Moving right along... is a common American expression used in everyday speech. Imagine a conversation between three people in a business meeting. One person is getting off the subject or changing the subject not on the agenda, which can often happen in conversation. One idea can lead to something else which is not necessarily relevant to the main idea being discussed. When this happens, one of the three, perhaps the one leading the discussion might say to the other two delving into the "deviation" subject, after a few minutes:
"Ok. Well, that's all very interesting, but moving right along...we know our budget this year did not include any amount of investment in the Wuttsernegger Projects...".
"Moving right along..." is the expression used above to bring the discussion back to the original subject, which in this case is the budget. It gets the discussion "back on track", as we say.
Video: Personal Archives
In the above video the "deviation" is represented by "blah, blah, blah...".
When the discussion deviates or "takes a detour" from the original topic, one can use this expression.
Tony: Well, you guys know Bill has a lot of talent for making bread. His bakery should prosper in a short time.
Joe: Yeah, sure it will, if he can stop long enough to control his eating habits! He might eat more bread than he sells! Haahaaa!
Mark: Haaha! Yeah! We all know how overweight he is! Haahahaaaa!
Tony: Umm...moving right along...he's offered us shares in this new company, and has his other two very successful businesses...".
In the discussion above, the group of friends while chit-chatting, get off the subject when Joe starts talking silly, making a bad joke about their friend Bill, the businessman. The attentive and sensitive friend, Tony, helped Joe and Mark get off the insulting comment and back on the subject at hand, without directly confronting them. However, indirectly, Tony manages to confront their insensitiveness with the expression "moving right along...".
In this case, nothing more needed to be said to confront after the expression, because it served as an alert to the others that the conversation should change to the original, more wholesome, decent subject worth talking about.
Moving right along is not always meant to confront, but also to just get people on to the next subject, as time is often precious (time is short).
You are getting closer to speaking impressive American English!
