Monday, June 15, 2020

Qualifiers

When you have to keep putting in more introductory qualifiers, making it clear "I'm not saying no horses are tan, I am saying that tan horses..." or "I recognise that the current residents of Elbonia were not the people who first bombed Nowheresville, but am trying to narrowly say that Elbonians of the 19th C..." or any version of "I'm not saying A, I am making a distinction between A and B," you are signaling to yourself that you are convinced some readers are going to misunderstand you.  If you have to keep heading people off at the pass before you can make any positive point at all, it means your audience has a problem

I write this as one who does this a lot. 

2 comments:

james said...

Bitter experience.

Jonathan said...

Indeed.