Writing Tip # 9
Don’t surrender in advance.
Using the comparative form of a modifier when one’s intended meaning calls for the superlative form is weak.
Today’s tip concerns the three degrees of comparison.
Positive, Comparative, and Superlative.
Good, better, best.
Weak, weaker, weakest.
Judgments without comparison are “positive.”
A comparison of two takes the “comparative” form.
A comparison of more than two takes the “superlative” form.
Simple, but..
..If Harold is one of the best pitchers in the league, why would a baseball announcer say, “Harold is one of the better pitchers in the league”?
The other pitchers in the league amount to more than one other guy, right? What’s going on?
Here’s my observation: we live in a world of televised virtuality, attached to an immediate gratification impulse that relies on comfort and familiarity. The form of the product continually seeks to stretch boundaries, but the actual message must not. The message is one of reassurance. Presenting “new” information that challenges our assumptions makes us uncomfortable. The trick for the media provider is to present something that sounds new, while at the same time remaining within the conventional wisdom guidelines.
Thus, I observe, appearing to say something significant is more important than saying something significant. Form takes precedence over substance. An announcer deemed innovative because he eschews a necktie says Sandy Koufax is one of the “better” pitchers, all-time, instead of one of the “best,” for instance.
It’s more than baseball, more than that little quibble. Isn’t the intent to leave the “edgy” announcer some wiggle room?
In “Don’t surrender in advance,” I’m paraphrasing Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny lesson #1 because I sense that in the common misuse of the language that I observe in this baseball announcer example, there is a problem born out of the same instinct. The instinct is in the direction of equivocation for the sake of comfort. I wonder if keeping comfort is indicative of some broader societal weakness that could help us understand why we are the way we are.
Writer: Please, say what you mean and mean what you say.
Announcer: Please, if he’s one of the best say he’s one of the best.
Viewer: Please, don’t submit uncritically to the authority assumed for the person on the screen.
I emphasized the practical in my 27 years teaching English at New Prairie High School, New Carlisle, Indiana. Summer school students and I one year identified four characteristics of good writing: Clear, honest, interesting, and appropriate. My favorite source was On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
Sid Shroyer is the author of When Once Destroyed, A Historical Memoir of the Life and Death of a Small Town