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“It turns out” « the jsomers.net blog

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"It turns out" became a favorite phrase of mine sometime in mid 2006, which, it turns out, was just about the time that I first started tearing through Paul Graham essays. Coincidence? I think not. It's not that pg is a particularly heavy user of the phrase---I counted just 46 unique instances in a simple search of his site---but that he knows how to use it. He works it, gets mileage out of it, in a way that other writers don't. That probably sounds like a compliment. But it turns out that "it turns out" does the sort of work, for a writer, that a writer should be doing himself. So to say that someone uses the phrase particularly well is really just an underhanded way of saying that they're particularly good at being lazy. Let me explain what I mean. Suppose that I walk into a new deli expecting to get a sandwich with roast beef, but that when I place my order, the person working the counter says that they don't have roast beef. If I were to relay this little disappointment to my frien

&#8220;It turns out&#8221; << the jsomers.net blog the jsomers.net blog. About Subscribe Read More Contact me &#8220;It turns out&#8221; by James Somers , February 28, 2010 "It turns out" became a favorite phrase of mine sometime in mid 2006, which, it turns out, was just about the time that I first started tearing through Paul Graham essays . Coincidence? I think not. It's not that pg is a particularly heavy user of the phrase---I counted just 46 unique instances in a simple search of his site---but that he knows how to use it. He works it, gets mileage out of it, in a way that other writers

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