Lexis Lesson · Disagreeing and Staying Hired

01

Warm-up · 4 min

The sentence they can use

Read out the sentence from your own general notes. Then say what it protects you from — and what it stops you proving.

02

Input · 10 min

Your own disclaimers, read as hedges

Verbatim from the general notes on your sets.

General notes

ALL DIMENSIONS SHOWN ARE APPROXIMATE.

LOT DIMENSIONS SHOULD BE VERIFIED AS SOURCE DRAWING MIGHT BE INACCURATE.

THIS DRAWING IS NOT A SURVEY.

In Unit 6 you corrected one of these. Lot dimensions should be verified became shall be verified, because a specification imposes obligations and should does not impose anything.

That was right, and it is not the whole story. These three sentences are not only spec language — they are hedges, and they are there deliberately. They protect you from being held to a dimension you took off a source drawing you did not survey. That is a real risk and the disclaimer is a real defence.

Now read comment 3 again.

Comment 3 · Sheet L0. General notes state that all dimensions shown are approximate and that the drawing is not a survey. Setback compliance cannot be verified from approximate dimensions. Provide a boundary survey, or dimension the setbacks to the property line from a recorded source.

The reviewer has not misread anything. Your own note says the dimensions are approximate; a setback is a dimension; therefore your drawing cannot demonstrate the setback. The hedge that protects you from a liability claim is the same sentence that defeats your compliance argument, and it does both because it is unscoped — it covers every dimension on every sheet, including the ones you are certain of.

Teacher note This is the intellectual centre of the unit and it is worth slowing down. The instinct — hers and most designers’ — is that a broader disclaimer is a safer disclaimer. It is not. It is safer against one risk and actively harmful against another, and the two risks arrive from opposite directions.

03

Focus on Form · 12 min

Scoping a hedge, and hedging a reviewer

Unscoped and scoped

Unscoped	Problem	Scoped
All dimensions shown are approximate.	Covers the setbacks you need to prove	Dimensions are approximate except those dimensioned to the property line, which are taken from the recorded survey.
This drawing is not a survey.	Disclaims exactly the boundary the argument rests on	This drawing is not a survey. Property lines are shown per the recorded survey dated 12/2023.
Lot dimensions should be verified.	Transfers a duty without naming who, or by when	Lot dimensions shall be verified by the contractor prior to construction.

The move is not “hedge less”. It is: keep the protection, and carve out the thing you are certain of. A scoped disclaimer is a stronger legal document as well as a stronger compliance one, because it distinguishes what you measured from what you inherited — which is the distinction a dispute would turn on anyway.

The other kind of hedge is aimed at a person, not a liability. When you write to a reviewer, hedging buys you distance: you can correct them, question them, or read their comment differently, without the sentence saying “you are wrong”.

Diplomatic distance

Formal, standard, and not sarcastic in a US professional register. Listen and repeat.

04

Controlled Practice · 16 min

What is each hedge doing?

Lexical Matching

Match each hedge to the work it does. Click the phrase, then its function.

Protects against a dimensional claim — and prevents the drawing from proving any dimension, including the ones you need

Disclaims boundary accuracy, which is precisely what a setback argument depends on

Transfers a duty to somebody else without naming who carries it or when it falls due

Introduces a correction without asserting that the reviewer was wrong

Fixes your reading of an ambiguous comment in writing, so a misunderstanding surfaces now

Reports something you believe but have not verified, without claiming it as established fact

Key Word Transformation · B2+

Rewrite each blunt sentence as something you could actually send. Use the word given, unchanged.

Your measurement is wrong. NOTE

I think you mean the rear wall, not the side wall. UNDERSTAND

The old drawing we copied might be wrong. APPEARS

We guessed where the property line was. ASSUMED

We are not paying for a full survey. RATHER

Teacher note Watch for over-hedging here, which is the opposite failure and just as common: “We would perhaps respectfully note that it may possibly appear that…” One hedge per sentence. Two reads as evasive.

05

Communicative Task · 10 min

Rewrite your own note

Task card

The general note on your Sheet L0, and comment 3

Rewrite the note so it still protects you but no longer defeats your setback argument.

Keep the protection. You genuinely did not survey the lot.
Carve out what you are certain of, and say where that certainty comes from.
Read the new note aloud and ask: could comment 3 still be written against it?

06

Feedback · 4 min

Protection or proof?

Go through the rest of your general notes. How many are unscoped hedges of the same kind? You are not looking for sentences to delete — you are looking for sentences that cover more than they need to.

07

Wrap-up · 4 min

Before the next lesson

Homework. Measure the rear retaining wall on Silverwood at its highest point, and find out what the wall is made of. Next lesson you are disagreeing with comment 2, and you will need both.