One finding, four treatments
A. Emissions have fallen.
B. It may possibly perhaps be the case that emissions could have fallen somewhat.
C. According to one study, emissions in industrialised economies appear to have fallen by roughly four per cent since 2019.
D. I think emissions have probably fallen.
Five questions.
1. Which claims the most?
2. Which claims the least?
3. Which is the most precise?
4. How many different slots does C fill?
5. What is wrong with B?
The stacking rule
Across the slots, never within one
The difference between prose that reads as precise and prose that reads as evasive is not the number of hedges. It is where they are.
According to one study, emissions in industrialised economies appear to have fallen by roughly four per cent. Four hedges — source, scope, evidence, magnitude — and it reads as somebody who knows exactly what they know. It may possibly perhaps be the case that emissions could have fallen somewhat. Four hedges, all of them on the probability of the same fact, and it reads as somebody who does not want to be quoted.
So the rule is short and it is testable: hedge across the slots, never within one. One instrument per slot, and as many slots as the claim actually needs. Two hedges in the same slot cancel rather than accumulate, and the third and fourth do active damage.
The second question is how many slots a given piece of writing wants, and that is a question about genre rather than about honesty. An abstract fills all seven, tersely. A committee paper fills scope, source and magnitude, and adds probability wherever a recommendation follows. Journalism uses source and scope and rounds the magnitude. Spoken discussion manages two, occasionally three; a speaker who fills five sounds as though they are being deposed.
And there is a failure in the other direction that this unit has not yet named. Hedging something you actually know is not modesty, it is imprecision — and in a policy context it is worse than that, because it hands the decision to somebody with less information than you have. If you have the number, give the number.
One last confusion worth heading off. A hedge removes certainty. The agentless passive removes people. Mistakes may possibly have been made does both at once, and that is why institutional prose of that kind is unreadable rather than merely cautious: the reader cannot tell whether the writer is unsure what happened or unwilling to say who did it.
Three questions.
1. What is the stacking rule?
2. What is wrong with hedging something you are certain of?
3. What does mistakes may possibly have been made do?
How many slots does this genre want?
The register map
| Genre | Slots it wants | What happens if you get it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Research abstract | All seven, filled tersely. | Under-hedge and a reviewer stops reading. This is the one genre where more is genuinely better. |
| Committee or policy paper | Scope, source, magnitude — plus probability wherever a recommendation follows. | Under-hedge and somebody acts on a finding that does not apply to them. |
| Journalism | Source and scope; magnitude rounded; probability sparingly. | Over-hedge and it is unreadable; under-hedge and it becomes the press release. |
| Exam essay | Scope and source, and one probability hedge in the thesis. | Under-hedging costs marks in every band descriptor that mentions “appropriate” claims. |
| Spoken discussion | Two, occasionally three. | Five hedges in one spoken sentence sounds like somebody being deposed rather than somebody thinking. |
| Press release | In practice, none. | That is the problem described in Lesson 2, and it is a choice rather than an accident. |
The rule, and the two failures it catches.
Hedge across the slots, never within one.
It may possibly perhaps be the case that… — four instruments, one slot. Cancels.
According to one study, emissions in industrialised economies appear to have fallen by roughly four per cent. — four instruments, four slots. Accumulates.
And the third failure, which is the quietest: hedging a slot you are certain about. If you have the figure, the date, the source or the scope, give it. A hedge in front of something known is not caution; it is a refusal to be useful.
Eight sentences. Match each to what is wrong — or right — about its hedging.
Four questions.
1. Four hedges in four slots reads as…
2. Which genre genuinely wants the most hedging?
3. You know the exact figure. What do you do?
4. What does an agentless passive remove?
Too much, and too little
Rewrite each line so that it claims exactly what is supported — some need hedges added, some need them taken out. The words in the avoid list must not appear.
Over-hedged → precise
It may possibly perhaps be the case that emissions could have fallen somewhat.
Under-hedged → precise
Solar is now the cheapest form of electricity in the world.
Over-hedged → precise
I kind of think that maybe recycling might not really work that well.
Under-hedged → precise
The data proves it.
Over-hedged → precise
It is possible that the figure might potentially be around approximately four per cent.
Under-hedged → precise
Everyone agrees that this is the most urgent problem we face.
Eight sentences. Seven need work; one is correct as written.
1. It may possibly be the case that it could perhaps help.
2. Solar is cheaper than gas. — true in most markets, not in all
3. It appears to me that the figures are wrong.
4. Cities of this size tend to possibly have worse air quality.
5. The study proves the scheme works everywhere.
6. Mistakes may possibly have been made by somebody. — you know exactly who missed the deadline, and so does the reader
7. According to one study, emissions appear to have fallen by roughly four per cent. — correct as written
8. I would perhaps tentatively suggest that it might arguably be worth possibly considering.
Same claim, three audiences
Task card · Writing and speaking · Pairs · 10 minutes
One environmental finding you know something about — from your reading, your work, your city, your course. Real if possible, plausible if not.
Write it three times for three audiences, and count the slots each version fills.
- Version 1 — a committee paper (about 30 words): scope, source, magnitude, and a probability hedge because a recommendation follows.
- Version 2 — a post or a headline (under 15 words): choose the one or two slots that would mislead somebody if left out. You cannot have the rest.
- Version 3 — said aloud to a friend: two hedges maximum, and say it to your partner rather than reading it.
- Then compare. Which slots survived all three versions? Those are the load-bearing ones for this claim, and they are not the same ones for every claim.
Version 2 is the difficult one and it is the honest test. Fifteen words will not carry seven slots, so something has to go — and the discipline is choosing which omission would actually mislead a reader, rather than which one is easiest to cut. That choice is what separates a short honest claim from a press release.
What survived all three
Two questions.
1. Which slots survived into your fifteen-word version?
2. What happened to the spoken version?
One per slot
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What is the stacking rule?
2. You are certain of the figure. What do you write?
Next. Twenty-six minutes of policy discussion in which every claim has to survive one question, asked by anybody, at any point: how do you know that?