English Help Online's Blog

Hello again.

I know it’s been a very long time since my last post, but I’ve decided to try to start writing my English teaching blog again. I won’t be able to write as often as I did in the past but I will try to update it about twice a month or so.

For the first lesson back, I want to teach you the expression “needless to say”. We use it when we want to say that something is so obvious, it’s not necessary to say it, but we will say it anyway. Here are some example sentences using it.

My friend just got engaged to the man she loves so, needless to say, she’s very happy.

Bill just punched the boss in the face. Needless to say, he was fired.

The shoes that the clerk showed me were purple and too small so, needless to say, I didn’t buy them.

I spent all day carrying boxes up to the fifth floor. Needless to say, I’m exhausted.

As you can see from my examples, we either put “needless to say” after the word “so” or at the beginning of a second sentence after explaining the situation in a first sentence. If we use it after “so”, we put commas around the expression as a way to indicate that it’s additional information and is not necessary for the sentence to make sense.

Generally speaking, we don’t use the word “needless” except in this expression, especially when talking about personal situations. Therefore, we don’t say something like, “The extra time is needless”. This sounds very strange. Instead, we say, “I don’t need the extra time.” or “The extra time isn’t necessary.”

I hope everyone has a very happy 2014!