In My Humble Opinion

IMHO. It's an acronym I've used for years and for almost as long as I've been aware of it I've heard people say that it's a redundant expression, because obviously if you're writing something it's your own opinion. I've always seen it as more of a courtesy though, something you add after a potentially controversial statement to show that you're being polite. Especially on message boards and forums you never really know who'll have a reasonable discussion with you and who'll descend into a gibbering moron.

But after reading an article recently on how to edit your own writing, I've started to think about its final piece of advice more and more. I've sometimes read through my work and it's felt like quite a slog but I wasn't quite sure why. I now realise just how often I repeat unsure sounding phrases like "I think", "I believe", "It seems like" etc. I guess I've always put them in because I thought I would sound arrogant otherwise but especially on a blog it starts to seem pointless, as if you can't express your honest opinions there then where can you?

I've noticed an immediate difference in my writing by homing in on these wishy-washy opinion highlighters and just cutting them out. Things seem to flow better and it's less of an effort to read back, which is really the desired end result for people reading your blog too. I've also found it an easy place to start when editing, as it can sometimes be difficult to figure out the simplest form a sentence can take. Pulling out the "I think"s makes you examine what remains and ask whether it still reads correctly or if any other parts of the sentence are unnecessary.

Maybe it will make me sound arrogant in the long run but at the moment I'm a lot happier with my writing after being completely ruthless about these phrases. I think that in a sense it's not about being arrogant, it's about standing by what you believe in and showing that you care about your subject matter.