September 25th, 2007

Microspeak: Going forward

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The jargon phrase going forward has largely replaced the more mundane equivalent from now on. It appears that I’m not the only person who is bothered by this phrase. Sample usages:

  • We discussed the membership and timeframe for support team meetings going forward.
  • There will be change to the status reports going forward.
  • Going forward we will be doing this for every milestone.

Notice that the phrase going forward usually adds little to the sentence. You can delete it from all of the sentences above and nobody would notice a difference.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
MicrospeakOther

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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