My attempt: When in doubt, try find what is the thing and what’s not the thing.

When it comes to communicating well in English, it’s easy to get stuck between words that seem very similar. For example: poll vs vote, citizen vs civilian, politician vs representative. When you don’t know the difference between words, try to find what makes them different from each other.

For example: a poll can be an opinion poll, but a vote is only for an election. So all votes are a kind of poll, but not all polls are specifically votes.

Another example: a politician politically represents the will of their constituents. A representative may represent any company, organization, or government. So representatives generally represent groups of people, but politicians specifically represent their constituents in government.

Another example: what’s the difference between plausible and reasonable? Something reasonable means it’s logical or can be reached through reasoning. Something plausible is a story that makes sense, a good enough story that could actually happen. So something reasonable needs to have a relatively consistent logical thread to it, whole something plausible needs to make enough sense as to be possibly true.

When you are asking if something is plausible, you are asking if the story is true or if the reasons given make enough sense to make the story true. When you are asking if something is reasonable, you are asking if using your reasoning ability, you would come to the same conclusions.

If you can’t choose between two things, describe what’s different between the two things.

E.g. I’m hungry, I could choose an apple or a sandwich.

Hmm. An apple is crisp and refreshing, the sandwich is dry and will make me thirsty.