WAYS OF SHOWING AND AVOIDING COMMITMENT
Ways of showing commitment
Use first person pronoun as subject:
I, We
Use verbs with first person subject:
advocate, believe, feel, know, mean, think, understand
Use personalized expressions:
it seems to me, it appears, from my point of view, in my view, in my opinion
Use attitudinal signals such as:
assuredly, certainly, definitely, indisputably, undeniably, undoubtedly, unquestionably
clearly, obviously, plainly
fortunately, unfortunately, unhappily
significantly
rightly, wrongly
Use verbs like should, must, ought to
Ways of 'hedging' or avoiding commitment
Avoid using first person pronouns
Use impersonal subjects, such as it
Use passive voice so as to avoid specifying an agent or 'doer' such as:
It can be imagined that ...
Large numbers of foreign students have been admitted ...
Use verbs (often with an impersonal subject) such as:
hear, guess, imagine, suggest, suppose
signals such as:
apparently, arguably, hypothetically, ideally, possibly, seemingly, superficially hopefully, strangely, unexpectedly, regrettably
Use verbs such as:
could, would, may, might
MARKERS OF COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
Comparison within sentences
X is
X and Y are
X is very
quite
rather like Y
similar
similar to Y in terms of
with respect to
with regard to quality/size/
expense etc.
X resembles Y in that they are both large/expensive etc.
X is
exactly
precisely
just
virtually
almost
nearly the same as Y.
Both X and Y are large/expensive etc.
X is as large as Y.
X is no larger than Y.
X is the same size as Y.
X is costly to buy and it is (also) costly to maintain.
Comparison between sentences
X is expensive to buy.
Similarly,
Likewise,
Moreover,
Furthermore,
In addition, it is expensive to maintain/operate etc.
Contrast within sentences
X is unlike Y
X differs from Y
X and Y differ
X is different from Y
X contrasts with Y with respect to
with regard to
in terms of size/expense etc.
in that X is smaller/more expensive etc.
X has four Zs,
whereas
while
but
yet
although Y has three.
Y is
X is
considerably
a great deal
(very)much
rather
somewhat
a little
slightly
only just
scarcely smaller than X.
larger than Y.
Contrast between sentences
X is expensive to buy.
However,
Conversely,
By/In contrast,
On the other hand, it is cheap to operate/maintain etc. |
