Words such as rather, pretty, very, and little are the leeches that infest the body of prose, sucking the blood of words. We should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.
— E.B. White
It can be tempting to use hedge words like just, very, seemingly, and their ilk. Sometimes, we use these words because we fear being too bold or appearing too certain; we want to acknowledge the room for disagreement or more information on a topic. In other cases, we are unsure whether our message is valuable, so we offer it noncommittally in case others shoot it down.
In both cases, avoiding hedge words will add strength to your message.
If you are afraid of making a point too boldly, remember that there is always a chance that people will disagree with you; however, if you make your point using fuzzy language, your readers might not understand you well enough to know if they agree or disagree.
If you have something valuable to say, say it. If it is not valuable, why say it? But don’t hedge your words with language that makes you seem unsure of your message.
Resist the urge to fatten up your work by hedging your points with namby-pamby modifiers. If your goal is to make your point clearly, why clutter it up with words like very and seemingly?
Notice as you read whether these words add anything to your comprehension other than an uncomfortable sense that the writers don’t stand behind their words.
· just
· by and large
· rather
· seemingly
· somewhat
· kind of
· mostly
· really
· very
· pretty
· little
· sort of
· it would seem
· in some respects
· for the most part
· for all intents and purposes
What is wrong with hedges and modifiers? They block your points. They betray uncertainty. They consume the reader’s time and energy with words that add nothing to your message.
So, for the most part, just be very careful to be pretty clear when you write, because it would seem that when you add hedges to most of your statements, you seem sort of a little unclear about what you are trying say.
Call Worktalk When:
- Companies lose customers due to poor messaging from sales and customer service teams;
- Clients complain about communication from professional service firms’ staff members;
- Employees need to humanize the output of AI-assisted writing programs so it doesn’t sound fake;
- Employees need help developing the right prompts for AI-assisted writing programs to generate more effective outputs;
- Employees waste time repeatedly emailing one another because their messages are unclear.
Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or 310.396.8303.
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If you missed the last Writamin on being gruntled that irregardless is a word, find it here.