The phrase "actual phrase" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when distinguishing between a specific phrase and other variations or interpretations of it.
Example: "In the context of our discussion, the actual phrase we need to focus on is 'time management skills.'"
Alternatives: "specific phrase" or "exact phrase".
Messed-up was not the actual phrase she used.
However, in some fairly minor correspondence of Mme. de Maintenon with her father confessor, she used the actual phrase: "Il y a une wide effreuse dans toutes les conditions humaines".
Under Blair and Brown, the actual phrase "the global race" was rarely used by British politicians, but it gradually became a favoured concept on the business pages of rightwing newspapers, especially the Times.
Whether this was Obama's actual phrase is not specified but note, jumpy readers, this is not a reference to the Middle East nor coded confirmation that Obama is Muslim.
The official Élysée Palace interpreter gave Mr. Chirac's words an even more ominous meaning in English, saying, "We can no longer agree to have the law of the strongest, the law of the jungle," although Mr. Chirac did not use that actual phrase.
Riesman's title is a publisher's invention -- the actual phrase appears nowhere in the book -- but it touched a nerve, the same nerve touched by Sloan Wilson's novel "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," say, or by Cheever's short stories about lonely commuters and anxious suburbanites, or for that matter by Douglas Sirk's movies, now back in vogue.
In some passages this freedom suggests a near-indifference to Brahms's actual phrasing.
Mr. Jarman once lamented that heterosexuals had so colonized and despoiled the screen — his actual phrasing was less polite — "that there's hardly room for us to kiss".
Moore provided this "postscript" to her "Selected Poems," in lieu of a dedication: Dedications imply giving, and we do not care to make a gift of what is insufficient; but in my immediate family there is one "who thinks in a particular way"; and I should like to add that where there is an effect of thought or pith in these pages, the thinking and often the actual phrases are hers.
His actual phrasing of the condition was somewhat involved.
Whether history will little note or long remember the actual phrases the new president uses in his speech is immaterial.
