Editor’s note: Sybil Adelman Sage, one of the first women to break into television writing, is currently working on a fictitious memoir titled Diary of an Overachiever: Mensa Model Finishes First in NYC Marathon After Solving Economic Problems and Proposing Health Plan Praised by Democrats and Republicans Alike. 

A recent poll taken by Marist College to determine which words are most annoying in conversation showed that the winner — well, actually, the loser — getting 47% of the vote was "whatever" (pronounced WHAT-ev-err). It beat out "you know," which irritates 25% of the respondents, "it is what it is" (11%), "anyway" (7%) and "at the end of the day" (2%). Conspicuously missing for me was "like," a longtime favored verbal tic in the younger set.

Skip over this content.

I may be more prickly than the Marist respondents because my list is much longer. I’m agitated by the use of "frankly" and "quite frankly," typically inserted before the third clause of a construction and never introducing anything more revealing or shocking than what preceded it. Even more disturbing to me is the recurring use of "sort of," overwhelmingly the favorite of academics, pundits and writers on cable news networks as well as guests on NPR. "Sort of" seems to be the sophisticated version of "like," used to sound more informal with both, judging by their frequency of usage, being addictive.

At the risk of sounding Andy Rooneyish, what’s the deal with the nodding response, that repeated bobbing up and down of the head by the listener, followed by, "OK"? 

Have these all been introduced by one person with a huge social network? And what causes them to go viral? I propose we fight the national debt by creating a category known as "communication offenses" and fining the guilty.