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Comment by II2II | Hacker News Reader

> I'm a native English speaker. I don't find the article offensive, and I appreciate it pointing out how I can be a more effective communicator.

If you want people to communicate more effectively, then you state how to communicate more effectively. It is best to avoid criticism since the recipient is liable to take it poorly. Trying to be provocative will only result in the intent of the message being ignored.

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Unless they’re German or Eastern European, in which case if you don’t point out exactly where they personally are wrong they might think you’re complimenting them, seeking help in figuring out who IS doing something wrong, or don’t have any actual issues, and everything is ok.

Speaking of cultural differences.

For an article about communicating clearly, it was pretty poor at communicating clearly.

FWIW, I don't take this article poorly because I don't see it as being critical of some immutable characteristic of either me or of English. It's simply pointing out a blind spot that native speakers are unlikely to realize when speaking to non-native speakers.

As to the headline, like not judging a book by its cover, I also don't judge an article by its crappy clickbait provocative headline.

The provocative title is surely one, if not the main reason, the article is here in HN, and not utterly ignored in a sea of other articles with effective and clear titles.

Clickbait exists, because we react to it.

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