So About This Ed Bott Character...

So Ed Bott was wondering why so many Microsoft people start their sentences with the word "so." "So" is a weird word. It tries to mean "apparently" and "greatly" and "thus" all at once. I actually had someone tell me that starting sentences with that word made me sound smarter. I laughed since I view it as an empty filler word -- a Twinkie snack cake in the English language. It's a verbal tic many Microsofties have that gets from one thought into another. It tries to make it sound like we were listening to the last thing you said. (Don't worry: we weren't.)

So why do we use this extra word? Probably because somebody smarter than us did it first and we're just copying them. Rather like the period where so many people ran around imitating a beer commercial by screaming, "Wazzup." You know: people who are smarter than we are.