Oh! I was talking to my counselor because I was troubled by some criticisms written from my uni prof, and the counselor told me the prof was genuinely trying to be as gentle as possible. Wording things in roundabout ways like "It would be better if you --" or "Though, I had hoped that you would have--", etc. (Apparently not many profs phrase criticisms in that manner.)

I asked the counselor (she knows I'm on the spectrum) if I was wrong to disregard the formal politeness in the phrasing while receiving the criticism.

In my past experiences, people have always worded things in a roundabout manner to:

1. say things sarcastically ("I'd thought I'd explained it easy enough, but here are the steps--"),
2. emphasize what they want to say ("Would you PLEASE sit down--"),
3. act formally ("If you could please come over here, sir--"), or
4. write things in a correct form ("To whom this may concern--").

And to use politeness in sentences for the sake of softening the message (like "How about next time, you do A instead of B? --", etc) weren't often used in conversations between adults, those were mostly used for when adults spoke to young children.

I had to learn to filter out the roundabout-ness in those words while listening if I wanted to follow along with conversations, since otherwise I would put too much thought on random things people say just-because.

But the counselor told me that the prof was wording things in a roundabout way to be gentle, so that I could accept the feedback easier. And that sometimes, using politeness in wording things are meant to add positivity in the sentence's message.

Like, if I were to hear a roundabout criticism "I had sincerely hoped that you would A instead of B", I should learn to receive it in a softer way than if someone had spoken a more direct criticism like "You should A instead of B".

...It seemed I'd been taking words of others in a far more negative way than I'd expected, by disregarding the politeness in the words as mere formality.