#14: FOR FREE:  Every day we hear advertisers offer us this great deal: "Buy one and get a second for free!"  For free suggests that free is a noun and can be exchanged for something else.  Correct English is "Buy one and get a second free!"  It's not too difficult, really.  The second item is not, of course, really free, but that's another subject.  March 29, 2006.

#13: NEAR MISS:  What is a near miss, really?  Is there such a thing?  Is a glancing blow a near miss?  Or a sideswipe?  (Maybe it's the girl across the street, groan.)  We say near miss when we mean near hit.  Let's insist on near hit in future.  August 12, 2005.

#12: GO MISSING:  People and things don't go missing, they disappear: then, having disappeared, they are missing.  Where did go missing come from?  It's very sloppy English and sounds as if it had the same sort of meaning as go fishing.  May 27, 2005.

#11: POCKETBOOK:  When did you last hear anyone use pocketbook in ordinary conversation?  This is one of those words that only journalists use.  It's very popular right now: rising prices always "hit us in the pocketbook".  For me, it's yet another sign that most journalists are (a) ill educated and (b) lazy.  Men carry a wallet or a billfold; women carry purses: nobody carries a pocketbook or even owns a pocketbook, unless by pocketbook we mean a Penguin paperback, which was originally designed, in the mid-30s, as a book that would fit in your pocket.  (Historical note: the British Army's battledress, with which you are familiar from all those WWII movies, was designed with a pocketbook-sized pocket.)   April 30, 2005.

#10: MUNCH ON:  Here's another phrase that's only used by journalists, never in ordinary conversation or literate writing.  People are always said by journalists to munch on a sandwich or whatever.  It seems to be particularly popular when the items being munched on are perceived to be expensive, such as caviar or salmon.  And why must it be munch on rather than just munch?  What does on add?  Is it possible to munch under something or beside something?  April 30, 2005. 

#9: SIX-MONTH ANNIVERSARY:  If it's only been six months, it isn't an anniversary.  An anniversary is the turning of year, not the turning of anything less than a year.  Latin again: annus a year and versare to turn, both words which appear frequently in English and should be familiar to any semi-educated person.  And while we are at it, let's also ban the related and equally irritating formation one-year anniversary: in what possible way is one-year better than first?

#8: OUT OF:  When did we start saying out of when we mean in or from, as in "He works out of the Houston office" and "Where are you out of?"  It's not only incorrect, it's clunking, it sounds all wrong.  Let's go back to "He works in the Houston office" and "Where are you from?", please. 

#7: THE U.S. MILITARY: There is no such entity.  There is a U.S. Department of Defense.  Inside the Department of Defense, there are other departments and an enormous number of organizational entities of different shapes and sizes, but there is no U.S. military.  And by the way, military is an adjective, not a noun.  And by the way again, military derives from the Latin miles, meaning a soldier: to apply it to ships is incorrect and displays ignorance.  Armies are military forces, navies are naval forces, and air forces are, well, mechanics.

#6: PROPER NOUNS AS ADJECTIVES: A headline on the Internet today says China Ship Collides with Oil Tanker.  They mean Chinese, I presume (and hope).  This formulation has become annoyingly common, and not only in headlines, where there might be some small justification based on space, at least in newspapers.  Fundamentally it's just sloppy journalism.

#5: IT'S ABOUT:  The phrase it's about and its variant it's all about (doesn't the addition of all make all the difference?) represent more lazy thinking.  What is it?  I'm not crazy about formulations like "This company is all about quality" but at least I know what they mean.  It's about must be ridiculed into oblivion.

#4: QUOTE UNQUOTE: Using the phrase quote unquote to precede a quotation is just plain lazy.  The words quote and unquote should bracket the quotation: otherwise, the listener doesn't know where the quotation ends.  In fact, unquote should really be end quote: unquote is a relic of telegraphese - but let's not get too picky.

#3: PROACTIVE:  We don't need this ugly word.  Never did, never will.  It is used as a synonym for active and as an antonym for reactive, but it doesn't add a thing to the language.  Can you imagine old Isaac Newton saying "Gentlemen, for every proaction there is an equal and opposite reaction"?  In what way is "We are proactively pursuing new opportunities" better than "We are actively pursuing new opportunities"?

#2: ALL-NEW:  It's remarkable how often things that are described as all-new turn out to be not even remotely new but just slightly modified.  Except on television, however, where all-new apparently just means new: after all, when did they ever broadcast a partially new episode of anything?

#1: SYNERGY:  It's grossly overused, usually incorrectly, and often, it seems, as though the only reason for its use is to demonstrate that the user is right up to date in all the latest business management terminology, when, in fact, he almost certainly isn't.