Microsoft speak

So, quite a few people have been raising the issue around the use of the word ‘so’ by people at Microsoft, so I just wanted to pick up on that thread and in fact extend that out to discuss our taxonomies and usage of the English language in general, at Microsoft, right.

 

So, here’s the thing: do I use the word ‘so’ a little to start a sentence? Absolutely! Do I also like to ask a rhetorical question to make a point? You bet. So, can I combine both techniques into one.? Bingo. Right, so...Now, there, in fact just now, we used an example of a sequence of at least 3 words that acted as delaminater from one thought to the next.

 

OK, so there is ‘let me play that back to so I’m sure I got you right’ process in order to make sure I understood you correctly, there is the ‘let me turn that around a second’ phrase as a precursor to me disagreeing with you, and so, last and probably least in this problem-slash-solution set is the ‘thanks - that is really great feedback’ that transforms cleanly to ‘go away’.

 

Now, occasionally I will start a sentence with ‘now’ - not quite going to the max in the ‘global find and replace’ scenario. i.e. So, ‘so’ for ‘now’ but we will happily swap ‘I’ for ‘we’. Flip the bits, so to speak. Which is kind of interesting.

 

So, how do we operationalise this? Well, that is a pretty good question. Let’s forget for the moment that by embracing and extending standards-based nomclatures to be used in new, and probably inappropriate scenarios, we are keeping our work-peers on their toes. So let’s forget that. You know, we need that too. So go wac-wac acronyms. Or dub-dub-dub-wac-same. https, right.

 

You know, for time to time I’ll get pushback that is recurring: “I’m not completely sure I can support you on this. You need to re-assign the resource, get level one go-ahead and come back with the mandate in place. Leverage, right? Once the standard process is run - it’s on the share - the next v-dot of the deck is rtw’d on next cycle, wb 21st, please review and loop back. I’ll get the notification, then I can action this and get you resolution on this piece, hopefully at runtime.”