Utilize Caution: Annoyed English Major Ahead

I hate, hate, HATE (note the repetition for emphasis) the word utilize in most contexts.

People USE it all the time as a jargon-y, pretentious, fancy-pants sounding substitute for the simple word use. In fact, it is not a substitute for use. It does not make your writing sound more efficient, technological, or intelligent. You're actually probably using it wrong.

To utilize something is to USE it (to make it usable), usually in a manner for which it was not originally created. For example, if you take the old iMacs and turn them into a fish tank, you are utilizing the iMac in an interesting and clever way. If you pick up a chair and hit someone who just wrote utilize in a paper instead of use, well, then you are utilizing that chair as a weapon to express your frustration at the phrase popping up all over the place.

I'm not usually a stickler enforcer of "correctness". I am all for changes in grammar & style. I know that a living language, which English is, changes or it dies. We introduce new ways to deal with grammar and style problems all the time, and sometimes they fly, sometimes they don't.

But please, if you are writing something for me, USE a perfectly good verb. Don't try too hard to sound smart, because generally, you're going to screw it up if your "util" isn't working correctly. :) And then, you'll just sound pretentious, and I'll whack you with a chair.

Ah, Humanity

I was reading over a couple of various news stories just now while the babies are napping and husband is at work. I like to scroll through the google news feed just to see what's happening in the world, to keep up with the big headlines without getting too bogged down in the horror that can be the daily news.

I read over a blog/news post about the tragedy of the young boy who died of dry drowning and was horrified by the comments section where people argued over petty grammar issues and I'm positive one poster varied his/her pseudonym several times to make snarky, irrelevent comments. Several people tried to point out how petty it was to post about a grammar error in such a tragic blog post, but the majority of the large mass of comments was snarky argument. Then I scrolled down and saw a NYTimes post about the 78 year old man who was hit by a car while people passed by and did not help him. Granted, it apparently was only a minute or so, and some four people did call 911, but the image of that man lying there for that long alone in the street like a dog is in my head now. Finally, peering in on the catfight (I can't really call it much else) for publicity about Spike Lee & Clint Eastwood at Cannes was bad enough but then reading, again, over the comments section where people are bitching about tiny petty things rather than actually debating anything serious, are jumping to personal attacks and stupidness.

I'm frankly a bit sad about the state of the Internet, and humanity, right this second. IN the face of horror and human pain we worry about what coin Abe Lincoln is on, what grammar is used to report a tragedy, what links are used for referencing an issue.

Now, I'm all for spellcheck, and I believe firmly in people learning intelligent debate. But the level of pettiness in these several different examples of behavior just bums me out.