Oh I have some other common phrases I've been collecting! "to be honest" "...the thing..." "I mean.." "Yah yah yah" people say this rapidly. It seems rude and dismissive to me so I've stopped doing it
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“It turns out” (2010)
41–50 of 99 posts
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#42Feels related to the idea of "exonerative tense", a way of phrasing things to subtly absolute yourself of responsibility for your own actions.
Puts me in mind of Trump being asked about the lack of evacuation plans around the Iran war, his response was "because it happened to all very quickly", as if it were a force of nature rather than something the administration had control over.
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#43This is a nitpick, but since this essay is over 15 years old now I don't think the author will mind. This phrase always rankles me: > Let me explain what I mean. It turns out that if you're writing an essay or a youtube script you don't have to tell me that you're going to explain something to me before you explain it to me. I guess it acts as a "hack" to try to impart some gravity to what follows without actually ha…
You also explained what you were going to explain here
I guess it's not prefatory remarks or disclaimers that I find so grating, but the explicit "I'll explain" (or worse, faux conversational "May I explain?" "Let me explain") followed immediately by the explanation.
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#44This is a nitpick, but since this essay is over 15 years old now I don't think the author will mind. This phrase always rankles me: > Let me explain what I mean. It turns out that if you're writing an essay or a youtube script you don't have to tell me that you're going to explain something to me before you explain it to me. I guess it acts as a "hack" to try to impart some gravity to what follows without actually ha…
If you're writing a YouTube script, just, stop. They're so tiresome.
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#45Before clicking the link I thought this was going to be about over-usage of the term by LLMs... it's not in my personal "red flag" list but it does seem to have a general applicability that's not connected to actually having something to say that fits well with LLMs
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#46This is a nitpick, but since this essay is over 15 years old now I don't think the author will mind. This phrase always rankles me: > Let me explain what I mean. It turns out that if you're writing an essay or a youtube script you don't have to tell me that you're going to explain something to me before you explain it to me. I guess it acts as a "hack" to try to impart some gravity to what follows without actually ha…
If you're writing a YouTube script, just, stop. They're so tiresome.
I enjoy longform yt essays. Many others do too, based on view counts
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#47From The Mote in God's Eye:
"Wrong," said Renner.
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, 'That turns out not to be the case.'"
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#48This is a nitpick, but since this essay is over 15 years old now I don't think the author will mind. This phrase always rankles me: > Let me explain what I mean. It turns out that if you're writing an essay or a youtube script you don't have to tell me that you're going to explain something to me before you explain it to me. I guess it acts as a "hack" to try to impart some gravity to what follows without actually ha…
That jumped out to me because you see it in YouTube videos so much now. I was surprised at the age of this post.
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#49Oh I have some other common phrases I've been collecting! "to be honest" "...the thing..." "I mean.." "Yah yah yah" people say this rapidly. It seems rude and dismissive to me so I've stopped doing it
I also reduced the use of those phrases, but more because they don't do much other than making the text longer. Except for things like "in my experience" or "as I understand" to signal that they're not meant as factual statements.
Re: “It turns out” (2010)
#50This is a nitpick, but since this essay is over 15 years old now I don't think the author will mind. This phrase always rankles me: > Let me explain what I mean. It turns out that if you're writing an essay or a youtube script you don't have to tell me that you're going to explain something to me before you explain it to me. I guess it acts as a "hack" to try to impart some gravity to what follows without actually ha…
Language is filled with those types of phrases, the one which bugs me once it was pointed out (even though I use it myself) is "to be honest...", which could carry the implication anything said without that qualifier may be dishonest. What including those phrases seem to come down to is an informal style, a bit more acceptable in a spoken conversation but for written it probably depends on the audience.
Something I'd wonder about is if usage of it has changed based on the medium people use over the years, whether that's in-person, telephone, writing letters, or computer/smartphone writing. Has using computers for short form conversations allowed conversational phrases to bleed into formal writing.