Posts tagged weather

Here’s what gets me.

Take a look at this.

The three most overused and unnecessary words you ever hear on television are “Take a look.”

Take a look at this.

First of all, except for blind people who only listen to the television set, we are already looking at it, and so people on television don’t have to tell us to look at it!

Take a look at this.

And for all we know, blind people might get offended by being reminded all the time that they can’t see anything whenever told to “take a look.”

Take a look at this.

Second of all, what does saying “Take a look” add that a simple “Look” doesn’t convey?

Take a look at this.

And third of all, the expression in either its shortest form of “Look,” its longer form of “Take a look,” or even its longer forms of “Take a look at this,” “Take a live look,” or “Taking a look at the temperatures” are all just a lazy way of introducing what the meteorologist, traffic reporter, or any other on-camera person wants to talk about next. Much worse is “take a listen.”

Take a look at this.

I first became aware of this lazy crutch of an expression back in the past when I would attend a presentation by a programmer I worked with, and he would mangle it by saying “Take and look” instead of “Take a look.”

Take a look at this.

For example, he would have a visual aid displayed before us and say something like, “If we take and look at the coding, we can see how the reverse Polish notation affects all the lines that follow.”

Take a look at this.

Then I began noticing that the weather girl on the local news that I watch every morning was saying “Take a look” much too often and even more much too unnecessarily.

Take a look at this.

Then I began to notice that the traffic reporter who would follow her weather report was using “Take a look” in his reports, too, and sometimes even saying “Take a look” twice in the same sentence.

Take a look at this.

And then I began to notice that national reporters on television and hosts on national talk shows were being lazy and using the expression, which, when you think about it, doesn’t add anything to the introduction of whatever follows that we are being told to look at.

Take a look at this.

Rather than saying “Take a look at these temperatures,” the weather girl could simply tell us that the temperature in Denver is a pleasant 65 degrees, compared with the temperatures in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.

Take a look at this.

Rather than saying “Take a look at the traffic map,” the traffic reporter could simply say “The traffic is heavy on the Interstate highway, so you might want to avoid it.”

Take a look at this.

And rather than saying “Take a look” when a national reporter or a talk-show host wants to introduce a piece of video footage, a simple description of what is going to be shown would suffice or even a simple “Play it” when the person might not know what is about to be shown.

Take a look at this.

Now that I have made you aware of this excessive and unnecessary overused expression on television, start counting the number of times you hear it said, and if you use social media to follow either the person you hear say it too much or the program on which you heard it said or even the network on which the person or program appears, write using either of the more popular social-network tools directly to the person, program, or network and encourage them to stop using that now offensive, unnecessary and overused expression.

Take a look at this.

Unfortunately, this might turn out to be a lost cause. Emphasis on good language and effective communication might have been lost ever since the Baby Boomers became a major influence in society in the Sixties.

Take a look at this.

I don’t watch religious shows on television, and so I don’t know if televangelists use the expression in their sermons or requests for money, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, because I am hearing the expression almost every time I turn on the television.

Take a look at this.

The same goes for politicians.

I rest my case.

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