Pro Tip from Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Say What You Mean — You Have a Lot to Add.
In a TIME profile of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the actor speaks frankly about the challenges she still faces as a woman trying to parlay her massive success — 11 Emmys and 9 Screen Actors Guild awards so far — into the opportunity to gain full creative control of her work:
“I can honestly say that I have a sh-t ton of experience when it comes to making entertainment. So I think I have …” She stops, detects the note of insecurity in her phrasing, and decides to edit it out. “I don’t think,” she says, “I have a lot to add.”
That last self-edit is a perfect example of breaking the habit of selling yourself short. Phrases such as “I think,” “I feel,” “I believe,” “I would say,” “I’m not sure about this, but…” and others are variously called hedges, qualifiers, or softeners. They add a note of uncertainty to what would otherwise be a simple declarative statement. A sentence that begins with “I think” suggests that whatever comes next is a personal opinion rather than a firm assertion.
It’s no secret that women are scrutinized more closely than men for using these kinds of phrases.[1] But here’s the thing: plenty of American men[2] use hedging or softening language in high-stakes contexts in which they are expected to sound certain, and nobody typically notices.
When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress in April 2018 about data privacy, he said, “I believe it’s important to tell people exactly how the information that they share on Facebook is going to be used.” He later added, “…this gets into an — an issue that I — I think we and others in the tech industry have found challenging, which is that long privacy policies are very confusing.” Ya think, Zuck? [3]
There are plenty of situations that call for hedges, qualifiers, and softeners, whether to telegraph uncertainty, defer to others, or underline that a statement is merely speculation. It’s common to rely on this kind of language when lacking positional power, and in many instances it’s a sound survival strategy. Just as there are times to march boldly, there are also times to tiptoe.
Years ago while working as a newbie tech writer at NASA, I found myself in a roomful of senior engineers debating rules for designing spacecraft. I barely knew the difference between the space shuttle and a bottle rocket, and simply keeping up with the discussion taxed all my bandwidth. At one point, though, I heard a proposed wording change that struck me as problematic. The idea of interjecting made me nervous, but I took a breath, raised my hand, and said something like, “I may be missing something on the technical side, but as far as the wording goes, if we say x, couldn’t that be interpreted to mean y?” I wanted to acknowledge the limits of my understanding while at the same time providing my own expertise. After a pregnant pause, one of the engineers acknowledged that I had a point, and the topic turned to clarifying the ambiguity.
The problem arises when the use of these phrases becomes an unconscious habit that diminishes concision without adding an equal amount of warmth or nuance. Think about an email that begins: “I just wanted to check in about ___.”
Now remove the qualifier: “I wanted to check in about ___.”
The intention of the first sentence is not to appear heavy-handed, while the second sentence gets right down to business. Does “just” make the first sentence friendlier than the second, or does it introduce a note of passive-aggressiveness to the message? Just checking.
The shorter formulation may not always be the right one, but the choice should depend on context rather than habit. Like a perfectly timed Selina Meyer f-bomb, hedges, qualifiers, and softeners work best when used sparingly and intentionally.
And remember, you have a lot to add.
End notes:
- If you’re interested in reading more about this, a good place to start is: Nelson, A., & Brown, C. D. 2012. The gender communication handbook: Conquering conversational collisions between men and women. San Francisco: Pfeiffer; Wiley.
- This preference for directness is a peculiarly American trait. Cue any bumbling Hugh Grant character, for instance, and you’ll hear a lorry full of qualifiers streaming out of his mouth. Outside the English-speaking world, the nuances multiply.
- One could argue that Mark Zuckerberg may have been hedging before Congress to appear more humble or to avoid saying something that could have landed him or Facebook in hot water. But that doesn’t explain why he said “I think” more than 80 times in an hour-long interview with Kara Swisher. That’s a verbal tic, not a mastermind strategy.
