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#14261 02/21/2001 2:22 PM
Joined: Jan 2001
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wwh Offline
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Seems to me "verbiage" has a pejorative tone often enough to make it useful at times.


#14262 02/21/2001 9:36 PM
Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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At the website developer where I occasionally am taken on to cast an editorial eye, what I'm paid to look at is the "verbage." "Verbiage" almost looks good compared to that.
Granted, the verbage is often garbage.


#14263 02/22/2001 6:17 PM
Joined: Jul 2000
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This is one word that is misused a good bit. Verbiage means (in its usual sense) overly wordy, saying something in ten words when two would do. My now-retired boss used to send me notes about changing the verbiage of something I had written and I used to turn purple with rage because I was trying hard to write just the two words.





TEd
#14264 02/22/2001 6:37 PM
Joined: Apr 2000
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not only that, but (from dictionary.com):

Note on pronunciation: Verbiage is sometimes pronounced with two syllables, as \VUR-bij\. Charles Harrington Elster, in The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, calls this a ``thoroughly beastly mispronunciation that unfortunately has become so common that two current dictionaries recognize it.'' He continues, ``Marriage and carriage have two syllables, but, traditionally and properly, foliage and verbiage have three.''

...which leads, of course, to verbage.


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