Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
IMHO "X should be Y because..." is already a fairly abrasive formulation - it has a certain undertone of issuing a demand, you know ?

I'd personally go with something along the lines of "shouldn't" and similar enquiring and more neutral wordings.

Alas, it tends to be the shouting that's the most common.
Indeed "X should be Y" seems abrasive, in English. Let us not forget that many people here don't speak English as fluently or that their knowledge of the language is restricted to the grammatical and vocab level. By this I mean that people who don't speak English very well have also no understanding of such nuances such as what constitues an abrasive phrase, if indeed it contains no swear words.

In my native language it would be considered over-polite to say "please" after the tiniest of requests, in English (in the UK at least) it is practically necessary. Also in my language saying something equivalent of 'In my humble opinion I think that it would be better if you X" is over-wordy and might be perceived by some as conveying uncertainty or timidity.

All I am saying is that it should be taken into account, when appropriate, that not all languages have the same modes of speech; people who don't speak a foreign language well tend to just translate whatever they would say in their own language in a situation, they don't actually think in a foreign language.