Hedges, qualifiers, and intensifiers are essentially weasel words which can be removed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a web page for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (unitar) titled Qualifiers and hedges and other TONE softeners beginning with the following:

 

“Qualifiers: lessen the full impact of the message being communicated; make things appear ‘less than 100%’

somewhat, a (little) bit, slight, slightly, small, a few, minor, insignificant, certain, possible, potential, not quite, etc.

 

Hedges: words that make matters seem less definite, certain – a bit more open-ended and less direct

seem, appear, reportedly, apparently, likely, unlikely, essentially, actually, basically, possibly, perhaps. Reportedly and allegedly also are frequently used in political and conflict analysis.”

 

There is another web page from Patricia Fripp on March 23, 2023 titled Want to know why your weak words are taking away your power? She says speech qualifiers can undermine our credibility, diminish the impact of our message, and distract our audience from our message.

 

And in Ben Yagoda’s 2013 book titled How to Not Write Bad: The most common writing problems and how to avoid them on page 113 he states:

 

“I’d estimate that three-quarters of the time, you can improve a sentence by striking out the qualifiers (pretty, somewhat, a little, kind of and the currently popular kinda, sort of, rather, arguably slightly) and intensifiers (very, extremely, really, completely, totally, absolutely, unbelievably, remarkably, and of course literally).”

 

The British Wildlife Centre image of a weasel came from Wikimedia Commons.