Pet peeve: “A lot of people say X” or similarly “A lot of people do Y”.
There’s a lot of people in general: ~330,000,000 in America alone. If you look hard enough, you can find *somebody* who will say/do almost literally anything.
If 1% of Americans believe something, that’s over 3 million believers. That’s both a huge number of people and hardly anybody, depending on your context.
I find this usually isn’t a problem in writing, where with minimally competent phrasing/structure the context is clear. During chit-chat or as used by the likes of Fox News, it can be (often purposely) obtuse.
I like us to try to be specific, is what I’m saying. 🙂
Originally a Twitter thread.