A few days ago, I received back a proof that had a little tutorial at the bottom. It said:
“Never use ‘in fact’ or ‘the fact is’ – they are redundant. Either something is a fact or it isn’t.”
Goodness, every day is a school day.
The original sentence said:
“Pay-as-you-go mobile phones are extremely popular. In fact, more than 50% of our readers have one.”
And my anonymous tutor had changed this to:
“Pay-as-you-go mobile phones are extremely popular and more than 50% of our readers have one.”
Bearing in mind that this is a chatty, informal and consumer-facing magazine and that the 50% figure is surprisingly high, I think the original sentence has more impact and has actually been made duller by the change.
However, he’s not alone. The Times style guide says:
fact that almost always an unnecessary circumlocution, so avoid (eg, “owing to the fact that” means because). See verbosity
in fact can, in fact, almost invariably be omitted
The Guardian style guide doesn’t have any entries that I can find.
The episode got me thinking. “The sentence has actually been made duller”? Surely any ban on “in fact” or “the fact is” should also include “actually”, because similarly, it doesn’t have much of a meaning. But on that day I had used just that word in a feature about sales skullduggery.
My sentence was:
“In each case the sale price was contrasted with a ‘usual’ price that was never actually available.”
And although “actually” adds little in terms of meaning or content, I feel quite strongly that without it the sentence would be weaker.
To me it is a question of tone of voice. This magazine has quite a pally style. We abbreviate it’s, there’s, you’ve, for example. And in the case of these two features, there wasn’t much pressure on word count. In other words, surprise surprise, I think I was right to use “in fact” and “actually” in these cases. However, I doubt I would use either in a hard-hitting and tight news story for a newspaper.
So what does “actually” actually mean? My feeling is that it marks the surprising part of the sentence – the juicy or meaty bit, or the scandal. It’s also useful to signal a contradiction of the reader’s expectation – “Those who religiously eat turnips every day may be surprised to hear that they are actually bad for the nerves”. I put the question to a friend, as I am wont to do, and after some consideration he proclaimed it was the bit of the sentence that you accompany with a jabbing finger. “I can’t believe you actually [jab] did that!”
In my opinion, these words and phrases are far from redundant and imposing a “never use” rule is just miserable. It’s a matter of knowing when to use them - and when not to. As a matter of fact, I’m actually rather reticent to give them up.
