I use a lot of qualifiers in speech and in writing. I find that, in both informal and professional contexts, most people don’t even notice them and interpret my sentences as if they weren’t there. It regularly trips me up when people come be to me and say, “You said X, and now you’re saying/doing Y!” and I say, “Well, no, actually I said [Qualifier]+X, and [evidence Z that we later encountered that led me to Y] is exactly the kind of reason why I didn’t just say X.” Sometimes even me saying “X, unless Z, then Y,” isn’t helpful, people just hear X anyway, and may try to hold me to X later.
So, my take is that the benefit of qualifiers is dependent on the audience you’re talking too, and how well they understand why you’re using them. I use them anyway because it’s important to me to not pretend more confidence than I have, but also because I’m a perfectionists who sometimes twists his words with qualifiers so I won’t later find out I was wrong and can rationalize it away. I’m working on that, but it’s slow going.
Some people will misunderstand you whatever you do. That doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t communicate more precisely with everybody else. Some people will notice.
If I (correctly) expect to be misunderstood, then the precision is only in my head and not actually facilitating communication. It can still be useful, if it’s recorded and I can call it back up later for some purpose, but otherwise it doesn’t help me or whoever I’m talking to. At worst, it ironically brushes up against knowingly misleading people.
This is also my experience. Other misunderstood phrases are even simpler; I’ve told people “We need to do either X or Y” and have them come back later and say “X is impossible”, and then be surprised when I asked about Y.
I use a lot of qualifiers in speech and in writing. I find that, in both informal and professional contexts, most people don’t even notice them and interpret my sentences as if they weren’t there. It regularly trips me up when people come be to me and say, “You said X, and now you’re saying/doing Y!” and I say, “Well, no, actually I said [Qualifier]+X, and [evidence Z that we later encountered that led me to Y] is exactly the kind of reason why I didn’t just say X.” Sometimes even me saying “X, unless Z, then Y,” isn’t helpful, people just hear X anyway, and may try to hold me to X later.
So, my take is that the benefit of qualifiers is dependent on the audience you’re talking too, and how well they understand why you’re using them. I use them anyway because it’s important to me to not pretend more confidence than I have, but also because I’m a perfectionists who sometimes twists his words with qualifiers so I won’t later find out I was wrong and can rationalize it away. I’m working on that, but it’s slow going.
Some people will misunderstand you whatever you do. That doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t communicate more precisely with everybody else. Some people will notice.
If I (correctly) expect to be misunderstood, then the precision is only in my head and not actually facilitating communication. It can still be useful, if it’s recorded and I can call it back up later for some purpose, but otherwise it doesn’t help me or whoever I’m talking to. At worst, it ironically brushes up against knowingly misleading people.
This is also my experience. Other misunderstood phrases are even simpler; I’ve told people “We need to do either X or Y” and have them come back later and say “X is impossible”, and then be surprised when I asked about Y.