One million percent

"X percent", where X > 100, is an expression that should be banished to the dustbin of English phraseology on the grounds that it's senseless and moronic. For a start, the phrase, in the context in which it is commonly used, is mathematically impossible. Expressions such as "I expect you to give 110%" or "When I go out there, I give 110%" are meant to get across the idea that you're expected to work very hard on a particular task, or that you're so devoted to a cause (say, trying to beat Roger Federer on the tennis court) that you will invest an extra-ordinary amount of effort to it. People who use this expression, however, are clearly not working very hard, for if they were, they would soon realize that you can only give a maximum of 100 parts out of 100, or 100 percent. I can imagine that the first time someone used the expression "I want you to give it 110%" it must have sounded quite eloquent and inspirational, but really, people should know better by now. Instead, they come up with even more absurd variations on this phrase: "I want you to give it 110%. No, 200%. No, 1000%!" Why not 10,000%, or 1 million percent? They're all equally impossible. Such people may think that they're expressing an increasing sense of fervour but, in fact, all they're doing is demonstrating a clear disdain for long division.

There are, of course, instances where "X percent", where X > 100, can be used validly, as in "The Zimbabwean economy has experienced rates of inflation of 1600%". But really, in that case, the problems lie elsewhere, because who can really operate in an economy in which the rate of inflation changes hourly? What you really want to know is the price of stuff on the black market.

So I'm inviting you to join my crusade to eradicate such stupid expressions from the English language. And no, I'm not gonna give this crusade 110%. I'm not even gonna give it 100%, because mathematics also dictates that if I did that, I wouldn't get anything else done. But maybe 0.005% would be an OK amount of effort to devote to this.