Anand Girisharadas of the New York Times addresses a weighty issue that threatens to become a regular topic on Contrarian: use of conjunction "so" to begin a sentence. He notes a National Public Radio interview in which fully one quarter of the sentences began with "so." While Girisharadas dredges up a 14th century poem in which Chaucer begins a sentence with "so," he cites scholars who trace the recent boom in introductory so's to Silicon Valley, or perhaps to Microsoft employees. In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of...

01 June, 2010

Maritime Noon host Costas Halavrezos has interviewed hundreds of so-talkers: "So" is the name of a great Peter Gabriel album, but I've had precisely the same discussion with colleagues about its use as a preface to answers. I first noticed the "so" tic when interviewing American academics and bureaucrats, but it has clearly become an invasive species here, with increasing prevalence over the past year. (I should start assembling the digital detritus I've edited out of interviews: so, um, well, uh.) Previous discussion of the "so" tic here and here....

23 September, 2009

Nothing stirs up readers like English usage. Several have responded to my earlier post about a habit many interviewees have recently developed: beginning their answers with, "So...

23 September, 2009