To me it connotes (intened or not) a sense of depth to the subject of the sentence. Well, at least when the sentence is describing a social or cultural subject. Sort of a historical depth device. We do something, we figure out which is the best way to do this something, and so we wind up doing something this way "as a rule".
Last edited by drigel; 09-09-2005 at 11:28 AM.
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