The Grammar Assassins

Yesterday, in an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, actress Lisa ‘Friends’ Kudrow used the word ‘actually’ and the phrase, ‘you know’ at least a dozen times. On the Jet Blue 1:40 am redeye last night (that didn’t depart sin city with its packed floating house until almost 2:30 am), a mother and daughter were seated next to me, recapping the traumatic event of the day. Seems the 13 year old cracked the top of her skull on the family swimming pool bottom, a painful act that required four staples (yes, I saw them, they were silver metallic staples) inserted into the child’s braded crown to hold the lacerated flesh together. ‘Did your head go off when you walked through Security?’ I asked. ‘ACTUALLY it didn’t, but we thought it might,’ smiled mom.

The angel Carrie uses the word actually a lot. It’s to emphasize a phrase or comment or thought but if you analyze it for a second – and repeat the line without the A word – you’ll discover that ‘actually’ ACTUALLY isn’t necessary at all. It is in fact, redundant, and if you’ve become hypersensitive to the word as I have – aware of its usage virtually everywhere in modern western vernacular – well, it’s actually quite annoying. I mean, it’s quite annoying. You know?

The late great L.A. sports commentator Jim Healy whose 6 30 pm KLAC broadcast was peppered throughout the 60s and 70s with odd, scandalous and just plain wonderful sound bites from across the sport humanity spectrum, he had a couple ‘you know’ tapes he would often play. Classic rants by noted heroes of diamond, turf and hardwood, such as Laker forward James Worthy’s ‘you know’ peppered post game soliloquy where Healy counted something like 20 ‘you knows’ in 30 seconds. Actually, that may have been 25. Ooops.


There are other addictive phrases polluting the King’s English in these less than eloquent verbal times. He’s all, and she’s all, and it’s like…I mean, that’s just plain grammar homicide. But the gran mal is still ‘you know,’ because it’s usage simply adds nothing to a conversation. When I’m in an ornery mood and someone is firing off repeated ‘you knows’ at me, I might be prompted to fire back a ‘no, I don’t know? Why do you keep asking me if I know? You’re telling me. That’s how I will come to know what I don’t know. You know what I mean? Now, that phrase, as it was originally constructed, holds water. It’s inquiring whether someone is following the conversation, hip to the content, down with the thematic struggle. Do you know what I mean was a great Lee Michaels song. ‘You know’ is the bastard stepchild, an abortion that brings nothing to the interaction party but annoyance. And everyone is you know happy. Politicians, rock stars, construction workers, casino managers, reality TV personalities, teenagers, octogenarians….it has spread into the popular culture like a literary cancer and it sucks. You know what I mean? Actually, I think you do.

Carrie Ann now catches herself ‘actually-ing.’ ‘Shit’ she’ll quip immediately after spouting an unnecessary ‘actually. ‘I’m also working on ‘basically,’ she says. ‘I believe it’s the next big thing and could overtake ‘actually’ if something isn’t done immediately to thwart its progress.’ Now there are places where ‘actually’ works and works brilliantly. Like in the film, Love, Actually, the witty and wonderful British comedy of a couple years back. Or yogi avatar, Paramanhansa Yogananaa’s Self Actualization movement. There is an immense spirit of unification attached to these efforts. I guess when the topic is love, the boundaries extend to the ends of the tongue. You know what I mean? It’s like, I mean, actually, really cool. That’s basically all I have to say on the matter. Ummm. Oh shit!

Lonn Friend
Rob’s Apartment, Pearl Street, Manhattan
6/23/05