This whole convo is reminiscent of the "filler world" phenomenon - e.g. especially if I'm feeling relaxed, I'll say "Like" a lot (I lived in CA for a decade, grew up/went to school in Boston) and I've seen that especially people from Texas will get really hung up on it (ok, big state, like CA, I have double digit individual data on this from a skew of states) and I thought about applying an audio plugin to filter out my "likes" as these convos were in a video game. I'm not sure if I'm right about the "Texas doesn't like the CA slang" hypothesis, but I find it fascinating that people get so hung up on it and expect me to adhere to their expectation of how I should behave. I'm just saying "like" instead of "filler word" of "empty air" - the later of which the critics advocated for. I guess they might just be advocating for open air for others, and I'm overthinking the whole thing.

Well, I think that starting a sentence with “So” is pretty natural and common. Indeed:

> So it’s often worth at least contemplating such feedback, if you care about being taken seriously.

(Maybe you were intending to joke here, but it still came off as “pretty natural.”)

I think it depends a lot on your target audience.

Engineers (at least in my locality in California) tend to prefer direct, casual language and to a great degree even have a grudge against overuse of formal language and formalities. We love things that speak to us in our day to day language.

I suppose if you're pitching a product to lawyers, then sure, bring on the notwithstanding hitherto aforementioned gibberish and I'm sure they'll feel right at home thereinafter. :)