For example, I use ‘honestly..’ when I’m about to say something that might not be 100% politically correct, or providing a solicited personal opinion that is unfavorable to the person I’m talking to (e.g., Him: “Do you like my new haircut?” Me: “Honestly.. no.”).

I used to work with a guy who overused the word ‘basically’. Basically, he used it as the first word of every sentence, and basically, sometimes even more frequently. So basically, that got pretty annoying. Basically, of course.

The situation was that I was answering a series of questions posed to me by a colleague about a project we were working on. I had been working on it longer, and was more familiar with the subject matter, and he was rather new to the project. In fact, I actually thought that I knew about everything there was to know about the subject matter and that the conversation was going to be annoying because I would be spending my time covering new ground.

However, after asking a couple of good questions to solidify his understanding of the subject, my colleague asked me a question that I didn’t have an answer for, because I had not previously considered the possibilities implied by his question. I may have even said “that’s a good question” specifically because I didn’t have an answer, and was buying time to think, as you suggested above.

But I don’t think this is so bad in this case. I’m basically saying something akin to “Wow, I thought that due to your limited exposure to the subject matter your questions were going to be routine and boring but instead you’ve surprised me by coming up with a question that a) I have not previously considered and b) is worth thinking about. Good job!” but without spelling all of that out in such detail. I’m sure the person I was speaking too got the jist of it from the context and my tone and so on.

As an aside, I noticed that I used another phrase that people may find redundant or annoying above when I started a sentence with “In fact, …”. Following the logic in the post and some of the comments, some people might suggest that my use of that qualifier suggests that unless my sentences are prefaced with that qualifier (or a similar one) that perhaps I am lying or wrong.

This is not the case, but rather I was just using it to try to keep my writing flowing nicely and indicate that the statement following “in fact” was a further refinement of the preceeding statement.

There are tons of “tics” that people use every day that could certainly be eliminated from their vocabulary or perhaps even the collective vocabulary, but written and verbal communication would get really boring really fast if you rip out all the unnecessary verbiage and force people to always get right to the point.

I realize that no one is advocating eliminating every colloquialism from ever situation, but where do you draw the line? I think that’s a good question.

In my former life as a reporter at a small town paper, the police used “Code Frank” over the police radio to refer to a dead body. So whenever I hear someone ask if they can be “frank” I always picture them dead.

That cured me of ever accidentally saying that!

When it is insincere, it is grating.