English is not difficult !

Off of.....

It does not exactly drive me crazy, but it causes a slight annoyance when people, who should know better, misuse the English language.

You may read it in Newspaper columns, in Books, and in Magazines. The living shall remain nameless, since I want to spare them this degrading embarrassment.

This is what you may read: “With his right hand he brushed the snow flakes off of her hair.”

or this: “She took the book off of the table.”

If they ever bothered to look up the word “off” in a dictionary, or just go to Google and ask: define:off, they would be able to read : “away from the place in question.”

In other words: “off” already means: away from, so there is no need, in fact it is inaccurate, to add the word “of”.

It would suffice if “he brushed the snow flakes off her hair.” or if she “took the book off the table.

When famous writers, like the late Thomas Wolf, as well as current Journalists, use the words “off of” it does not “drive me off of my mind,” but it gently annoys me.

There is another common, all too common, mistake made in the respective use of the words:

“waiting on” and “waiting for”. Particularly in conversational English, but also in the written form, people will say and write:  "Where were you? We've been waiting on you for hours.”

Of course they have not done such a thing! They have “been waiting for you.

The difference is quite simple to remember:

A waiter stands at the entrance of the restaurant, waiting for his guests.

Once they have arrived, taken their seats, then the waiter can start “waiting on his guests.”

Yeah, I know, why worry about little things like that?

Because it's the English Language which gets maltreated in a way it does not deserve.

That's what annoys me.

Bertstravels