This idea that you shouldn’t use the word “very” has always seemed pretentious to me. What value does it add if you say “extremely” or “incredibly” instead? I guess those words have more emphasis and a different connotation, and can be better fits. I think they’re probably a good idea sometimes. But other times people just want to use different words in order to sound smart.
I remember there was a time in elementary school when I was working on a paper with a friend. My job was to write it, and his job was to “fix it up and making it sound good”. I remember him going in and changing words like “very”, that I had used appropriately, to overly dramatic words like “stupendously”. And I remember feeling annoyed at the end result of the paper because it sounded pretentious.
Here I want to argue for something similar to “stop saying very” though. I want to argue for “stop saying think”.
Consider the following: “I think the restaurant is still open past 8pm”. What does that mean? Are you 20% sure? 60%? 90%? Wouldn’t it be useful this ambiguity disappeared?
I’m not saying that “I think” is always ambiguous and bad. Sometimes it’s relatively clear from the context that you mean 20% sure, not 90%. Eg. “I thhhhhinkkk it’s open past 8pm?” But you’re not always so lucky. I find myself in situations where I’m not so lucky often enough. And so it seems like a good idea in general to move away from “I think” and closer to something more precise.
I want to follow up with some good guidelines for what words/phrases you can say in various situations to express different degrees of confidence, as well as some other relevant things, but I am struggling to come up with such guidelines. Because of this, I’m writing this as a shortform rather than a regular post. I’d love to see someone else run with this idea and/or propose such guidelines.
Communication advice is always pretentious—someone’s trying to say they know more about your ideas and audience than you do. And simultaneously, it’s incorrect for at least some listeners, because they’re wrong—they don’t. Also, correct for many listeners, because many are SO BAD at communication that generalized simple advice can get them to think a little more about it.
At least part of the problem is that there is a benefit to sounding smart. “very” is low-status, and will reduce the impact of your writing, for many audiences. That’s independent of any connotation or meaning of the word or it’s replacement.
Likewise with “I think”. In many cases, it’s redundant and unnecessary, but in many others it’s an important acknowledgement, not that it’s your thought or that you might be wrong, but that YOU KNOW you might be wrong.
I think (heh) your planned follow-up is a good idea, to include context and reasoning for recommendations, so we can understand what situations it applies to.
I’ve tried doing this in my writing in the past, of the form of just throw away “I think” all together because it’s redundant: there’s no one thinking up these words but me.
Unfortunately this was a bad choice because many people take bald statements without softening language like “I think” as bids to make claims about how they are or should be perceiving reality, which I mean all statements are but they’ll jump to viewing them as claims of access to an external truth (note that this sounds like they are making an error here by having a world model that supposes external facts that can be learned rather than facts being always conditional on the way they are known (which is not to say there is not perhaps some shared external reality, only that any facts/statements you try to claim about it must be conditional because they live in your mind behind your perceptions, but this is a subtle enough point that people will miss it and it’s not the default, naive model of the world most people carry around anyway)).
Example:
I think you’re doing X → you’re doing X
People react to the latter kind of thing as a stronger kind of claim that I would say it’s possible to make.
This doesn’t quite sound like what you want to do, though, and instead want to insert more nuanced words to make it clearer what work “think” is doing.
This doesn’t quite sound like what you want to do, though, and instead want to insert more nuanced words to make it clearer what work “think” is doing.
Yeah. And also a big part of what I’m trying to propose is some sort of new standard. I just realized I didn’t express this in my OP, but I’ll express it now. I agree with the problems you’re saying, and I think that if we all sort of agreed on this new standard, eg. when you say “I suspect” it means X, then these problems seem like they’d go away.
Not answering your main point, but small note on the “leaving out very” point: I’ve enjoyed McCloskey’s writing on writing. She calls the phenomenon “elegant variation” (I don’t know whether this is her only) and also teaches we have to get rid of this unhelpful practice that we get thought in school.
The other day Improve your Vocabulary: Stop saying VERY! popped up in my YouTube video feed. I was annoyed.
This idea that you shouldn’t use the word “very” has always seemed pretentious to me. What value does it add if you say “extremely” or “incredibly” instead? I guess those words have more emphasis and a different connotation, and can be better fits. I think they’re probably a good idea sometimes. But other times people just want to use different words in order to sound smart.
I remember there was a time in elementary school when I was working on a paper with a friend. My job was to write it, and his job was to “fix it up and making it sound good”. I remember him going in and changing words like “very”, that I had used appropriately, to overly dramatic words like “stupendously”. And I remember feeling annoyed at the end result of the paper because it sounded pretentious.
Here I want to argue for something similar to “stop saying very” though. I want to argue for “stop saying think”.
Consider the following: “I think the restaurant is still open past 8pm”. What does that mean? Are you 20% sure? 60%? 90%? Wouldn’t it be useful this ambiguity disappeared?
I’m not saying that “I think” is always ambiguous and bad. Sometimes it’s relatively clear from the context that you mean 20% sure, not 90%. Eg. “I thhhhhinkkk it’s open past 8pm?” But you’re not always so lucky. I find myself in situations where I’m not so lucky often enough. And so it seems like a good idea in general to move away from “I think” and closer to something more precise.
I want to follow up with some good guidelines for what words/phrases you can say in various situations to express different degrees of confidence, as well as some other relevant things, but I am struggling to come up with such guidelines. Because of this, I’m writing this as a shortform rather than a regular post. I’d love to see someone else run with this idea and/or propose such guidelines.
Communication advice is always pretentious—someone’s trying to say they know more about your ideas and audience than you do. And simultaneously, it’s incorrect for at least some listeners, because they’re wrong—they don’t. Also, correct for many listeners, because many are SO BAD at communication that generalized simple advice can get them to think a little more about it.
At least part of the problem is that there is a benefit to sounding smart. “very” is low-status, and will reduce the impact of your writing, for many audiences. That’s independent of any connotation or meaning of the word or it’s replacement.
Likewise with “I think”. In many cases, it’s redundant and unnecessary, but in many others it’s an important acknowledgement, not that it’s your thought or that you might be wrong, but that YOU KNOW you might be wrong.
I think (heh) your planned follow-up is a good idea, to include context and reasoning for recommendations, so we can understand what situations it applies to.
I’ve tried doing this in my writing in the past, of the form of just throw away “I think” all together because it’s redundant: there’s no one thinking up these words but me.
Unfortunately this was a bad choice because many people take bald statements without softening language like “I think” as bids to make claims about how they are or should be perceiving reality, which I mean all statements are but they’ll jump to viewing them as claims of access to an external truth (note that this sounds like they are making an error here by having a world model that supposes external facts that can be learned rather than facts being always conditional on the way they are known (which is not to say there is not perhaps some shared external reality, only that any facts/statements you try to claim about it must be conditional because they live in your mind behind your perceptions, but this is a subtle enough point that people will miss it and it’s not the default, naive model of the world most people carry around anyway)).
Example:
I think you’re doing X → you’re doing X
People react to the latter kind of thing as a stronger kind of claim that I would say it’s possible to make.
This doesn’t quite sound like what you want to do, though, and instead want to insert more nuanced words to make it clearer what work “think” is doing.
Yeah. And also a big part of what I’m trying to propose is some sort of new standard. I just realized I didn’t express this in my OP, but I’ll express it now. I agree with the problems you’re saying, and I think that if we all sort of agreed on this new standard, eg. when you say “I suspect” it means X, then these problems seem like they’d go away.
Not answering your main point, but small note on the “leaving out very” point: I’ve enjoyed McCloskey’s writing on writing. She calls the phenomenon “elegant variation” (I don’t know whether this is her only) and also teaches we have to get rid of this unhelpful practice that we get thought in school.
Thanks! I always upvote McClosky references—one of the underappreciated writers/thinkers on topics of culture and history.