Needless to say...

"Is a harmless enough expression, but it often draws attention to the fact that you really didn't need to say it."

This one is for my dad who will often start a conversation by saying, "needless to say..." and then he'll stop talking. You say, "what?" and he'll say, "I don't need to say it."

So Stephanie has been reading in Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting it Right. It has a bunch of interesting words and phrases. A lot of which have just become common to say in the good ol' American English language.