“So, …” What?

For me the word has no content, it is a way to prime the listener. It's the on ramp to a sentence. "Get ready, I'm about to say something."

Try this experiment. Start your conversations without any pre-amble for a day. Just launch right into the topic. Count how many times you are asked to repeat yourself.

The next day try it by adding "Hey ..." or "So ..." and count again. When I did this there was a 50% decline in need for repeats. Note: Sample size was very small.

It's painfully obvious to me that I have this linguistic quirk, because my fiancé (who is not a computer geek) interjects with "buttons!" every time I start a sentence with "So...".

This is annoying, but possibly not as annoying as listening to someone who starts half their sentences with the same word.

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Thinking about it a little more, this habit is not specific to the computer / programming geek communities. I noticed others doing it around 2009-10, when I did almost no programming and didn't hang around with programmers. I mostly hung around with math and physics grad students. I suspect it is more generally a geek phenomenon, not specifically computer / programming geeks. Or possibly it's an even wider phenomenon than that - hard to say, since most of my friends are geeks of one sort or another.

It would be interesting to see if male and female geeks do it with similar frequencies. My guess would be that male geeks do it more often (based on the interpretation that starting a sentence with "So..." is a way of saying "I have given this topic serious thought" and the assumption that this is more likely something that a male geek will want to indicate than a female geek).

Beowulf starts with a "So", in the 1999 Seamus Heaney translation. He explains why in the foreword:

    'so' operates as an expression that obliterates all
    previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time
    functions as an exclamation calling for immediate
    attention.

https://books.google.com/books?id=mlg7VKOvsZAC&printsec=fron...

(click 'page' link to expand quoted area)

This is pretty much in-line with Steve Wilson's "Full-start" theory in the last paragraph.

I have a theory that the use of "so..." to prefix a statement serves two purposes for the speaker: gives them a few more seconds to form their statement, and it also creates a rhetorical beachhead, allowing them to stake a claim in the conversational airspace. This is particularly useful in environments where it can be difficult to get a word in edgewise when others are dominating the space. Unfortunately it becomes a bad habit used to start every other sentence.

With that said, I despise it as well, being the adult equivalent of the teen practice of scattering "like" throughout every conversation. What is even worse is when it works its way into the written form though, something you don't see with "like".

    So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
    and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
    We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns.

The first word of the first known English document is "so" in this style.

I have been working very hard to avoid doing this in the last few years, but it's hard when it's so pervasive among colleagues and other technical folks.

There was - I believe - a Tesla desert demo video with the engineers that came out late last year and I had to stop and count the number of sentences that started with "So," and I think it was 90%+ for a 15 minute video.

It may not drive everyone else nuts the way it does for me, but it's filler that I feel implies a condescending tone or at minimum a way to gently increase the perceived validity of the point and expertise of the speaker.

I realized reading this that I start many many sentences in French (my native tongue) with "Bon, " which is a strict equivalent. After a quick look at my IRC logs, it seems that a lot of my geek friends do the same. It's funny to see that this cultural trait is not specifically tied to the English language.

In classical Latin texts, I remember running into a lot of sentences which start with "itaque" (which means "so"). The habit hardly started recently.

It appears to be a "new information marker", which is a feature in quite a large number of the world's languages. English, despite the efforts of legions of fifth-grade English teachers, is a natural language, and its grammar changes, or at least tries new things, through time. Languages that aren't dead yet do that. We recently had a similar thread about the use of "no", which has become a sort of redirection/steering indicator.

Seems related to why I feel compelled to say "ummm" or "uhhh" before responding to a Subway employee asking me what I want on my sandwich. It just feels like I am being nicer and not barking out commands.

I've only noticed that I write "So..." at the beginning of some sentences, when writing a first draft. I delete it, of course, but I suspect it serves a purpose when speaking: When you're speaking, you need a quick way to divert others' attention to you. When you're writing, you already have their attention.

"Geeks like to pre­fix sen­tences, ques­tions and an­swers both, with “So, …” "

I didn't know it was something specific to geeks. As a non-native English speaker, I sometimes start my sentences with "so" (not sure where i picked this, maybe from literal translation of French "donc").

It comes across as aloof and detached, like the speaker is about to rattle off their pre-rehearsed response.

"So, I didn't really listen to your specific question and I don't really care about why you're asking it, and here's my cut and paste answer to this question ..."

Seamus Heaney began his translation of Beowulf with "So", rendering the Old English "Hwaet" in a more natural way than the usual archaic "Listen!", "Lo!", "Hark!" kind of thing. In the introductory note, he explains: "'so' operates as an expression that obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention." Far from being a chatty colloquialism, it is a solemn, weighty kind of "so" for Heaney.

Is possible that using "So, ..." as a "full start" is a defensive measure against being interrupted?

If I end a sentence and immediately tack on "So, ..." as I gather my next thoughts and prepare them for utterance, I'm signaling that I've got more to say to everyone who might interpret a "full stop" as an opportunity to interject with their own thoughts or a rebuttal.

For the last couple years I've consciously tried to remove "so" from writing as much as I can. It rarely seems to add anything to what I'm trying to say. Avoiding it in speech, though, has been a bit more difficult.

Harmless space-filler when spoken; annoying affectation when written.

Maybe on topic: ~ two month ago, /r/TheoryOfReddit/ had a thread about the effects of using "So" to introduce headlines: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2tuq64/redd...

I use "So..." on client calls an awful lot, usually to mean something like "I think we've talked enough about this now and I'm starting to find it boring", often followed by "just to recap..." and a précis of what we've decided, and finally an introduction to the next topic.

I haven't noticed anyone being irritated by it yet!

I find this quite annoying. Not everyone around me does it, but a whole lot of them do. It has a tone of condescension in my opinion.

I take it as the expression of a permanent quest for logic just hung up in the air "so" someone, including myself possibly picks it up. The meaning seems to be more "so that" than "that said, how's your day been". Or "if this is correct, then this means that..." rather than " OK, got it, what else?"

Harry Shearer of The Simpsons has a recurring segment on his radio show where he collects clips of people incapable of answering questions without "So, " couching.

In my book it's even less defensible in writing than in speech. You see it in countless reddit submission titles that aren't a response to or continuation from anything.

If you're into this line of thought, you might also enjoy "Well, actually..." ( http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html ).

I see a lot of speculation about what causes this, but if it is actually serving some sort of important linguistic purpose we would expect it to generalize beyond the English language, right? Do French geeks start their sentences with "Si, ..." (or equivalent)?

I think "So, ..." is mostly equivalent to "Well, ...". Both can be used as filler words or for signalling. It's just that in our community "So" is much more common.

Another "linguistic quirk" I've noticed among tech people is the use of the word 'right', used in the same way urban culture says "know what I'm saying".

This is the geek equivalent of corporate buzzwords. Lots of communities do this and it comes and goes in fads.

Listen to political commentators. For them, the trendy thing is to start sentences with "Look,..." For tech people giving talks on stages, it's looking and sounding as much like Steve Jobs as possible. Pilots, Chuck Yeager. In hip hop, it's "Son,..."

The unifying theme and the reason these things feel obnoxious is that they all attempt to put the speaker in an implicit position of superiority. It's unoriginal, trite, and boring. It's like using lots of swear words. It's what's happens when writers don't venture outside insular communities.

It's the real life equivalent of a synchronization header.

I attended a live performance of The Moth a few days ago. Of the five storytellers, four started their stories with "So, ...". It isn't just us geeks.

Is this a real phenomenon? I've never noticed it in my own speech patterns or those of my colleagues.

This doesn't seem bad to me. Ending a sentence with ", so..." does.

Ideally...

So, I submitted this year's ago, but sadly it didn't get picked up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2231932

:-)