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Comment by cristoperb | Hacker News Reader

This 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 having to write a convincing introduction, but unlike "it turns out" it can almost always just be deleted to improve the flow.

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I think it's more like a sign post in the text. At the start of any paragraph (or sentence, really) the text may go literally anywhere--could be a new thought, a continuation of an implicit list, an explanation of what came previous, or anything else.

If you say something weird or apparently unsupported, the savvy reader at that very moment is going to be thinking so. So it's helpful to orient them like:

> Here's a wild sentence. Here's why it's not actually that wild: reasons

Without the connecting phrase, the reader has to figure out from context that out of all the possible things the following text could be doing, what it's actually doing is explaining the previous claim.

You can rightly counterpoint that it's not strictly necessary, that a savvy reader can figure it out. But I think the moment right after a wild statement is a hotspot for readers getting ready to jettison, and having a little assurance is likely very helpful.

It turns out that both phrases are used like this, similarly to how they teach in logic classes that "but" is just "and" in fancy clothing, but actual usage is quite different. Actually, a lot of language is just signpost phrasing that "helps the medicine go down" by giving hints at how the following idea will connect to this one.

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Both phrases are used like this— let me explain:

Logic classes teach that "but" is just "and" in fancy clothing, and actual usage is quite different. A lot of language is signpost phrasing that "helps the medicine go down" by giving hints at how the following idea will connect to this one.

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.

> 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.

Supernatural highlights this on S1E08, at 27:28. Dean was talking with someone and starts saying "the truth is" but the other person instantly cuts him off saying "you know who starts their sentences with 'the truth is'? Liars".

If the literal meaning doesn't make sense, derive the meaning from the way it is used.

"To be honest" typically means "Here is an opinion that I'm embarrassed to share, and would rather lie about"

They're not lying about everything else, they're lying about that one thing, every other time.

e.g. "I tell people my favorite movie is 'The Godfather', but, to be honest, it's actually Ratatouille"

> 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.

If you change it to "To Be Perfectly Honest...", then it doesn't imply that everything else was dishonest, merely elided.

Reminds me of Mark Twain’s advice to writers, “Any time you want to write ‘very’ write ‘damn’ instead so your editor will remove it.”

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.

> 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 do if I'm looking to pad the essay or video to make it longer.

That jumped out to me because you see it in YouTube videos so much now. I was surprised at the age of this post.

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

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