Said husband.. said friend..

[KettleOnCredit]

I feel levels of disgust each time I read this. Simply writing 'my friend/ husband' would leave the reader in no confusion..

My cat has now become 'the aforementioned feline'

It smacks of people who achieved at best a grade C at GCSE English, now attempting to come across as literate and well read.

Well it seems you have hit a nerve op. You're certainly not the first to have posted a thread like this on Mumsnet but usually people join in with all their irritants rather than give the op a kicking

I agree with you on the use of 'said' I find it irritating. I'm not sure why though - I don't agree with you at all about the GCSE thing. It's just a style of writing I don't like I suppose.

I also don't like it when people talk about 'presenting' with symptoms when they're ill.

I particularly hate the use of anyways.

I'm sure there are also plenty of expressions I use that would make someone shudder too.

Said a pedant.

😂😂

Oh, manners, manners - don't be so rude, OP. You did go to school, didn't you?

I think it’s less that OP has a gripe, and more that they have been demeaning about posters who use those words. Absolutely no need to insult their intelligence and/or literacy just because OP doesn’t like a certain word.

I have a long list of words and phrases that I have an irrational dislike of 😂 I’ve managed to refrain from being rude about people who use them…

i agree op! I don’t give a shite about grammar and spelling but the twee posters and those who seem to think they’re hilarious and in a creative writing competition grate on me, so many words and such a lack of a sense of humour

who cares if it’s trivial, if it wasn’t for people getting pissed off over trivial goings on mumsnet would be a ghost town

I read a lot of threads and have never seen this. Are you frequenting specific boards?

I think the difficulty you are having here OP is that you have named something that is an extremely commonplace phrasing, used across loads of registers of spoken English - it's neither particularly pretentious nor particularly colloquial, etc. So your meaning isn't very clear.....

Also, in the case of someone posting about a friend or a cat, using "said" could actually have a purpose - they may well have more than one friend, or more than one cat - so they are making it clear that this next sentence is still referring to the same cat/friend they mentioned earlier. In the case of husband, bigamy aside I can see that it's less important.

And do you see "C at GCSE" as a scathing insult? I teach English and I promise you you have to be functionally literate, able to comprehend what you read with some subtlety and insight and communicate in writing with fluency and a sense of purpose, in order to achieve one! It's really not a mark of shame!

(And before you tell me I am massively thick and my literacy is shit, I read English at Oxford so, whatever holes you pick in my grammar, you're still wrong! But I still think C in GCSE English is decent - English isn't everyone's strength. C gets a lot of people where they want to get to, in terms of next educational steps!

This poster makes me rather sad. What a life.

Wait for me, OP I’m coming with you.

I have never heard anyone say that in real life. It always makes me think of a courtroom drama on TV, daytime TV

Said poster is obviously sleeping it off 🤔

Not quite!
But well done you getting up early!

You’ve criticised something that annoys you on MN without waiting for a whole thread titled What Annoys You on MN. You’ve gone rogue and shouldn’t be surprised that you are being given a verbal slapping by the post police. You’ve been very impatient as there is usually one of those threads every month. Shame on you and get back in the pen with the rest of the sheep.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170301-what-overusing-exclamation-marks-says-about-you

I got an A* in English and then an A-Level at top grade and honestly I couldn't give 2 shits.

Wait huh

OP’s school may have dragged him/her over the GCSE grade C line but I’m not sure they did much for his/her character

I must at this isn't something that particularly annoys me.

On the other hand certain expressions - " hubby" and the atrocious " my bad" being the worst - make me not want to read a post because they fill me with disgust.

But I do try very hard not to judge posters by their writing style and use of language because people come from different cultures, are different ages and have different educational standards.

When it comes down to it if a particular post annoys you for any reason - writing style included - there's always the option of stopping reading it.

Wow. How embarrassing for you, op.

Yes, let's go with that.
It's like you're self soothing.. who am I to stop you?
I failed my English GCSE and have a terrible character. I hope that helps you to feel better about yourself

Clearly this touched a nerve.
I'm sorry to all the posters who thought they sounded intelligent when referring to everything as 'said.'

Have you quite finished?

Who hurt you, baby?

Speaking AS a professional editor Shirley? 😃

OP on a genuine note, are you ok?