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Ghastly expressions you want to see the back of in 2011

paul rich said:
Media nowadays tends to say "interest rates have moved by half of a percentage point from 4.5 percent to 5 percent" whereas my I would say "interest rates have moved 0.5 percent .....". I was taught maths at school which included the use of the decimal system and know there is no need for talk of percentage points when stating such data. In media speak they I suppose they assume the listener does not know what a fraction of a percent is and so talk about percentage points, but in the same sentence revert back to straight forward "percent" without the "point" when coming to the actual rate of interest.
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Sorry, but in this case you’re wrong, and they’re right. Percentage points are not percentages. Interest rates are expressed using percentages. But percentages are also used to express changes in a value. The problem comes when you want to express a change in something that is already being expressed as a percentage.. if you say that “there was a 2% rise in the base lending rate”, well, do you mean that it has gone from 5% to 5.01% (the amount of interest due on any loan has increased by 2%), from 5% to 7.1% (the amount payable has increased by 2% - 102% of 105%), or that the rate it has gone from 5% to 7% (“5% is 7% plus 2%”, but the amount of interest payable has increased 40%). Because of the ambiguity, especially when the amount of increase could be either, bankers use “percentage points” to refer to the number before the percentage sign, and so a “2 percentage point” increase can only be understood to mean an absolute change, not a change whose magnitude is a fraction of the current value.

Unfortunately, once you know this distinction, you can get annoyed when people on TV mix the two up...
 
KrisW said:
Sorry, but in this case you’re wrong, and they’re right. Percentage points are not percentages. Interest rates are expressed using percentages. But percentages are also used to express changes in a value. The problem comes when you want to express a change in something that is already being expressed as a percentage.. if you say that “there was a 2% rise in the base lending rate”, well, do you mean that it has gone from 5% to 5.01% (the amount of interest due on any loan has increased by 2%), from 5% to 7.1% (the amount payable has increased by 2% - 102% of 105%), or that the rate it has gone from 5% to 7% (“5% is 7% plus 2%”, but the amount of interest payable has increased 40%). Because of the ambiguity, especially when the amount of increase could be either, bankers use “percentage points” to refer to the number before the percentage sign, and so a “2 percentage point” increase can only be understood to mean an absolute change, not a change whose magnitude is a fraction of the current value.

Unfortunately, once you know this distinction, you can get annoyed when people on TV mix the two up...
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Thank you for writing this. I meant to and then give a guideline to basis points BPS/bips but you have saved me a job.
 
KrisW said:
Sorry, but in this case you’re wrong, and they’re right. Percentage points are not percentages. Interest rates are expressed using percentages. But percentages are also used to express changes in a value. The problem comes when you want to express a change in something that is already being expressed as a percentage.. if you say that “there was a 2% rise in the base lending rate”, well, do you mean that it has gone from 5% to 5.01% (the amount of interest due on any loan has increased by 2%), from 5% to 7.1% (the amount payable has increased by 2% - 102% of 105%), or that the rate it has gone from 5% to 7% (“5% is 7% plus 2%”, but the amount of interest payable has increased 40%). Because of the ambiguity, especially when the amount of increase could be either, bankers use “percentage points” to refer to the number before the percentage sign, and so a “2 percentage point” increase can only be understood to mean an absolute change, not a change whose magnitude is a fraction of the current value.

Unfortunately, once you know this distinction, you can get annoyed when people on TV mix the two up...
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I stand corrected, and rightfully so. Thanks Kris, perhaps now I have less to get annoyed about :)
 
paul rich said:
I stand corrected, and rightfully so. Thanks Kris, perhaps now I have less to get annoyed about :)
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Oh no, trust me: once you know this difference, you will be far more annoyed by interviewees who mix up the two.. “points” seems to stick to “percentage” in the same way that the word “mark” has become attached to “question” in sporting interviews..
 
Stop! Kris you told me about question "mark"! You've increased the number of things that will annoy me now. I'll have to give up watching all sport interviews now :(, and following that logic no more going to work or main stream TV and radio.
 
Slaw - as in coleslaw - as written on the menus of pretentious cafes who often serve food on completely flat pieces of slate or wooden board
 
KrisW said:
Oh no, trust me: once you know this difference, you will be far more annoyed by interviewees who mix up the two.. “points” seems to stick to “percentage” in the same way that the word “mark” has become attached to “question” in sporting interviews..
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You should worry. Try journalists who don't know the difference between viruses and bacteria. For the last time, it's NOT the E. coli virus!
 
“I’m not going to lie”; hopefully the speed at which this turn of phrase arrived will be matched by its departure.
 
PaulMB said:
What do they eat during the end part of the voyage?
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Glad you asked. Depends which leg of the journey they are on: outbound, they may have been greeted with indigenous offerings such as yams or guava fruit from local boats keen to do a bit of trade or kill him like they did James Cook ; inbound, perhaps pasties if the approach is from the south west or stottie cakes if the end destination is the Tyne, the Tees or even the Humber.
 
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"phenomena" as I understand is something observed that can't be explained with present day conventional knowledge.

But what rankles is when its applied to something perfectly explainable e.g. "the phenomenal popularity of Pamela Anderson with teenage boys", okay I'm showing my age, but you get the point hopefully :)
 
Moving from academia to industry in the past year has opened me up to a whole world of annoyance, many examples already covered here.

I'm mainly annoyed by verbs being used as nouns when a suitable noun already exists. I apologise if any of these have been covered already:

"Ask", roughly equivalent to "request", as in "Here's my ask: if you can go ahead and come in on Saturday, that'd be great."

"Invite" instead of "invitation"

"Reveal" instead of "revelation", "unveiling", etc.

As an American in the UK I get annoyed by: choc (chocolate), veg (vegetables, but yet we get hell for saying singular "math" for mathematics; at least we agree on "stats"), "washing up liquid" (sounds like what a drunk or a young child says in frustration after giving up on remembering the words "dishwashing detergent" or even "dish soap"), and unnecessary diminutives like "leccy", "brekkie", "chippy", etc. Please don't inform the Home Office.
 
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