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A Campaign to End Awesome? NOOOO!!!!

Evan Hahn via Flickr Creative Commons

Produced by Avishay Artsy

We all have our linguistic pet peeves. I, for one, bristle when I hear “literally” to describe things that aren’t literal at all. I admit, I was an English major, and still grieve a little inside when people use “was” for the conditional tense instead of “were.” A painter and writer living in Los Angeles is campaigning against a far less arcane peeve: the overuse of “awesome”. 

John Tottenham works at a bookstore where he sells bumper stickers that have the word “awesome” pictured with red diagonal slash through it. Ouch.

Virginia Prescott is the Gracie Award-winning host of Word of Mouth, Civics 101, The 10-Minute Writers Workshop podcasts, and the Writers on A New England Stage series on New Hampshire Public Radio. Prior to joining NHPR, she was editor, producer, and director for NPR programs On Point and Here & Now, and directed interactive media for New York Public Radio.
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