Thlog # 8

Well here is my weekly thlog. This week was interesting because of the presentations. I honestly, learned a lot especially in terms of using hedged language. Before, I used to follow the notion that you should always assert what you are saying and go all in. This was supported by my high school teachers who said if I should any uncertainty it would kill the argument. Using hedged language reduces the the amount of weight a claim has in a sense without losing the force. In writing, especially if its going to be read by others, if you make a claim and assert it is the absolute truth and its proven wrong, it makes the whole piece laughable. People will believe the rest of the paper is just nonsense and stop reading. Using hedged language makes it where you have some leeway if your claim is disproved because you didn’t say it was the absolutely correct. One merely said it may be correct not it is correct.  This personally affects, me in my writing since a lot of the papers I have to write are argumentative and require the usage of outside sources to support our claims. One has to be careful in choosing outside support because if the support is proven wrong the ones claim and argument loses the weight behind it. It becomes weak and unbelievable. My group did a presentation on commas and semicolons which helped me a lot personally. I know somewhat of how semicolons were used but I didn’t know the proper way to use them. While looking up facts for my groups presentation I saw the uses of semicolons and how they can improve my personal writing for college papers and life in general.