Be Careful When You Compare

Check to be sure you actually mention what you’re actually comparing.

He means “…than the food at the places…”

I see this mistake surprisingly often. Don’t do it.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

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Writing concisely saves your reader time and effort (and irritation), because when you don’t repeat yourself, your reader doesn’t have to read the same thing twice. I’ve written about redundancy before. Use the search box in the upper right corner to find more on this subject.

He could have said:

• Get the sign painter back!
• Get the sign painter here!
• Get the sign painter again!

That sentence would be correct if the sign painter had already been there more than once, though.

When you write, don’t repeat yourself!

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

Ordinarily, good English avoids using two negatives in a sentence. I’m thinking of sentences such as these:

I ain’t got none.
It don’t make no never-mind.

But we do have a way to use two negatives, when it’s what we mean. I’d say it’s a kind of understatement. I ran into a nice example the other day:

Meanwhile, there’s little reason to think that stealthy, sophisticated hackers aren’t already exploiting BlueKeep in secret, says Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of the firm Rendition Infosec.

https://www.wired.com/story/bluekeep-worm-windows

You can get away with a sentence like that if you want to sound “literary,” but when you’re into being clear and concise, something like this is better:

We think that sophisticated hackers are already exploiting BlueKeep in secret.

Not as colorful, perhaps, but more to the point. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?

The mistake is in the first panel. I bet you won’t see it. I’m not referring to the false subject (there’s) either:

Here’s the goof: technically, “slower” is an adjective, and she’s using it as an adverb, to modify “drive.” You can have a slow driver, but you drive slowly, or in this case, more slowly.

Ah, idiomatic spoken English is so full of solecisms…

One of my five rules is that documentation should be useful. Some places where I’ve worked are over-thorough. Like this place:

If you follow the link, it’s in the upper right corner of the comic.

And if you want to learn more about usefulness, get the free article I mention on the right side of this web page.

PS—Normally I use “such as” when I give an example, but I used “like” at the end of that first paragraph because it’s not a place I worked at, just similar.