3 ms·
He doesn't mention my pet peeve: the use of "So" to start a story or a talk, or to start every (spoken) paragraph. Other than that, the article was groovy, man
by mcswell 3y ago
He doesn't mention my pet peeve: the use of "So" to start a story or a talk, or to start every (spoken) paragraph.
Other than that, the article was groovy, man. And get off my lawn.
- theonething 3y agoI see this mostly online and strongly agree. I don't know why it rubs me so wrongly. Perhaps because (IMO) it's totally unnecessary and adds nothing except perhaps an air of pretentiousness.
- petercooper 3y agoIt has one good use case, IMO: when you want to mention someone on Twitter at the start of a tweet but without solely directing the tweet at them like a reply. For example: "So @otherperson built this cool thing..." Some people use a single "." at the start of a tweet to the same end but I think it looks hacky.
- Gordonjcp 3y ago[dead]
- arnsholt 3y agoAt a guess (this is kinda far away from my own linguistics education), it serves some kind of pragmatic/discourse function. Basically, it means something along the lines of "I am now going to tell a story", which is probably useful information for interlocutors to know how to modulate turn-taking when interacting with the speaker.
- groovy2shoes 3y agoYou're really going to hate Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, then.
- mcswell 3y agoYou're right. Translating OE 'Hwæt!' as "So." does make me grit my teeth.