The same request can be an order, a plea, or a working sentence — the difference is two dials, not two vocabularies. Set who you are writing to, then move softening and firmness and watch the message rewrite itself live. Your target is the shaded zone: hedge the relationship, never the requirement.
Both dials are real. Stripping every softener out produces messages that read as hostile; stacking softeners around a real requirement produces messages nobody can tell are mandatory. The fix is never “delete every just” — it is putting the hedges around the relationship and leaving the deadline bare.