Actually

You are about to endure a very random rant. The word "actually" has been bothering me the past few days. The definition of actually is: in fact; in reality; used to express surprise. When someone puts the word actually into a sentence, it tells the other person that they are shocked. An example of this happened yesterday. My mom gave me a book to read and she wanted me to write a review so she could post it on the website that she writes reviews for. After reading my review she said, "This is actually pretty good." I interpret that to mean, "I'm shocked you wrote a great review. I didn't expect that out of you." She did it again today. "You are actually getting better in SongPop." She means, "I can't believe how much you are improving in SongPop." I noticed the word "actually" was used in Chopped yesterday, too. "This is actually pretty good." The judge meant, "I didn't expect you to make such a good meal." The moral of this completely random and useless rant is to choose your words wisely. People definitely interpret words differently than you might want them to. On that note, no, I am not mad that my mom said actually. I won't get made when people use the word. It was just an observation I made today and I actually remembered to write a blog post about it!