Two long-standing bad habits in spoken English are really starting to get on my nerves, as they continue to gain prominence and – by sheer weight of numbers – acceptance.

First, adding unnecessary, redundant words.

“The reason why we did it …”

The definition of “reason” in this context is “the cause; the explanation; the why”. You don’t need to add the word “why” because the word “reason” includes it implicitly. That sentence above should just be:

“The reason we did it … “

This next one is a brand new Americanism that’s really pissing me off.

“He took the book off of the shelf.”

or

“We ripped the melody line off of a folk song.”

Why double up like that? Like the previous example, the “of” is unneeded. In this case, it’s not because the word is already implicit, but rather that it is just completely unnecessary. Reduce the unneeded complexity:

“He took the book off the shelf.”

and

“We ripped the melody line off a folk song.”

The second issue that’s annoying me is the growing omission of a small, useful word. This is a trend that I see growing in mostly American sources, but it’s wrong, and it should be stomped out. Those misplaced Americans have inserted “of” in those examples above when it isn’t needed and, to achieve that, have stolen it from phrases like:

“Give it a couple months.”

or

“He waited a couple seconds.”

Yet they’ll still include it in:

“I bought us a couple of coffees.”

That just makes no sense. Why remove it from one and not the other? It should be in BOTH!

“Give it a couple of months.”

It doesn’t take any more effort to say these phrases correctly, yet in doing so the language will be clearer and correct.