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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7967
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Lucile Vaughan Payne's classic guide to the essay, [The Lively Art of Writing](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451627121), calls out "I think" specifically as weak writing. Now, it's been nearly 30 years years since I read this estimable guide, but to the best of my recollection, she says that writing "I think" is akin to saying timidly, "What I think isn't very important, but anyway what I think is..."

State your opinions forthrightly, without "weasel words." This has three benefits:

1. It demonstrates respect for the reader. The reader can be relied upon to recognize an opinion and to know that it is the author's without being reminded constantly, making it a waste of everyone's time to state this explicitly.
2. It doesn't continually remind the author that he or she is reading, drawing them out of the piece and giving them the opportunity to turn their valuable attention elsewhere.
3. It provides your opinions with more rhetorical force, implying that, even though they are obviously opinions, you have thought them through sufficiently that they may as well be facts. Of course, for this to hold up in the reader's mind, this implication should be true!

Original score: 7