Good thoughts from the Harvard Business Review blog on spoken communication:
Qualifying words lessen the importance and the value of the nouns and verbs they accompany. Those nouns and verbs represent the products, services, and actions of the business — the family jewels — that the presenter is pitching, and a presenter should not diminish their worth. Parents do not describe their children as “sort of cute.”
Instead, follow the advice of the Strunk and White classic, The Elements of Style: “Use definite, specific, concrete language.” To accomplish this you must diligently delete meaningless words and phrases from your speech, a task easier said than done due to their pervasiveness.
