I thought  leash's entry led on quite nicely to an entry I'd been meaning to do for several days regarding musings on the use of the english language.

As Leash alluded to in her entry, people have a knack for stating the obvious in an exciting, thoughtful way, despite the fact you obviously (and that's an understatement) know the answer already. As well as her example of "It's your last day!", I have recently been subject to the "You had a hair cut!" treatment. This got me to thinking.

Now, the manner in which it is stated would in reality require greater than the single exclamation mark I have used for illustrative purposes in the above two examples. Yet all the person is doing is making a statement, and a boring and obvious one at that. It is for that reason I have decided to in future refer to all such remarks as "exclements" - the 'excla-mation' of something which requires none, and should indeed just be a 'state-ment'. If you can't see where I got exclament from the above quite indiscreet typing, I'm not going to bother explaining it.

So, what do you do when faced with an exclament? My responses have generally fallen into 3 catergories, dependant on both the asker, and the level of energy I possess at the time of the asking. I will use my recent experience with "You got a hair cut!" as an example;

Response 1: the sarcastic response - "Really? I didn't notice, your powers of observation astound me."

Response 2: the joking response - "Yeah, it came as a surprise to me to - I just woke up and it had all fallen out!"

Response 3: the I-don't-feel-like-talking response - "Yep."


Seriously, people, don't share your exclament! It's half an exclamation, half a statement, but it's all crap!


That's all for this time round, but don't worry, I have more... much, much more...


Cheers
Simon