I attended a seminar last week and the speaker basically over used the words "According To". I think this is very bad, but of course he will disagree. The fundamental problem is you lose the accountability if you use too many other people statement to make it a point. It ends up your audience will think like this - since there are so many "according to", why do I still want to listen to you? I may as well listen to the person that you rely on.
You can use according to, but try to give your comment or argument towards the statement that made by another person whether you disagree or agree and also tells the reasons why. Please don't ever use that to support your idea. The even better what you can do is re-paraphrase without using the words "according to" because somehow I just feel that the words "according to" try to push away the responsibility to someone else. Don't you think so? For example, you can said something like this: Person X says this too and I totally agree with that because [reason1], [reason 2] and [reason x] rather that using the words "according to".
Even from your day-to-day work, whenever you give a talk, speak to your clients or even talk to your boss, you should always try to avoid using "According To". This is basically to make sure all the words that come from your mouth, you're responsible for that and have 100% confident on it. Then, people will only trust you and believe in you.
So, what do you think? How often do you use the words "according to"? In fact, it is very "nice words" to use especially if you want to push away responsibility and you do not want to own your words, isn't it?
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Try to Avoid Using "According To"
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9 Comments:
mmmm i tend to use "i think", "in my opinion", "it depends" a lot. Not so much on "according to" unless it's a fact/data that I've obtained from the internet to support my points.
or when i wanna point finger at someone so that screwing things up wont feel as bad for me. kakakak. just kidding :p
I use "It depends" a lot because most the answers are really "it depends"! Not sure if that is a good thing to say that too often.
Yes, usually when you use "according to" is to avoid or push away the responsibility. Sometimes we will no choice to have to do that.
If you use "according to" to support your idea, may not be a good thing. But I see a lot people like to quote those expert to back them up, therefore they tend to use the "according to" a lot. Is it a good thing?
Great point. When one uses "according to", it is really almost saying that you do not have confidence in your own opinion. Best to say straight out "I believe" or "In my view".
Not 100% in agreement with you though. "According to" can be a reference made to some data quoted from someone's analysis or statistics. Need not always be a reference to what someone said. When it's made reference to data, I think it's fine. It's like saying "Base on", "With reference to". But if it's always used as a quote to someone's words, then I concur with you
Good point, I totally agree with you that is fine for using it for data but not as reference to someone's idea or comment.
Saying "According to" too much annoyed me a lot in college- not only when trying to avoid it while citing sources in my papers but also while listening to my Professor's lectures. It can get very repetitive far too quickly. Thanks for the tips!
Thanks for the sharing, I have the same feeling with you, not during the college time but after I came out to work.
I think what you say is very important and timely. So many people misuse the word and do not take responsibility for what they say or do. So they talk with subtle ambiguity.
Or sometimes they just use it in purpose. :)
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