English as She is Spoke.

I chanced upon a radio programme yesterday, about various people’s pet hates of the ways the English language is abused. A favourite(?) dislike of many, “At this present moment in time,” was strangely missing, perhaps the producers thought that that particular example had been done to death. The Old Man, a technical author, would have described the expression as indicating the user’s inability to express themself in their mother tongue.
 
Mrs TD has a strong dislike of the word, “Cookie,” considering it to be an American word not appropriate in British society; I’ve not asked her if she objects to the use of the French word, “Biscuit” which means twice cooked, a manufacturing process that seems to have disappeared, along with the ship’s biscuit in the mid-19th century. However, I must admit that, when we went out to celebrate The Old Lady’s 90th birthday, the biscuits that the restaurant served with the cheese were made of stale bread that had been thinly sliced and toasted. For several years after, it was a practice that I followed.
 
My own dislike is the sort of nonsense that appeared on the front page of one of our national newspapers concerning the horrible murder attempt on Russian Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The third hand report that, “Medical tests indicate that their mental capacity may be compromised to an unknown degree” says absolutely nothing other than that the author doesn’t understand English. They might as well print, “Something may well happen tomorrow but, then again, it might not though, if it does, we have absolutely no idea how disastrous the consequences, whatever they are, will be.” At present, little is publicly known about the Skripals’ conditions or prognoses, other than that neither look good.