Eliminating disclaimers to strengthen your writing

Hi Coworker!

Just wanted to poke my head in a check to see if you were able to complete that task. If I am looking at the calendar it looks like maybe you were supposed to have it to me Monday? No worries at all! Not sure if this makes sense, but maybe if you just let me know when you’re done I can go ahead and get started on my side!

This might not work, but I have an idea. What if we…

You get it. You’ve been there! Written communication is hard because we want to ensure that we relay the right tone. Disclaimers, excited punctuation, and filler words might feel like you’re softening your message and coming off as approachable, but you’re also coming off as insecure.

Also, imagine you got this email. There’s so much fluff I’m almost more insulted that I have to read it all! In fact, I just might not read it at all — save it for later, and then accidentally forget about it.

Okay, so do we go off the deep end in the other direction?

Hi Coworker…

Your task was due Monday, where is it?

This plan sucks. We need to do xyz instead.

First. I hate ellipses… They immediately take the tone in the negative zone for me. (I’m curious, let me know in the comments how you feel about them.)

If I was the recipient of this message I wouldn’t be keen on finishing my task any time soon. Or, I’d feel rushed, bad, and my work might not be as good. Now, on the flip side staying on top of work and organized is key too, but that’s a topic for a different blog.

So you’re in a dilemma. You want to come off as kind and collaborative, but straight to the punch. The key here is to eliminate your disclaimers. 

My friend Joel Goana has a great post on, How Just Checking In Kills Your Deal. In it he uses a fabulous quote a mentor once told him:

“When you use weak language, you are wasting everyone's time and you sound like you don’t know what you are doing.”

So how can you strengthen your language?

1. Just delete your “justs”.

2. Eliminate disclaimer phrases like “this might not make sense but”, “this might not work out but”— if it has a but, maybe it should butt out. Say your idea with confidence.

3. Take a look at your punctuation. I’m a very excited typer and I always have to change my “!” to “. “ - but it helps keep the inflection of your message focused.

4. Truly think about what you’re trying to convey. What question or information are you asking for. Make sure that’s clear. The ‘?’ in your message shouldn’t be you questioning your own self like in our first example. It should be the actual question.

5. Give your words room to breathe. You can add in the love without the fluff. Remember most people are reading email and messages on their mobile. Simple sentences separated by lines make it easier to skim

Hi Coworker!

I’m excited to get started on Task for Project and waiting on the handoff from you. 

When do you think you’ll have Task completed? Need anything from my end?

Thanks so much,

You can add in some love by asking if they need anything from you. We used ‘and’ instead of ‘but’ to give it a friendly tone. We kept it short and asked the question we want an answer too. There’s really not a huge point mentioning the Monday aspect either right now. For our purposes, we don’t need to know why it wasn’t completed Monday, we want to know when it will be completed.

Ready to strengthen your language?

It takes time and awareness to notice how you write, and how you can adjust your style to still be your voice — but more powerful.