Question
Why does descriptive language fail?
Quick Answer
Believing you've described something when you've actually evaluated it. 'She interrupted me' sounds factual, but 'interrupted' carries evaluative weight — it implies rudeness, disrespect, intentional transgression. The purely descriptive version: 'She began speaking while I was mid-sentence.' This.
The most common reason descriptive language fails: Believing you've described something when you've actually evaluated it. 'She interrupted me' sounds factual, but 'interrupted' carries evaluative weight — it implies rudeness, disrespect, intentional transgression. The purely descriptive version: 'She began speaking while I was mid-sentence.' This distinction is subtle enough that most people fail to catch evaluative language in their own speech for weeks after learning about it.
The fix: Pick one judgment you made today — about a person, a decision, or an outcome. Write the evaluative version first (the label you applied). Then rewrite it as pure description: only what a camera and microphone would have recorded. Compare the two sentences. Notice what the evaluative version added that wasn't in the raw data.
The underlying principle is straightforward: Practice describing facts before applying labels like good bad right or wrong.
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