“Right?” – The New Semi-Colon
10/14/2009
I do screencasts over on CSS-Tricks. About 40-60 minutes a pop of just me talking into a microphone. So if I have any annoying speech habits, I tend to hear about it. I’ve been ragged on a few times for saying “Right.”
Not “Right” as in “I made a right turn.”, but just tossed in causally like “So now now we have this result in Firefox. Right.” Also very common is to use it in between two sentences: “Internet Explorer will show the corners as squares. Right. And it’s not important.” The “Right” comes quickly, like a spoken semi-colon.
Now that I’ve been tuned into it, I’ve tried to stop saying it myself because I feel it’s slangy and unnecessary for clean communication. And now that I’m tuned into it, I hear it all the time. It’s a rather strange trend that it seems to me has just emerged in the last year or so.
Other notes:
- It’s not a replacement for “uhm”. People use both.
- It seems like this is fairly new (last six months or a year?)
- It seems like slang or a trend. A similar phenomenon is starting sentences with “I feel like…”, in really weird places. E.g. “I feel like last time we were here we played pool.”
- I noticed this heavily in all the speakers at An Event Apart Chicago 09. Every single speaker did it, except Andy Clarke and Simon Willison who were the two speakers who were not from the United States.
I notice it most often as a question mark. “Internet Explorer will show the corners as squares. Right?” More of a rhetorical question, too. It’s not like they wait for an answer.
Very common though. I figured it was a Chicago thing, right?
The “right” speech quirk isn’t half as annoying to me as when people start every response with “so.” It’s especially common among technology pundits, personalities, and whatnot. Drives me crazy.
It is funny because when I think of someone saying “Right” it is Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) talking Fawlty Towers episodes. The difference is they are using it at the beginning of sentences not at the end.
Basil Fawlty: Right, well I’ll go and have a lie down then. No I won’t; I’ll go and hit some guests.
What is ironic about that is you mentioned that Andy Clarke and Simon Willison were the only two you noticed who had not used ‘right’ and I know Andy is from Europe I believe but I am not sure about Simon.
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. =)
I hope you dont stop with the rights Chris. I personally really enjoy the way you speak in your screencasts and I even enjoy the rights. It breaks things up and in my head I answer you with my own right.
I have also seen people write that you are very soothing to listen to and this I have to agree with. Keep up your great work.
It’s not that noticeable at all in your screencasts. Certainly not as irritating as some English/Irish types saying “yeah?” where you say “right”. Makes people sound like sales reps trying to convince you that what they are saying is absolutely correct, yeah? :)
Change the right to a mmmm …
I have definitely noticed this myself, my grandfather called me on it, but it is by no means new. Perhaps where you live it’s new, but in Canada it’s been around for a few years now. No, we don’t say eh.
I think it’s fine. It’s what keeps you from sounding very stiff in your screencasts. It gives your voice a personality or “DNA.”
I have the same phenomenon with the word “like”. I hate hearing the word like between thoughts. Example: “and I was like ‘weird’?!?! Like how did it know that?” Right?
I don’t know… I’ve been noticing this for a few years now. Perhaps it’s becoming more widespread, though. My theory is it’s a weird USAmerican adaptation of the British phrase.
In any case, what I find more bizarre is communicating agreement by saying “I know, right?” This doesn’t bug me, though — I find it weirdly cool.