Brian - July 16th, 2010 - Weak Writing
I'm not a professional writer, but I spend many contemplative hours wondering how to improve my written and oral communication.
I'd like to hammer on an ugliness in writing that I caught myself repeating continuously in the last post: the phrase, "I think," plus its brethren, "I believe," and "In my opinion."
It is, in short, a weak phrase; a sign of insecurity in the words. It's almost universally unnecessary.
The fact that you are declaring something means you think it, whether it is something you can demonstrably prove or something which is rooted in logical arguments, belief systems, or personal observations. In either of these instances, the only purpose of the phrase is to soften the language - to purposefully seem less than certain. Consider:
(1) I think a course like that would be useful.
(2) A course like that would be useful.
Phrase #1 seems easier to palate - it's injecting the human author into the writing and creating an entity which can be ignored, opposed, or supported. Phrase #2 lays out a blanket statement, leaving the human unexposed and letting the writing stand alone, though any rational person knows there's an author behind the work. They are both identical in function, but #1 comes off unconvinced whereas #2 says what it has to say without reservation.
Softening phrases plague forum posts, where without careful wording it's trivial to incite a flame war. After you've spent enough time regularly communicating with others and learning all the clever tricks we use to avoid offending people, it's hard to move into a mindframe where it's OK to just say things and let it be understood that, yes, this is your belief, but it doesn't need superfluous decoration to make a point safely. In the end, such phrases hurt the writing, both by padding it with fluff and by stripping away its apparent conviction.
You've failed me yet again, Starscream.
