How you say it

Writing daily gives me an opportunity to be more conscious of my style and my habits.

I tend to use lots of commas, ellipses, and dashes in order to hint at how I’d say the text aloud.

I’ve noticed that some phrases are frequent flyers too, like the words “of course”. I typically say “of course” when I mean, “this may be obvious, but it’s worth pointing out explicitly.”

There’s some irony here. In a literal sense, “of course” means “of the ordinary course of events” or “according to the expected program or path”. Meanwhile, I’m more inclined to encourage us to step off the path — to be off course — or at least to consider how we can create change by flirting with what’s near the guardrail, or even beyond it.