5 exercises — qualifying claims accurately in code reviews, specs, blog posts, and status updates.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
You're presenting a performance benchmark result to stakeholders. Which sentence best uses hedging to qualify your claim?
"tends to be around … in typical … scenarios" is accurate hedging — it acknowledges the result is real while specifying the conditions. Option A over-claims with no qualification. Option C sounds uncertain and informal ("we think"). Option D is over-hedged to the point of being meaningless. Good hedging is precise: it tells the reader under what conditions the claim holds.
2 / 5
In a code review you write: "This approach _____ cause issues under high concurrency." You're not certain — you want to flag a potential problem.
May (and might) signal that something is a possibility worth investigating, not a certainty. Code review comments like "This may cause a race condition", "This approach might not handle edge cases correctly", or "This could lead to memory leaks" are professional and accurate — they flag risk without asserting facts you haven't confirmed.
3 / 5
Which sentence from a technical blog post shows the best hedged claim?
"are widely considered to" is a classic hedging phrase that attributes the claim to the broader community rather than asserting it as absolute fact. This protects the writer's credibility because the claim is nuanced. Useful hedging phrases for technical writing: "is generally accepted that", "research suggests", "in most cases", "under typical conditions", "it appears that", "evidence indicates". Option D over-hedges with both "personally" and "potentially".
4 / 5
Fill in the blank: "It _____ (seem/appears/looks/sounds) that the bottleneck _____ (is/lies/sits) in the database layer based on the current traces."
"It seems that … lies in …" is clean, confident hedging. seems / appears / suggests are impersonal framing verbs that soften a claim without undermining it. Adding "definitely" removes the hedge entirely; adding "maybe" or multiple hedges degrades credibility. The phrase "based on the current traces" further signals that this is a data-based assessment, not speculation — always include your evidence source when hedging.
5 / 5
Your estimation for a feature is uncertain. Which response to "How long will this take?" is most professional?
Professional estimation combines: (1) a basis ("Based on similar work"), (2) a range ("2–4 days" rather than an exact number), (3) a dependency that explains the uncertainty ("depends on the API response shape"). Option A sounds overconfident. Option B is unprofessional. Option D over-hedges — multiple hedges in a single sentence signal confusion, not precision.