“But”
Posted on March 26th, 2009 by Niket
We hear the following sentence construction a lot these days:
“I am not a [insert a general label here], but I believe […]”
A few months back, we were discussing this and Vani made a comment that I agree with. You can safely ignore what comes before “but”. Keeping only “I believe […]” will not change the message at all. For example:
Statement: “I am not closed-minded but I think women who wear jeans are asking for it.”
What it means: “I think women who wear jeans are asking for it.”
What it really means: “I am closed-minded”
(PS: Not applicable to all statements with a “but”, but only to the construct above.)
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