“…it is important to distinguish between legal codes…and legal commentaries…”

…it is important to distinguish between legal codes, which intend to summarize the halachah in a concise and resolute manner, and legal commentaries, which intend to discuss the law and elaborate upon it. A legal code, by its very nature, will tend to use equivocal and irresolute formulations like the soft stringency much less than will a legal commentary.

Benjamin Brown, “‘Soft Stringency’ in the Mishnah Berurah: Jurisprudential, Social, and Idealogical Aspects of a Halachic Formulation,” Contemporary Jewry 27 (2007), 5.