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Comment by hellofunk | Hacker News Reader

> It is important to note

> It is important to emphasize

I am getting so disappointed by how widespread this wasteful use of the English language has become. The phrase is just filler and means nothing, yet it is used everywhere, nearly every HN thread has someone who uses it. If you need to note something, then note it. By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it." Further saying that it is important is a crutch.

This is probably why copy editors get so frustrated when technical people write things, because the idiom is particularly pervasive in the tech blogosphere.

We all need to do a service to the value of our words and see [0 ... 3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:It_should_be_noted

[1] http://womeninwetlands.blogspot.nl/2013/12/it-is-important-t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%22Note_that%22_is_u...

[3] http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/266529/similar-ph...

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Well this is 9 days old so I doubt you or anyone will see it. But I really want to say that this is just how language evolves. Phrases appear, become common, and even change meaning, subtly or entirely, from the original.

I don't think it's a waste of space. I think it conveys some information. If you remove it from a paragraph, the paragraph feels different. The meaning slightly changes. In a literal sense it may not mean anything, but I feel it does convey some intention from the speaker.

I kind of agree but I think there's a few subtle changes as to how you phrase it.

I sometimes type "Please note <something important>" to make sure the recipient pays extra attention to this bit and actually notices it, because people have a tendency to read through email very quickly and skip vital parts. I know this for a fact based on stupid responses I've gotten.

"Please note" never implies it should actually be noted on a piece of paper, just notice it and ready it thoroughly.

"It should be noted" - however, could be interpreted as you want the recipient to actually write it on a note.

Edit: And yes, Tesla's use of "It is important to note" kind of falls in the gray zone for me... but I've never even considered this an issue

Not everything that is important enough to write down has the same importance. While the phrase may be over-used, it is merely one in a long range of methods we use to draw more attention to statements we believe have particular importance at a specific point.

If the statement is not genuinely something that needs particular attention, then I agree that such phrases should be avoided.

However Wikipedia's policies in are not particularly relevant here, as in the case of an encyclopaedia which pieces of information are important depends entirely on what the reader is looking for at any given moment - the purpose is to make the information available, not to direct the reader to pay special attention to particular bits of information.

In many other contexts, the purpose of the text is not to merely make information available, but to influence the reader, and in many cases to specifically draw their attention to specific pieces of information. E.g. consider safety instructions or documentation of something where there are serious caveats.

In those situations various forms of emphasis are important, and using specific phrases to convey that a given statement is more important can be one valid way of creating emphasis.

The Wikipedia policy is just an example, of course, not a suggestion that we follow that site's editing guidelines. But it does show good practice.

> By putting it into words, you have said "this is important enough to actually say it."

But you have not said this is important enough for you to read, right now, nor especially important enough to remember every detail. If everything written were important to read, we'd spend our lifetimes failing to work through the backlog - of every word ever written since the dawn of writing. There are key points to remember, and then supporting facts to be forgotten after they've done their job of arguing for those key points, and this language emphasizes their key points (in defense of Tesla, naturally, rather than the mundane statistics.)

> Further saying that it is important is a crutch.

Perhaps. But remember - crutches are legitimate medical devices built to serve a need, they have purpose! I tend to use the terser "IMPORTANT:", "NOTE WELL:", "N.B.:"[1], "NOTE:", etc. to call attention to high priority stuff. I'll especially use this style of emphasis in code, where I can't make my text bold, underlined, large-fonted, red, blinking for emphasis, embedded into a modal dialog you can't dismiss for the first 10 seconds, just to make sure you read the damn thing. These are the notes I deem to have e.g. a 100:1 time saved/spent ratio, where I need my fellow programmers to stop skimming as a thousand inane comments before have perhaps trained them to do, and to instead save us all a lot of time and energy by reading the important thing.

But being that terse in a press release like this would come across as incredibly tone deaf and insensitive. Try replacing "It is important to emphasize that" with "NOTE:" and "It is important to note that" with "IMPORTANT:". The paragraphs themselves might read fine, but in the broader context of the press release it'd be cringe worthy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nota_bene

> Try replacing "It is important to emphasize that" with "NOTE:" and "It is important to note that" with "IMPORTANT:".

That would be an equal problem as the original and not how a good writer should solve the wording.

Compare this to, for example, the press releases by a major news organization when it admits it got something important quite wrong. There are many ways to use our language as it was designed without getting meta.

[4] https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Because, Orwell was awesome.

On the other hand, dashing off a quick comment isn't exactly the pinnacle of writing. "It is important to note" is lazy writing. So many of my comments here have the terrible sins of passive voice. I think; in my opinion; just; very; i throw in useless phrases all the time.

Forgive us for writing a long letter, we didn't have the time to write a short one.

> The phrase is just filler and means nothing, yet it is used everywhere

I guess this is due to legal concerns (which also provided us with pages-long email footer legalese bullcrap).

I don't think this has anything to due with legality. A legal contract, for example, doesn't need this phrase anywhere for the words to be legally binding: after all, they are in the contract itself, therefore don't need any special modifier.

Some clauses and phrases are required to have extra attention called to them to be binding, which is why you see some paragraphs bolded, or all capitals.

Bolding and capitalization are not wasting words, however.

It is important to note that there is some writing that sounds like a college graduate wrote it and some writing that is good.

There is no overlap.

Compare these two versions of the first 2 paragraphs. The second version actually emphasizes the point better, without saying "it is important to emphasize."

Original:

We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.

Following our standard practice, Tesla informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred. What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.

Simple edit to one sentence:

The NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.

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