CONTENTS FEATURE: Avoid these phrases to appear more sincere GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions FINDER'S FEE: Recommend a friend—and earn up to $500 FEATURE: You'll appear more sincere if you avoid these phrases      Mail-order shippers commonly stuff their packages with inflated plastic "bubble wrap," through which consumers have to wade to retrieve their merchandise.      Some people likewise tend to envelop their statements in inflated oratory, using pretentious phrases to appear eloquent. Such contrivances are often as glaringly and humorously evident as an ill-fitting toupee.      An interviewer discussing newspaper coverage of the Watergate scandal told former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, "With all due respect, your answers have always seemed to be an intentional dodge of the question."      The interviewer's professed respect for Bradlee rang hollow with the charge of furtive behavior.      In an on-line forum, a posting addressed to an Internet search engine executive stated, "With all due respect, your research is wrong, but more to the point, your principle is wrong."      Hmmm. One person accuses another of conducting flawed research based on a flawed concept, but claims to respect him or her nevertheless.      On another Internet forum, "Colleen" criticized "Evan" by writing, "With all due respect, your two sentences are riddled with contradictions, spelling errors, and specious logic."      Colleen says Evan contradicts himself, is a poor speller and is illogical, but wants him to believe that she respects him. If anything, that pretext casts a shadow over Colleen's credibility.      "Culturally, loans are kind of a weird concept," declared a university doctoral student who serves on a state government higher education commission. His comment was for a newspaper article about rising loan expenditures for college students. The article made no reference to ethnic or cultural distinctions among students.      Lacking relevance to the subject, the self-conscious adverb "culturally" did nothing more than contrast starkly with the vapid remainder of the sentence: "loans are kind of a weird concept." A student who lacks money for college fees can obtain funds, but has to repay the lender with interest following graduation. The lofty word "culturally" did not disguise the inexplicability of his characterization of lending as a "weird" concept.      He likely assimilated the word "culturally" into his speech in the academic environment, where it is used often randomly to rationalize droll statements.      In a hearing, the assistant secretary for technology policy at the U.S. Commerce Department declared, "Personally, I believe we need to find ways to help consumers protect themselves." Because the government official was declaring his belief, the word "personally" was superfluous. It served no purpose other than suggesting that the assistant secretary was unsure about his ability to project sincerity without amplifying reassurance.      Another frequently used idiomatic expression poses as a polite request, but is fundamentally insincere.      "What we currently face with the noise issue is a fragmentation, a balkanization, if you will, of our national air transportation system," the president of an aviation industry organization said in testimony before a Congressional subcommittee.      In that sentence, the speaker appears to ask permission to use the term "balkanization" in reference to federal aviation policy. It's a term that has been in general accepted use for more than 80 years. No permission is required to use it.      The phrase "if you will" is often nothing but feigned cordiality. On the surface, it poses as the parenthetical equivalent of a question: "will you pardon me?" or "will you indulge me the latitude to speak frankly with you?" It is not the polite request it appears to be, however, because the speaker rarely if ever pauses to give the listener the opportunity to decline permission.      In its most benign form, "if you will" needlessly complicates sentences. Here's an example of such a use: "What I think most interesting here in terms of health is that the magnitude of the stress hormone response to individual challenges, correlates, if you will, with the demand of these challenges on the individual's health."      The phrase does nothing but bog down that already ponderous sentence. In most uses, the phrase "if you will" is not deferential or polite; it's presumptuous.      "As it were" is another recurrent and often superfluous idiomatic expression.      The phrase appeared in an article that an employment counselor wrote to assist job applicants who claim that questions they were asked during the interview process violated employment laws. The counselor wrote, "you'll have to show that the failure-to-hire decision was based on your answer to the question, as it were, but you can get some help from your state's human rights department or the federal EEOC."      The expression "as it were" is a condensation of "as if it were so," a phrase indicating that a statement describes an imaginary or nonexistent condition. The counselor was referring not to wishful thinking, however, but rather to questions that were asked during a job interview. The phrase in this use was histrionic.      "As it were" is acceptable when discussing hypothetical conditions or when making metaphorical comparisons.      In a discussion about Internet security, an information technology expert said, "worms are pieces of code that can move themselves around, burrowing, as it were, through the Internet like a worm burrows through earth." That use of the phrase is appropriate because the reference to the propagation of electronic worms was figurative, just as the name "worm" is a metaphorical acknowledgment of its organic counterpart.      When you use such a phrase, make sure it serves a legitimate purpose in the sentence. Other phrases about which to be cautious include "so to speak," "having said that," "not unlike" and "if the truth be told."      If you will purge your writing and speech of needless repetition of these idiomatic phrases, your statements will be more succinct and you'll appear more sincere. GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions 1. "Fred" wrote:      "Your newsletter sparked this question. The mission statement of our school district is: "The Cherry Hill Schools [not the actual name], in partnership with our community, nurture and educate our children to prepare for responsible citizenship and success in life."      It has been suggested that it's better to change to: "In partnership with our community, the Cherry Hill Schools nurture and educate our children to prepare for responsible citizenship and success in life."      My questions are: 1) Is one version better than the other? If so, why? 2) Are either or both incorrect in some way? 3) In general, what do you think about either version?" The grammar coach replies:      Both of your example sentences about the Cherry Hill Schools are grammatically correct—but only if this is a statement being issued jointly by two or more individual school campuses. Both sentences can be distilled to the same subject-verb-object essential components: Cherry Hill Schools nurture and educate children ("in partnership with our community" functions as a parenthetical phrase in both sentences). In either of your example sentences, "Cherry Hill Schools" appears to be a compound subject (consisting of more than one school).      If, however, "Cherry Hill Schools" is regarded as the name of the organization (which might really be, for example, "Cherry Hill Schools Inc."), then the verbs should be changed to agree with a singular subject—thus, "Cherry Hill Schools (Inc.) nurtures and educates children." That would be appropriate if Cherry Hill has only one campus.      If the organization encompasses more than one campus, we suggest referring to it in this particular sentence only by the name Cherry Hill, while lowercasing "schools" as a way to emphasize the multiple-campus reference (e.g., "All three Cherry Hill schools nurture and educate...").      Of the two sentences, we favor your second example because the phrase "in partnership with our community" creates an unnecessary interruption in the flow of the first sentence. The phrase is superfluous in both sentences, because schools necessarily interact with the communities they serve. If anything, a separate paragraph should be devoted to the ways in which the schools invite the participation of the community.      We also suggest choosing a substitute for the noun "partnership," which is so overused that its meaning has become hollow. At EditPros, we believe its use should be confined to financial or personal relationship references. 2. Art M. wrote:      "In the sentence 'The bus operates every day except holidays,' 'every day' is an adverbial phrase. However, the word 'every' is an adjective, isn't it? Could you explain how an adjective introduces an adverbial phrase?" The grammar coach replies:      Although the word "every" is an adjective that in this sentence modifies the noun "day," their combination forms an adverbial phrase—"every day"—which modifies a verb. It describes when the bus operates, with one qualification that is indicated in the form of a prepositional phrase: "except holidays."      Are you perplexed by some aspect of grammar or word usage? Don't be shy! Ask the "grammar coach" at EditPros and we'll try to help—at no charge, just for the sport of it. 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