"... if that makes sense."

[MyThreeWords]

Anyone else getting a bit fed up with people ending perfectly simple utterances with "if that makes sense"?

Fine if you are trying to communicate something that you yourself struggle to understand, and you feel you might not have worded it very clearly.

Not fine if you are saying things like "I just like coffee more than tea, if that makes sense."

I think its the newest way of being overly tentative and appeasing in conversations. It is a way of softening what you say, often out of an anxiety about appearing to have an opinion that others might disagree with or get upset by. It's a bit like when we put an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence to make it seem more jovial and consequently less assertive/confrontational/etc - if that makes sense.😉

No, I'm not fed up of it. I don't see it as something to care about.

It’s not something that would bother me enough to start a thread about.

Verbal habit. Like using the word literally. It does have appeasing undertones but honestly can’t get worked up about it myself.

Always amazing to see people posting on a thread to say that the topic is something not worth posting about.

Do you all only like to chat about deeply serious things?

I’ve only ever heard it used when trying to help someone understand something. So at work when helping a colleague understand where the new spreadsheet is located and what data to input. That sort of scenario.

Far less irritating than those who put "no?"at the end of a post with a sort of implied head tilt. Eg "I'm sure you can walk fifty yards with a toddler, no?"

Are you a very irritable person in general OP? I can't say I have any feelings at all about this, let alone strong enough feelings to start a thread about it.

My manager at work does that when she’s making a point. We’re public sector so god forbid anyone just says something to the point.

I've never heard it used like that at all. I tend to use it at times because I waffle a bit when explaining technical things at work - and sometimes the answer is 'no not really can you explain that bit again 😅 '

I’m with you. I find it annoying. What is more annoying is that I am finding that I, too am saying this. And noticing it. And annoying myself.

Today, in fact I have a meeting with someone, who at every previous meeting has lectured me about the same subject, punctuating the whole thing regularly with ‘if that makes sense?’

(what? The thing that I already knew about and that you’ve repeated to me on a weekly basis for the last 8 weeks? Yes, it does make sense ((though the fact of having these meetings does not now make sense))

I see this on social media all the time and it’s very annoying. Stacey Solomon and Hinch say it a lot.

I think it's a management training course thing. Dsis started unconsciously adding it to the end of sentences a lot, that's where she thinks it originated.

Yanbu. It’s irritating and unnecessary, especially when people use it to imply that you mightn’t have understood their very simple point.

I was hoping for a fun chat about changing linguistic habits. Shouldn't have put it in AIBU, I guess, since this is the topic where people feel they have a licence to be pointlessly joyless..

I would have put it in Pedants' Corner except that these days people seem mostly to use that topic for moaning about regional variations in language use, or shaming people for simple typos.

I do say it but in a classroom to a room full of teenagers so I think it's valid in that context, but I agree on general principle that it's annoying as a verbal tic, similar to "like" every few words.

Ah, lots more interesting replies now. Glad to see I'm not the only one who has noticed this trend!

I guess it's one of those phrases that once you have noticed it, is hard to "un-notice". A guy I work with has a really irritating habit of saying "to a certain extent" in completely inappropriate context, eg "I rang her but to a certain extent she wasn't there". How is that even possible? 😂

@TheTortiePuffinNeedsHerBreakfast That reminds me of a lovely little boy I met at one of my children's activities, who had obviously just discovered the word "technically" and really loved it. Everything he told me about was "technically".

Things like "Technically I have sugar puffs for breakfast; technically I'm in Reception at school; etc.

The word was like a marble in his pocket that he couldn't resist handling for its lovely feel.

Still coming across as unusually irritable, OP.

I think it’s considerably less annoying than ‘if you know what I mean’ appended to every statement, which is a virtual tic with some people.

To me, ‘if you know what I mean’ is much less annoying simply because it has been used so much for so long that its literal meaning is no longer salient. It just seems like the verbal tic that it is, and I no longer really hear it.

But 'if that makes sense' has only relatively recently been used in this way, so its literal meaning still jumps out. It really sounds as if someone is querying whether some perfectly straightforward utterance makes sense.

Once it has bedded in, I expect I will stop noticing it.

I do find it a bit irritating.
But on the scale of things that rub me up the wrong way about how people talk these days it's not even close to the top.

I've always been a radio 4 listener - though the amount i can stick listening to it now is miniscule compared to in the past - and I'm often truly amazed about the weird way people pronounce words these days. I totally stop listening to what the person is talking about and begin pondering on people's life and education that leads them to not be able to pronounce what used be straightforward words but now which obviously are outside their experience of common usage.

As a total non sequitur I was listening to some of the works put on to celebrate the centenary of Richard Burton and as always the beauty of his voice and pronunciation made me want to cry. I just wish people didn't seem to deliberately set out these days to murder the English language.

Everyone has these “placeholder” phrases. You see? Do you see what I mean? Does that make sense? I bet you have one too. No it doesn’t bother me. I actually find it quite interesting the different placeholders people use.

@SleepyandtiredandlazyI find it fascinating when a BBC reporter/presenter suddenly starts pronouncing a familiar word differently. I’ve noticed it quite a number of times over the years.

“If that makes sense” has been around for decades though, I don’t know why you’re saying it’s new?

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm another one that thinks you're easily irritated.