Garoo

To begin a sen tence with “oh,” she said in an e-mail, is to focus on what you have just remem bered and your own con cerns. To begin with “so,” she said, draw ing on her study of a data base of recorded ordi nary con ver sa­tions, is to sig nal that one’s com ing words are cho sen for rel e vance to the listener.

Lots of interesting considerations on the growing practice of beginning a sentence with “so.” I just can’t believe that origin story.

(Quotation presented straight from the copy-and-paste. The author evidently uses invisible spaces or something to allow for hyphenation, which makes sense for an obvious language geek, but screws up when pasted elsewhere.)