What if I didn’t see?

By The Grumpy Writer

April 19, 2009

Tags: Don't always write what you say

Category: Editing, Slang

1 Comment »

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #011: What if I didn’t see?

I was preparing for one of my classes the other day—Managerial Oral Communication—and I decided to revisit some videos from past sessions to see if there was anything specific I should address. There was one video in which one of my students, while giving a five-minute speech, used the phrase “If we see” about 25 times, an average of once every 12 seconds.

Here are a few examples of how the phrase might be used:

• Here, if we see that Customer A wants to purchase two units of widgets. . .
• If we see the infant mortality rate in this village, it is 15%.
• If we see the cropping pattern, paddy is grown in most of the cultivable land in this district.

The way it is used reminds me of the overuse of “like” in US English (well, California English in particular). It is essentially a placeholder, or an opportunity for presenters to organize their ideas (although, as any presenting or speech coach will tell you, this method of pacing your speech sounds really amateurish).

OK. Fine. When we speak, we sometimes need to buy some time, and long pauses can be awkward for everyone. But why would you put this in writing?

“Aw. Come on!” you say. “You don’t really see this in writing.”

Except that I do. . . quite often, actually. Sometimes, the samples are similar to the ones I’ve already pointed out, but more often, I find it being used like “If we see Table 1, this presents data about. . . .”

So, what if I didn’t see?

Well, if I didn’t see, that would be somewhat horrible. But if my students realized what they were doing to my eyes, then I might get to observe more streamlined writing and speaking. I could simply read “Table 1 presents” (3 words instead of 7) or hear “The infant mortality rate in this village is 5%” (9 words instead of 13). Perhaps, if they saw what I see, the work delivered to me would be more concise and effective.

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