One idea of using adjectives is to describe things or situations effectively.

In their effort to persuade readers, advertisers somewhat transformed this idea. At some point, they started to use comparative adjectives like better, faster or newer. If they could share how much their product was better than others, so the idea, they would be able to sell more.

But there was a problem. Comparing one product with the other wasn’t allowed or too tricky.

They ended up with the shortcut of using words like better or newer while avoiding to share how they actually compared. Along the way, the meaning of “better”, “faster”, etc was lost.

Today, using such adjectives has become common use in any situation in which someone tries to persuade others but doesn’t know how to do so. They are interjected in the belief to be more persuasive. They now have transformed themselves to adornments. They are superfluous but continue to serve the belief to allow to persuade more easily.

Actually, they don’t help to gain a better view or understanding. Asking the person to explain what these adjectives mean in the given context usually will be perceived as challenging. They might even feel trapped. It shows, that using such comparative adjectives fulfill the role of drivers, thus indicating that the user is somewhat stressed.

The tension between the wish to persuade and the lack of ability to describe things or situations properly leads into a shortcut. It’s a wish to hurry up the persuasion process.

The antidote to this stress is to use a direct way, one that makes the effort to describe the thing or situation.

This requires to trust but also to develop one’s own ability to describe things and situations.

Interestingly, the ability to persuade comes with that trust.