Everybody has their English language pet peeves; things other people say incorrectly that bother us.
I’ll try to debunk two I hear often:

  1. “to be honest”
    I think the real meaning of “to be honest”, is “to be perfectly upfront, frank, candid, transparent”. That’s not the same as being truthful. When used in that sense, it doesn’t imply that you’re normally (or at least you have been) dishonest.
  2. “Continue On”
    first some definitions:

    • Continue means “To go on with a particular action or in a particular condition; persist”
    • Onward means “Moving or tending forward.”

    And now my analysis: I could be swayed to believe that “continue on” is short for “continue onward”. Buying that, the inclusion of “on/onward” does provide the additional information of direction (sort of a vague analog to scalar and vector quantities). So, in contraposition to continuing on, you could: continue backwards/backing up, continue downwards, continue along a tangent, continue turning, etc.

And that concludes today’s unsolicited English language rant. Oh, my pet peeves? the misuse of flesh out/flush out, and the use of “irregardless”.

For a comprehensive summary of english errors

A previous entry on English mistakes