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The only valid use of 'actually' that I can think of is to correct someone in a smug way ('actually: synonymous with 'you idiot''). Any other use seems to be filler. Am I missing some good uses for it?

"1 + 1 is 11" "acccctually, it's 2"



I had a coworker who used to use "in reality" in place of "actually", which is even worse. Usually he used it immediately prior to statements that needed quite a bit of justification. It used to drive me nuts. Eventually I realized that when he said, "in reality," he meant, "in my opinion," and from then on we got along much better.


ACTUALLY, I was simply dropping the "my" from "in my reality", since in so many situations you seemed to be inhabiting your own unique reality. :)




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