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I work in academia. Frequently, I need to convey various levels of confidence about facts when writing emails to my colleagues. Microsoft Outlooks suggestions
by dizzant 4y ago
I work in academia. Frequently, I need to convey various levels of confidence about facts when writing emails to my colleagues.
Microsoft Outlooks suggestions are more than a mere annoyance on this front. They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing precisely because they convey uncertainty. That is why I wrote them in the first place! If I knew a result confidently, I would say so.
Please, let's not have another venue algorithmically pressuring everyone to uniformly remove nuance from communication. There is no one-size-fits-all threshold for "too wordy" or "too passive" or anything else with regard to language. Context is everything.
- jonny_eh 4y ago> They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing That just sounds like a poorly implemented feature.