habit. "If you use this word," she writes, "people will think you're stupid!"
Here's her article, the second in an ongoing series aimed at promoting better English usage. If you catch me doing it, alert Ed. and he'll, like, shoot me.
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