Constance L. Lieber

I am still in a grammar and word state of mind. There is one phrase that must have been first coined by a politician who had time to kill and wanted to sound even more bombastic than usual — as if that were necessary!

The phrase is “at this point in time.” Five words. Seventeen letters and five spaces. It is really too unfortunate that this has entered our general speech. English has an elegant, short (only three letters) word that does the same task:

NOW!

Yes, I am shouting. We could all save our breath and our time (at whichever point we find ourselves) by using “now.”