As a child, I hated museums. They were full of more or less identifiable things, labelled with meaningless names, dates and places. In other words: They were boring. Guided tours did nothing to change that. They merely herded us around, restricting our movement and making us wait in front of things that the guide deemed interesting. By the time I was fifteen, I had been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that museums were torture.

You’re in the middle of a conversation, but then: “Oh, there’s Claudia. Sorry, I really need to talk to her”. - You’ve given a talk, there’s no question in the Q&A, and the moderator asks something superficial before sending you off with a polite round of applause. - You’re halfway through a lecture, looking out at hundreds of blank faces, and no one answers the question you asked. This is boredom in action.

While writing the blog article that was supposed to be next, I noticed that I keep using the phrase “stupid” question. Why? Because everyone knows what I mean when I say it. But the question I am referring to is not a stupid question, which is why I use parentheses or add the adjective “so-called”. Problem solved, right? No.

Our memory likes things it has seen before. The phrase “stupid question” is well known, which is why I found myself using it. But with each encounter, we make it stronger. Which is a useful quality for a phrase, unless it is offensive and counterproductive like this one.

Lexical hedges are an essential part of good scientific writing, but for writers they are tripwires that need to be removed unless a writer wants to get rid of their readers. For a long time this was a conflict I did not know how to approach.

Phrases like “seems to” and “may” are valued by scientists as expressions of uncertainty in an environment that contains varying degrees of uncertainty but is almost never free of it. In writing, the same phrases are spurned as useless clutter that disrupts the flow of reading. Does this mean that scientists, like writers, need to avoid hedging if they want their writing to be accessible and engaging for all readers?