Right?

People who know these things say that interjecting the word "right" in our speech is called using a "filler word."

A lot of people do this. And it can backfire. I think they do it in the first place to seem authoritative or polished. But when they do it while speaking to someone such as I, who thinks everything through way too deeply, it slows down the conversation, because I answer them!

If you say to me, "The Orioles are a baseball team, and for many years they did not do very well, but for the past several seasons they have been near to or at the top of the standings in the American League East, right?"

I'll say, "Yes, that's right."

And you'll say, "Yeah, they're great, you know what I'm saying?"

And I will say, "I do know what you're saying, so please just say it without all the excess verbiage."

Using a rhetorical crutch like this can really distract from the message one seeks to share. This really hit home when I was watching the morning news the other day, and a child psychologist (actually a grown woman) was talking about the ways to get a child off to a good start in the new school year. And her advice was great! As someone who was inevitably the first kid in any class to be sentenced to detention, I know the difference.

But I wonder how many parents got her message, because - I am not exaggerating - she inserted "right?" in virtually every sentence. And after a while, I think that bespeaks not confidence or polish, but the exact opposite? It's as if the speaker keeps asking, "Am I right about this? Should I go on?"

Take this simple test: Here is William Shakespeare's immortal Sonnet 116 in its original form:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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And now let's muck it up with nonsense:

 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, right? love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds, right?

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark, you know what I'm saying?

That looks on tempests and is never shaken, right;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. You follow me?

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come, right?

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved. You know?

That distant rumble you just heard was old Willie rolling over in his grave. We should use geometry in speaking, that old rule about a straight line being the shortest way to get from point A to point B. Saying more with fewer words and verbal crutches is that straight line.

And that's all I have to say.