111–120 of 156 posts
For example, "quiet" would have "silent" rated as 1, "roomy" might have "spacious" listed close to 0, and "gorgeous" would have "pretty" as negative.
This reminds me of an English teacher I had in high school who disallowed us from using a list of banned words in a writing assignment. In previous assignments students had overused them to pad their word count and to inflate the apparent sophistication of their vocabulary. Among these words were "basically" and "essentially" which he told us were garbage words (as far as essay-writing as concerned). It stuck with me…
Also, "of course" and "obviously".
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Where I grew up we used "wicked" as an intensifier, as in "he is wicked nice." Sound any better?
That's New England dialect. Almost nobody says that outside of New England but people commonly know what it means.
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In this case, the rule is just not to use the word "very." I can't think of a single context where "very" doesn't degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence. I think this rule is appropriate to any and every style.
I don't know what it means to "degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence".
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I don't know what it means to "degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence".
It makes for shitty writing.
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Rules like these aren't really good guide to style though. They are the sort of guidelines suited to curing teenagers of bad habits. That's the problem I have with articles like these. They aren't adult discussions of language; they do not teach effective writing, and do not promote an understanding of language. One should ideally outgrow such pedagogy by one's second year of college.
In this case, the rule is just not to use the word "very." I can't think of a single context where "very" doesn't degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence. I think this rule is appropriate to any and every style.
"And when she was bad, she was very, very bad."
Let's all agree that using "malicious" or "malevolent" would "degrade the semantics and syntax" of the sentence.
The number of absolute statements you can make about the English language is very close to the null set.
-- Heathers
I was always bothered by the overuse of the word "pretty" on the Internet in place of "very." As a non-native English speaker, I grew up thinking of pretty as synonym of beautiful. Now that I see everyone using it as they would use very , I find it hard to parse.
Someone saying "it's pretty quiet here" is saying something like "it is quiet, but not silent, here". "This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries. So there's something in there about the context and that it is a modifier for "more" but not "much more".
>"This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries. //
Probably what they mean, if they're British - and especially if male, is that the curry is so frigging hot it's bordering on inedible and likely giving them chemical burns but they're going to eat it anyway either to show "good manners" or prove they're well hard.
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Rules like these aren't really good guide to style though. They are the sort of guidelines suited to curing teenagers of bad habits. That's the problem I have with articles like these. They aren't adult discussions of language; they do not teach effective writing, and do not promote an understanding of language. One should ideally outgrow such pedagogy by one's second year of college.
Ideally. But when I took my cross-discipline gen-ed requirements, I was pretty amazed how little & how low-quality writing was expected of at least some of the humanities first & second years. Not much chance for growth when assigning a two-page paper is enough to provoke upset.