Prime Ministers Bertie Ahern of Ireland and Tony Blair of Britain, having met six times in the last four days, are sounding carefully optimistic about the proposal that they thrashed out.
She asked all the expected questions and he gave all the carefully rehearsed answers, sounding strikingly similar to what I had heard him say when he was interviewed elsewhere the day before.
These can be harder to catch, as they are often phrased carefully to avoid sounding directly theistic, and the exact presentation mutates constantly.
"Son of God," on the other hand, continually falls prey to starchy, even sophomoric literalism, with Jesus's teachings sounding like carefully rehearsed speeches and his miracles coming off like magic stunts.
Facebook Dating has been carefully positioned to avoid sounding like a sex app.
What I found most troubling, as a compulsive tinkerer, was the constant use of the word for as a conjunction, which gives the text a repetitive quality: "Laurie did not see, for he was carefully skating along the shore, sounding the ice, for a warm spell had preceded the cold snap".
'Drive carefully,' " she said, trying to impersonate, but sounding only a little less like herself.
He is given credit too for reacting carefully to the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, sounding tough at home but ensuring international aid kept flowing to avoid a humanitarian crisis.
Yes, his potential constituency is limited to those who see to their own fiscal affairs – and at the risk of sounding hopelessly po-faced, people on the left should arguably think carefully before threatening to withhold their taxes.
But in his refusal to look carefully at the detritus of the past five years and hone his philosophy of government, he can end up sounding strangled and disengaged when he could be full-throated.
