[fret] (noun): an irritated state of mind; annoyance; vexation.
Friday's Frets are my little rants about something that annoys me, most often without reason. We all have them, those little peeves that you may or may not notice.
I will be the first to admit that public speaking is not on my list of skills. As a matter of fact, personal speaking isn't a skill I excel at either. I say this as proof I have no right to critique anyone's speech but nonetheless I shall.I am regularly punished with business meetings. There is rarely anything fun about them but probably the worst for me is if the leader of the meeting is an umm-er. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, an umm-er is someone that fears a silent break in speech so they fill it with ummmm or uhhhhh. Just let there be silence until you gather your thought. JUST LET THERE BE SILENCE!! It is most frustrating when the speaker isn't confident in the subject matter. In this case the um's and uh's flow freely often times to the point that the purpose of the speech is lost. Sometimes there are situations where the presenter is very familiar with the subject yet the uh's lead the audience to believe the opposite. It's my opinion that often these vocabulary destroyers don't even realize they fear silence.
Along the same subject, the more recent generations over use "like". Every sentence you utter shouldn't contain this word and you definitely shouldn't use it more than once in the same sentence.
Another, don't end a sentence with "you know". If I knew then why are you telling me?
Lastly, if the sentence is a question commit to the question. Don't start the sentence as a declaration and at the very last minute revert to a question. Example:
NO: "Roses are always pink, correct?"
YES: "Are roses always pink?"
Welp that's my two cents.
Fretfully, Jessie
