The Power Of The Word "But"

“I think you look great, but that dress has a few wrinkles.”

“You are doing a great job, but you need to edit your work more carefully.”

“We think you have a wonderful product, but we don’t have the budget for it this month.

What do each of these statements have in common? They each use the word “but” to connect two separate thoughts, and in all cases, the second part of the statement cancels out the first part. Let’s look at each and then I’ll suggest some better alternatives.

Statement #1

“I think you look great, but that dress has a few wrinkles.”

Excuse me, but how great can she look if the dress has a few wrinkles? Men, I assure you that she has completely forgotten the first part about the dress looking great and is only thinking about the wrinkles!

The entire compliment is completely destroyed by using the word “but”.

Statement #2

“You are doing a great job, but you need to edit your work more carefully.”

The same thing happens here. The value of the compliment is greatly reduced by the use of the word “but”.

As you can see, using he word “but” has the effect of canceling or diluting the first part of the sentence.

Statement #3

“We think you have a wonderful product, but we don’t have the budget for it this month."

How wonderful do they think it is?

Apparently not wonderful enough to allocate some of their budget dollars to it. With one part of the statement, they are saying how great it is, the other part says that it is not all that great and canceling out the first part.

Two Better Ways

Solution #1

Use the word “and” instead of “but”. Let’s substitute the word “and” in each of these sentences and see how it can be used to preserve the meaning of the first part of the sentence and still convey the meaning of the second part. Here they are:

“I think you look great, and that dress has a few wrinkles.”

“You are doing a great job, and you need to edit your work more carefully.”

“We think you have a wonderful product, and we don’t have the budget for it this month.

Solution #2

Reverse the order and use the positive part to cancel the negative part. You can still use the word “but”.

That dress has a few wrinkles, but I think you look great” 

You need to edit your work more carefully, but you are doing a great job.”

We don’t have the budget for it this month, but we think you have a wonderful product.”