Cue: I say the word “clearly”, “hopefully”, or “obviously”.
This definitely doesn’t always indicate rationalization, but I say one of those words (and probably some others that I haven’t explicitly noticed) with much greater probability if I’m rationalizing than if I’m not, and saying them fairly reliably kicks off an “ORLY” process.
Oooh, I just realized: if you can pick out words like this when you’re writing, and you can code in your text editor, then your computer can catch this cue for you. (like writegood-mode in emacs). I’ve had this prevent ugly sentences in technical writing, but catching “rationalization words” in written sentences would also be useful when, say, writing a journal, or writing down an argument.
More awesomely, the highlighting is immediate in that mode, so you get tight feedback about the sentences you’re typing.
Cue: I say the word “clearly”, “hopefully”, or “obviously”.
This definitely doesn’t always indicate rationalization, but I say one of those words (and probably some others that I haven’t explicitly noticed) with much greater probability if I’m rationalizing than if I’m not, and saying them fairly reliably kicks off an “ORLY” process.
Oooh, I just realized: if you can pick out words like this when you’re writing, and you can code in your text editor, then your computer can catch this cue for you. (like writegood-mode in emacs). I’ve had this prevent ugly sentences in technical writing, but catching “rationalization words” in written sentences would also be useful when, say, writing a journal, or writing down an argument.
More awesomely, the highlighting is immediate in that mode, so you get tight feedback about the sentences you’re typing.