A new annoying thing that speakers are doing

I am editing a client's copy; it is undoubtedly smart, informative stuff - and the opening word for the document is 'so'. Their first word, and my first cut. 

I've noticed this habit is creeping in to communications, and I noticed it first in myself, so trust me when I say that I am no grammar Nazi; if I were, I’d stay home and keep quiet. None of us communicates perfectly, and here are two quotes I've held close:

'What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.'

Wittgenstein

'There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems... They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.'

Stephen Fry

On the other hand, if you want to avoid being misunderstood to the best of your abilities, it's sometimes helpful to know your Azawakh from your shiatzu. Sometimes it’s evident that people don’t know what they are actually saying: 'I couldn't care less' has evolved (for some) into 'I could care less.' The meaning in the speaker’s head is the same, though the opposite thought is being expressed. This irritates some people, but then most of us describe the single garment we wear on our legs as a 'pair' of trousers. Baffling, but proof that words have only a loose grip on the things they’re supposed to be describing.

So why do we do it? (Whoops.)

1. Filler words are a sign of nervousness...

Why do we use filler words at all? I made a study of how we um and er in public speaking: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-stop-saying-er-field-research-ian-hawkins/

'So' at the start of a sentence has all the hallmarks of a filler word: it can be cut without any hardship, people use it without thinking, it feels like a time-buyer, a flag in the ground: 'I am about to start speaking,' says 'so', disposably, like the burn card in a poker game.  

2. ...which don't translate well into written copy

A good measure of readability for written copy is to compare it against spoken speech. But they are not the same thing: when we speak we have all the added tools of gesture, facial expression, tone etc to add context - context which may make our speech the precise opposite of the words as presented at face value. For example, 'I will not be going to the beach' on the page looks unequivocal. If you say it with a wink as you're walking to the car with a surfboard under your arm, it's an obvious joke. Non-British English speakers nod in agreement when I point out that the English seldom mean anything like the surface meaning of the words they speak.

We wouldn't, er, put an um into a written sentence, y'know? But we don't think of 'so' in the same terms as an 'erm' - and it creeps in. See also: 'basically' – and all the other filler words that are deluded in thinking they’re not filler words because they’re proper words.

Be warned: once you’re down the rabbit hole on this, you can go mad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRkE_Gv6ALM&t=9s

3. Informality?

'So' sounds like a pickup in the middle of a conversation, or the end product of a thought process: '(We've got too many apples, and some friends are coming over this afternoon,) so I thought I'd make an apple cake.'

Maybe this is why we're drifting into the redundant 'so': we swim in synonyms. For me 'so' is a synonym for 'therefore' and it feels an odd way to open a paragraph. What it does suggest is that a conclusion has been reached: I'm not making an apple cake for the kicks, there is reason behind my purposeful march towards the kitchen. Only one conclusion can be drawn…

4. Modern life is making us all into horrible people

We are all becoming more and more self centred. It is literally unimaginable to us that our private thoughts are not both a) obvious and b) eminently reasonable that we edit out the unnecessary and present our conclusions as final. ‘(The earth is flat, vaccines cause autism) so, you can’t trust the government.’

Headlines in a certain sector of the press have begun to do something similar with the word ‘now’ to imply that this news item (whatever it is) is just the latest in a long line of crazy or wrong decisions without having to say what these might be: ‘(Climate change doesn’t exist and is a conspiracy to raise taxes) now they’re banning YOUR holiday!’

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So what am I saying (whoops again)? Stephen Fry is right, the more we police our language, the less fun it becomes. But communication is never about one person; the writer needs a reader. And if the writer doesn't care about the reader, they don't really have a relationship - or at least, not a relationship that the reader doesn't feel bad about stepping out of. It's fine for the writer to say that they'll write as they speak, and that when they use the work 'blue' they mean the word 'pink' but you only have yourself to blame when your interior designer paints the bathroom the wrong colour. 

If as a writer, you cannot adapt your style to the intended reader, you have a problem. In real life, people who write technical manuals for nuclear submarines also talk to their newborn children, and they most likely do not use the same sentence structure and vocabulary to achieve both jobs.

My grandmother's least favourite verbal ticks were in radio interviews - when people would say 'absolutely' rather than 'yes' or 'no, no, no' when they meant 'no'. I am guilty of both of these - what are the verbal ticks that you'd most like to be rid of? (Double points awarded for the stupid things you say yourself, this isn't the language police.)