Once we know something, it becomes hard to imagine what it feels like not to know it.
More quotesLovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.
Every adjective queues in the correct order. Move one and an English speaker unable to name the rule will know something has gone peculiar.
Expertise often looks like this from inside: a feeling arrives before its explanation. An editor hears drag. An experienced support worker recognises a familiar failure through unfamiliar words. A designer sees that a standard control sits wrongly. Years of exposure have compressed countless comparisons into “that feels off”.
Managers dislike this because intuition resists neat scoring. So they either worship it as magic or ban it as subjective. Both responses are lazy.
Tacit judgement is evidence worth investigating. It may contain a real pattern nobody has articulated. It may also contain prejudice, convention or a rule whose original purpose expired years ago. “I just know” is a useful alarm and a terrible final verdict.
Examples can pull the hidden rule into view. What changes between the version that works and the one that jars? Does another expert react similarly? Can a beginner improve once the distinction is named? Explanation makes expertise transferable and, crucially, challengeable.
Some knowledge will remain difficult to state. Difficulty hardly makes it supernatural. Language is trailing practice.
Green great dragons still sound wrong. A writer can fix them without reciting opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose. Curiosity about the ear’s objection matters more than declaring the ear infallible.