Not the commentators themselves. They don’t bug me. Well, they do, but that isn’t my point here. I’m bugged by the word commentator.
I mean, do we really need this word? I know commentator is a real word, but I think in most cases it could be replaced by the much simpler commenter. It sounds like it has an extra syllable in there. At least a commenter can comment on something. Can a commentator commentate? That sounds even more awkward.
This wouldn’t normally bug me so much that I would write about it, but every afternoon on my drive home, our local talk radio station invites me to be a ‘listener commentator.’ In radio, where time is money, why waste time on an extra syllable when ‘commenter’ will do just as well?
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. What words bug you?
