We were delighted to receive the following email in response to our short piece about the new use of the word 'about'. It contains excellent examples of how the word is being used in everyday speech.

Hi Alison,

Loved your little article about "around" vs "about":
http://rightwords.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=30

And here I thought it was just me ... I've been working for a few weeks at a company where they use "around" like it's going out of fashion. Or coming in, or something like that ... :-)

Some real examples:

• "I have asked for pricing around the product" meaning "I have asked for the price of the product".
• "We need to make some assumptions around power supply capacity" meaning "We'll have to assume what the power supply capacity is".
• "To discuss installation requirements around the next generation model" meaning "To discuss installation requirements for the next generation model".
• "This should encompass a brief discussion around lessons learned" meaning "We should briefly discuss the lessons we learned".

As far as I can tell, it's partly people just being fuzzy with what they mean, but also partly they *want* to be fuzzy to soften what they're saying.

-Ben

Many thanks to Ben for sending the examples to us and allowing us to share them here.