Clutter is the laborious phrase which has pushed out the short word that means the same thing. These locutions are a drag on energy and momentum. Even before John Dean gave us “at this point in time,” people had stopped saying “now.” They were saying “at the present time,” or “currently,” or “presently” (which means
“soon”). Yet the idea can always be expressed by “now” to mean the immediate moment (“Now I can see him”), or by “today” to mean the historical present
(“Today prices are high”), or simply by the verb “to be” (“It is raining”). There is no need to say, “At the present time we are experiencing precipitation.”
