You don't say

I have failed.

Sure, I've saved lives, ended war, salved pain, cured disease. It's not enough.

Such trifles! Especially compared to my utter embarrassing impotence to stop people from saying stupid things. More precisely, I can't prevent supposedly smart people from saying really dumb things that I guess are supposed to make them sound smart.

I couldn't then and I can't now. I've tried; no use.

This has become a virus unchecked, a hideous phenomenon continuing to worm its way onto our tongues. Before we know it, it will seem perfectly normal. People will say to one another, "This is an entirely reasonable way for us to talk, going forward."

If you don't recognize the point of stupidity in this comment, you have already been infected. You will be saying "going forward," going forward, for the rest of your days.

Going forward.

"You know" has nothing on "going forward." "You know" has become merely a sound, a marker, giving the speaker a chance to gather thoughts that had wandered off from that moment, and the listener time to rest and prepare to process the newly herded thoughts.

There was a time, perhaps, in which a speaker said, "You know," and the listener actually did know: The two proto-communicators were talking about something that was obvious to each other.

Over time it became, you know, a thing. Just filler, almost unheard. You know?

"Going forward" will go that route too. We'll become numb to it, just another new-age "uh."

It defies gravity and sense, persisting, for some lame reason, like sagging pants on teenage boys.

It's obvious what "going forward" means: Moving into the future. Duh!

The question is, do you need to say it?

The answer: No. Make that, Hell no!

Unless time travel has become a common means of transportation in the two years since I first heard this phrase get regular play — and no one informed me, you selfish pigs! — "going forward" need go nowhere.

If time travel does exist, we may need "going forward" to indicate which direction in time we are discussing. But — cancel that! — we already have verb tenses to perform that function. Never mind.

"Going forward" has one legitimate use, as in, "I'm going forward with the divorce." Or some such thing. One is proceeding with an action.

As misused now — widely, vastly, almost universally misused — "going forward" always accompanies, in the same sentence, an already useful time reference, such as a verb tense, to indicate events that will take place sometime after now. "Going forward" is implied! "Going forward" does not reinforce the meaning of future events already described in the sentence containing "going forward."

It is the fattiest of fats, needless.

Yet, there it remains.

Actually, I've only heard newspeople, and the people newspeople talk to, use "going forward." I've never heard an actual everyday non-newsmaker misuse "going forward." I suppose I might hear "going forward" from a boss or director at a business meeting; I'm glad I've never been invited to such a meeting.

I might hear it there, as I hear it on the news, because the misusers seem to think it adds heft to what they're saying. I wish the misusers would instead hear how stupid they sound. I wish we would tell them. It'll hurt their feelings at first, but they'll get over it and be better for our help.

Last week, I heard National Public Radio host Ari Shapiro use "going forward" twice in a 5-minute, 14-second report (about a woman who is black in Santa Monica, Calif., locked herself out of her apartment, hired a locksmith, and then was visited by 19 police officers, at least two with guns drawn, on a neighbor's tip that she was breaking into her own apartment; an interesting story, as are online comments — but I digress).

Shapiro used two "going forwards" 1 minute and 7 seconds apart, to make the same point:

You write that this has changed your relationship with police going forward. You see police officers and feel differently than you used to. Tell us more about that.

and then:

here's a police interaction that has kind of forever changed your attitude towards law enforcement going forward.

Remove "going forward" from each instance, and the meaning of the sentences change not one iota. "Going forward" goes nowhere, takes us nowhere, wastes a whole second of our life and our respect for the speaker. Or should, anyway.

Shapiro also says "towards," but don't get me started about that misuse.

Phrases like that just crop up in the effervescence that is our language, a tiny bit of the new language being good. Phrases get started by someone who thinks it's clever, whom other people think are clever, and use it for their own, however stupid it is.

On ESPN, the sports network, hosts still say, after all these years, "Let us welcome in our college football analyst," or "We welcome you in to SportsCenter.®™" Why in? Why not just welcome? Do they ever welcome out guests? Maybe "welcome over" if the guest is out of camera range, but in is out. Memo to ESPN and all the regional wannabe sports talk shows inspired by ESPN: Stop it.

Last week after the terrorist attacks in Paris, one of their correspondents kept talking about fears of a "follow-on" attack, and the show host took up the phrase. Yeah, it's a real phrase, as in: it's in dictionaries. But why talk like the assistant junior head chief of security, where jargon just can't be helped? Why not use regular-person words, easily understandable time-tested words such as "subsequent" or "second" or "another?"

Following on, you may notice newspeople like to say things such as "they have optics on the target" rather than, "they're watching the target," because they're impressed by some spokesman for whom talking in a normal way is not high priority, and their strange talk rubs off. Newspeople and those they interview also like to say they have "metrics," when they mean measurements or data.

Politicians and political analysts like to start sentences with, "Look," by which I infer, "I know what's what, even if you and I know I'm telling a lie."

More and more people on the news begin answers to questions with, "So …" Someone said interviewed scientists are more likely to do this, but I have no way of knowing. I do hear it more and more, and it always sounds like the speaker is in the middle of a story and forgot to tell us the first half.

My wife grates at newspeople who say "expecially" instead of "especially."

Make it stop. 

Stop, especially, saying "going forward," if that is your habit. It's a bad habit and you need help. No one is impressed by your use of it, or shouldn't be, anyway. Unless you practice time travel; but again, verb tenses! Already available! Brush up on your conjugations. Save yourself valuable seconds you could spend mucking about in the 23rd Century or preempting the Black Plague.

I fear the worst, though. Right as I write this, NPR reports the story of Salt Lake City's first openly gay (is this phrase, too, overused?) mayor, presiding in a city where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has its headquarters. The Mormon Church earlier this month announced a policy that adult Mormons in same-sex relationships and marriages face disciplinary action from the church, and some children of same-sex couples in the church may not be able to be baptized there.

Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who is not Mormon, said she plans to meet with Mormon Church leaders about church policy and diversity in the city.

The NPR show host read a statement from a spokesperson for the Mormon Church:

"We look forward to working closely with Mayor Biskupski and her administration, going forward."

See? Now it's canon. With two "forwards" in one sentence, you really can't get much more forward thinking than that.

So it goes

So, "so" is the new "you know," I guess.

So close to being a replacement for "uh" or "um," except for its quirky new useless use.

So, lately I've heard more and more people begin sentences with the word "so."

So, usually these sentences are explanations. So, most often they're spoken by professionals in some discipline, explaining things to reporters on National Public Radio. So, sue me: I don't get around much anymore.

So, (a correct use of "so," by the way, meaning "for example"), a reporter may ask a science expert, "What allows the cuttlefish to hide by mimicking the texture of its surroundings?" and the expert more and more begins the answer: "So, we've found certain receptors within the skin that send signals to the cuttlefish's blah blah blah …"

"So" is so (another correct use, as an adverb to qualify this next word) superfluous in this sentence. So, "We've found certain receptors" is a mighty fine way to begin a sentence, so why not leave out "So?"

So, what's going on?

So, my theory is that some condescending expert sometime in the last year — speaking to the news media, no doubt — began a sentence thusly to mean, "Let me walk you through this, pea-brained reporter who keeps asking such childish questions."

So it caught on, because other experts heard other experts using it, and decided it must be the norm because they're all so smart.

"So" is really "um," with a master's degree, a tonal cue to help someone release the clutch and engage the brain and start talking. So that's all.

So, the preferred use of "so" in the cuttlefish case would be as a conjunction, a "therefore," an "as a result:" "The cuttlefish can't hide by color alone, so over time the cuttlefish evolved to have sensors and sensitive muscle fibers to blah blah blah …"

So it's akin to one of the other new abominations of English by people who should know better, namely "going forward," which is a stupid phrase that smart people use to mean the future, when verb tenses already do that job, have been doing the job for centuries. So just about every NPR and ESPN anchor, for example, uses this phrase, because they're all so smart and time is a variable concept in news and sports, apparently.

"So" is a distant relative to the horrendous "look," used by self-described experts, namely politicians and political analysts. So, "look" means, "I know the truth, even if I don't, even if it isn't, and I will explain it to you because only I have the capacity to know this stuff until I tell you." So, whenever you hear a windbag begin a sentence with "so," stop listening.

"So" is also a screenwriter's crutch, the word one character says when in an awkward conversation and none of the partners know or like one another. "So" is not used in such real-life settings.

So I forgive the use of "so" which I blame on the TV comedy "Friends," in which characters began saying things like, "I'm so not going there,"  or "I so need a vacation," using "so" as emphasis. "So" in this case became a tag for "I'm so young and hip," the corollary being, "You are not young and hip when you don't say "so" this way."

So, I don't hear "so" so much in other real-life conversations, to begin sentences — just enough to convince me it's spilling out of nerd-pop media and into the streets. So keep an ear out for it.

So freakin' annoying!

Very bad words

Fiscal cliff, my ass!

That wasn't the worst phrase of 2012, not by a flying leap.

Sure, we lemmings declared it the worst — while we were also filling out our 10-best lists, noting notable deaths, celebrating Christmas and fulfilling all the other rituals for kissing off the dying year.

We had a terrible choice of words to choose from.

"Fiscal cliff" is truly bad — politically charged, inaccurate, uttered ad nauseam  — but not the worst.

Nor is "artisanal," a made-up marketing word appearing suddenly on cheeses and breads and lunchmeats this year. It's meant to evoke the sentiment, "Buy the damn thing, already!"

We doubled up on "double down" each time Mitt Romney put his foot in his mouth and refused to remove it.

Most of the other bad words of 2012 escaped my notice because I don't do social media — "meh," "cray" (for crazy), "YOLO" (short for "you only live once"), "hashtag," "jeah" (Ryan Lochte's contribution to language, apparently).

But these are wimpy one-offs, merely annoying mosquitoes compared to the chronic torment of the worst phrase of 2012 or any other year:

Going forward.

If this phrase had its own slogan, it would be, "The really dumb phrase that people use because they think it makes them sound really smart."®™

Which it doesn't.

Not long ago it meant something, as in:

The bus is going forward. (The bus is rolling in a forward direction!)

or

She is going forward with the plan. (She is carrying out the plan!)

See? Good, plain sense.

No more.

Now people use the stupidest phrase ever this way.

"How will the Giants fare going forward?"

or

"What is the Republican strategy going forward?"

or

"Going forward, how will she plea?"

Completely. Meaningless.

Here are the same sentences without: "How will the Giants fare?" "What is the Republican strategy?" "How will she plea?"

Did they change with going forward's removal? They did not! Why?

(1) Someone did us the favor of inventing verb tenses, which tell us when events took place in the past, are happening now, or will happen. Thank you, prescient inventors, for saving us the trouble of having to say going forward when we talk of future events!

(2) Time (as we know and use it) moves in one direction: Forward. We already move forward! We don't have to say so all the time! People know this!

(I don't discount that in my lifetime some kid will roll out of MIT or Yale or Heald College with a $1.99 app that enables easy time travel; until that happens, we won't need going forward to distinguish when and where we're going. We're going forward.)

Stupid and redundant and dumb.

Still, TV and radio pundits say it many times daily, maybe moreso in sports broadcasting. Listen closely next time. Even the otherwise erudite National Public Radio personalities and guest experts say it every day. I bet you heard it six times at work yesterday.

It probably started when someone supposedly smart said it, and admirers copied it because that's how smart people talk — like dumb people. Now it's become the office-speak version of "y'know," and, like, "like."

You can stop it.

Call people out when they use it; it's OK to tell them it's the stupidest phrase ever; they need to know. Recommend they repeat themselves but substitute going backward or going sideways, just to humiliate them. Kick the habit if you're the one annoying the hell out of your office mates; use "at the end of the day" as your linguistic pacifier instead; it's annoying too, but at least it means something ("in the end" or "at the end of the process").

Invent time travel and give going forward meaning.

You owe it to children and the English language. And to physics.

Going forward, I hope for the best. Wait, I'm already going forward.