When it comes to qualifiers it’s good to actually use them to communicate information instead of just making statements defensible.
If you preface every statement with a qualifer then the qualifiers that you use communicate no information. If you however preface those statements that are less certain with qualifiers, then you communicate information.
When editing a post, it’s worthwhile to ask for every qualifier what value it adds and scrap it when it doesn’t add value.
Of course, the answer to “Should we use qualifiers in speech?” is almost certainly, “It depends”. But despite that, it still seems like it’d be pretty useful to figure out what the “default” or “your go-to” should be.
This could be easily reformatted into “The answer to “Should we use qualifiers in speech?” is almost certainly, “It depends”. It’s still useful to figure out what the “default” or “your go-to” should be.”
The added words don’t provide any value and habitually adding unneccessaru words means that the qualifiers that actually do convey information are more likely to be ignored.
This could be easily reformatted into “The answer to “Should we use qualifiers in speech?” is almost certainly, “It depends”. It’s still useful to figure out what the “default” or “your go-to” should be.”
I agree with the broader point, but in this case I wasn’t certain enough in what I was saying to omit the “seems like” part. Maybe the truth is that it’s very much a case-by-case thing and defaults aren’t in fact much use.
To the extend that you wanted to express some uncertainity it didn’t get through to me when I read it. I think part of the problem is that the nature of your uncertainty isn’t expressed.
When it comes to qualifiers it’s good to actually use them to communicate information instead of just making statements defensible.
If you preface every statement with a qualifer then the qualifiers that you use communicate no information. If you however preface those statements that are less certain with qualifiers, then you communicate information.
When editing a post, it’s worthwhile to ask for every qualifier what value it adds and scrap it when it doesn’t add value.
This could be easily reformatted into “The answer to “Should we use qualifiers in speech?” is almost certainly, “It depends”. It’s still useful to figure out what the “default” or “your go-to” should be.”
The added words don’t provide any value and habitually adding unneccessaru words means that the qualifiers that actually do convey information are more likely to be ignored.
I agree with the broader point, but in this case I wasn’t certain enough in what I was saying to omit the “seems like” part. Maybe the truth is that it’s very much a case-by-case thing and defaults aren’t in fact much use.
To the extend that you wanted to express some uncertainity it didn’t get through to me when I read it. I think part of the problem is that the nature of your uncertainty isn’t expressed.