LET'S face it: Bureaucrats, lawyers, and not just a few academicians use a lot of officious stock phrases in both their written and spoken communication, among them 'by virtue of,' 'with reference to,' 'in connection with,' 'with regard to,' 'in order to,' 'with respect to,' 'in line with,' and — perhaps the most irksome of them all — 'this is to inform you that' for both bad and good news and everything in between. These phrases make their English sound so highhanded — even somewhat threatening — but we learn to tolerate them because they are actually part of their professional jargon.

The problem, though, is that owing to our repeated exposure to them, these stock phrases creep into our own writing and speech. They make us sound like bureaucrats, lawyers, and academicians ourselves, although we are not. Our English becomes contrived not only in our day-to-day conversations with friends and coworkers but also in our job applications and office memos, letters, and reports.