On business English

Friday 20 November 2009This is nearly 15 years old. Be careful.

I’ve noticed in the office, people often refer to meetings with just an adjective phrase, letting “meeting” be implied: “I have to go, I have a 2:00”. Why don’t we carry this to its logical extreme? Let’s just say things like,

I have to get ready for the weekly.

Lunch has to be quick, I have to get back for a boring.

I think I’m going to skip the pointless.

Comments

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Claudio A. Heckler 6:26 AM on 20 Nov 2009
Awesome!

On the same topic: MS's Raymond Chen's excellent blog, "The Old New Thing", has a whole category dedicated to documenting "Microspeak", with some priceless entries:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/tags/Microspeak/default.aspx
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Wow, for once I'm glad to hear German in the office, never heard anything like that here.
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Typical excuse for not attending would be "Sorry, I have accidentally our daily"
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Around here, we actually use the first two you listed. We don't use the third, because the phrase "pointless meeting" is redundant.
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This is a very American thing IMO. For a long time, I didn't know what "I'm on a redeye to NYC" meant. I would have just said "I'm on a late-night flight to NYC".

Another thing which I find Americans do a lot is to pronounce the abbreviation as if it's a real word.
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I think it's a tech thing. Admitting you're going to a meeting is like admitting you use a spreadsheet. It's a flag that you don't really know what you're doing ;-)
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Very amusing! But isn't this like the (I think ancient) custom of leaving out "class" in a school/college environment ("I'll be late for my 2 o'clock") or appointment/patient in a medical/business environment ("My 4:30 never showed up")? In each case, the context governs this interpretation. Granted, in these cases, the adjective doesn't appear...
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Hey, what's with the time-stamp? Here in Toronto, it's 1:37 p.m.!
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I skipped a pointless today and was congratulated on my foresight.
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We don't say 'boring' or 'pointless' because that is inferred. The time is mentioned as it is really the only thing that differentiates it from the other meetings. :-)

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