Comments on: Cataloguing My Tics

By: Franklin Harris

Franklin Harris — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:10:33 +0000

Oh, god only knows how many such tics I have. “God only knows” being one of them, probably. I suspect (there’s another one) it’s because the bulk of my professional writing for the past decade has been a chatty pop-culture newspaper column, which reads only as slightly more formal that my blogs.

By: mobile

mobile — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:12:47 +0000

Whenever I see “epistimological” in a Hit ‘n Run post, there’s at least a 95% chance that the author is Julian Sanchez. When I see it on other blogs, there’s a 50% chance that it’s from Will Wilkinson.

By: Rue Des Quatre Vents

Rue Des Quatre Vents — Mon, 28 May 2007 02:29:04 +0000

You should learn what it means for something to be in apposition. The use of “of course” or “obviously” that you refer to are adverbial. Apposition refers (mainly) to nouns and semantic clarification. So one writing tic you might want to improve on is your knowledge of grammar. Good luck!

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 27 May 2007 18:18:08 +0000

Oh, I don’t know, I just discovered your web site and thought your ideas had some sparkle. I don’t know about this self examination. I am a big Orwell fan, which to me means one has a big Bull S—t antenna. I’m drifting over here from Catallarchy which has deteriorated into some sort of interpersonal smart guy contest between certain persons who have too much spare time, I’m guessing because they are wheelchair bound .
Oh, you are philosophy student. Well I hope you are not one of those who assume that everyone is who is interested in your opinions is conversant with the latest philo–talk philosophy jargon. This stuff should be confined to academic journals so those who use these terms without defining them in common English language are committing major Orwellian sins. The way some people use these soon to be obsolete labels only exposes their neophyte status.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Sun, 27 May 2007 18:04:54 +0000

The frightening aspect of this experiment, for me, was how difficult it was to pare the list down to ten.

By: Scott Wood

Scott Wood — Sun, 27 May 2007 14:11:48 +0000

I usually use the phrase “I think” and its relatives as a way of expressing a degree of humility in my statements. Of course it can be overdone, but I don’t usually find it otiose.

By: Blar

Blar — Sun, 27 May 2007 00:27:25 +0000

In his autobiography, Ben Franklin recommended overqualifying with phrases like "I think" and "if I am not mistaken," largely for the kinds of reasons that SF & Robin mention.

By: Robin Goodfellow

Robin Goodfellow — Sat, 26 May 2007 21:08:36 +0000

You could avoid using “really” so much. It doesn’t add emphasis. Such as above, I don’t think saying you “really mean to use” a specific language tic is any more forceful than saying that you “mean to use” them. Really is really a word that can often be inserted really almost anywhere without really affecting what you really mean to say. It’s overuse implies that you are nominally unserious.

Also, I think the “I think…” construction is valid and useful, when used appropriately. Consider the contrast between saying “I think cheese does not taste good” vs. saying “cheese does not taste good”. These constructions have dramatically different impacts on the nature and evolution of debate and argument. By saying “X is true” rather than “I believe X” you can make rational, civilized argument more difficult because the implication of someone believing otherwise is that they are a liar, an idiot, or a fraud, rather than merely mistaken about facts or logic. Moreover, stating “X is true” is passive and impersonal, it just is, and the statement might as well have been emitted by a teletype as by you: you may believe it because it’s impossible to believe otherwise or because you’ve been brainwashed or some other reason, but it almost doesn’t matter why you believe it. In contrast, stating “I believe X” is much more personal, and implies that there is a thinking individual behind the statement with thoughts and feelings and that this conclusion is supported by certain facts and rationale. Again, the impact that this has on debate is dramatic, and I would much prefer to enter into a discussion with people who have thoughts and beliefs (however strongly held) than people who simply emit immutable facts.

By: chuckles

chuckles — Sat, 26 May 2007 20:56:57 +0000

I get a kick out of it whenever you use the word “otiose.”

By: Dave W.

Dave W. — Sat, 26 May 2007 18:42:38 +0000

You use too many words generally, reflecting too many thoughts, some of which just aren’t that crucial. Your nuggets are real good, but sometimes I don’t take the time to mine them out.

Recent example: Your recent evolution post that quoted Gilder got cross-cited on the Henley blog recently, so I did a good hard read of it. You had some long winded intro to a quoted Guardian/Gilder quoted paragraph. Then after the quote, you commented that evolutionists would find the paragraph “true but not worth saying.” then you launched into some nice commentary on the commentary, adding some nice original thoughts or spin or whatever. Here is how I would have written that:

Recent Guardian commentary on evolution:

[quoted para]

This is equally true of the weather . . . [rest of what you said]