Adding to the discussion of superfluous words (Letters, 19 June), readers might like to know that my MA thesis many years ago had a section on the use of the word “so” in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which it is used 52 times, about five times less frequently than in his other plays. This is because it was being used as a speech act, or a word that does rather than says something. I thought that it was deployed mostly when Prospero was doing something magic.
Teresa Rodrigues
Crediton, Devon
• “Stunning” has been appropriated almost exclusively by estate agents to misdescribe anything from a bog-standard semi to a view over a car park. Possessed by groupthink, the media and businesses no longer contact anyone – they “reach out”. And don’t get me started on “going forward” replacing “in future”.
Dave Young
St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex
