Reader follow-ups
Reader Alexis had this to add re: the Vine letter of March 4:
The case of “hard to underestimate” that you discussed in The Vine recently was investigated on the linguistics blog Language Log in 2004: “Why are negations so easy to fail to miss?” I thought you might find the linguistics perspective interesting. It seems this is a widespread phenomenon, as it’s occurred in some follow-up entries.
There’s also “still unpacked” (meaning not yet unpacked) and there are likely more that I can’t find because they don’t contain the keywords I’m searching on.
Thanks, Alexis. And thanks also to reader Graham, who wrote me to warn me — and you — about a recent baseball-book find on The Vine:
I got a copy from my library and it…blows. Big time. Any reader with the slightest knowledge of baseball will be bored stiff. Some illuminating tidbits from this book: did you know that it’s considered bad form to bunt for a base hit when the pitcher has a no-hitter going? Did you know that stealing a base late in the game with a big lead can be
considered rubbing it in?The way the book is set up, there’ll be a chapter on, say, “Charging the Mound.” Bernstein will recount three or four instances when it happened, and some former big-league players will share their experiences. Did you know that Robin Ventura charged the mound against Nolan Ryan and (barely) lived to regret it? Teddy Higuera volunteers that no one ever really charged the mound against him. Scintillating stuff.
Save your money, and warn your readers. At least check this out at the library or in person at a bookstore before you buy it.
I hadn’t had a chance to buy/read it yet, and maybe one of you had a better experience with it, but: consider yourselves warned.
Tags: Ask The Readers books grammar
you know, i tend to agree with one of the hypothesis presented in that article about the negations – maybe people are just trying too hard to sound smart – and wind up sounding dumb… just leave out the extra words and what you are trying to say, you will say… I’m sure I’m guilty of the crime as well… man… “English is Hard!” as Barbie would say (I know, I know, that was math… still…)
and thanks for the warning on the book…
That’s so true about the negations. I was just editing something that was meant for readers with a high-school level of education, and there was a True-False question with three negatives that just kept countering each other. I have a master’s in journalism and I couldn’t figure it out, but my client didn’t understand why I simplified the question as I did.
I wondered if perhaps they were *trying* to trip up the reader, which isn’t really fair in a training exercise.
Not surprised re: the book. I was in B&N last night and I saw it on the shelf and, of course, had to flip through it because I can’t resist things that have this on the cover…and it’s stuff I kind of, like, knew, all those things Graham points out. So unless one is unfamiliar with the unwritten rules of baseball, it’s probably not worth the money. At least, that was my impression, not having actually read it.
Instead, I picked up October 1964 by David Halberstam, Praying for Gil Hodges by Tom Oliphant, and two books I only decided to buy when I saw them on the shelf — A Game of Brawl by Bill Felber and Benchclearing by Spike Vrusho (which includes a much better account of Nolan Ryan beating the crap out of Robin Ventura).
Bill James has a new book out, Rob Neyer has a book out in April, the new Bill James Handbook and BP books are out…so many books, so little money.
Cool! I’m honored to have been useful for TN!
As a fellow “linguistician”, I appreciate the Language Log. As soon as I read the TN post on “failing to underestimate”, my husband and I began pondering what it truly meant, and he realized he’d just written it in a grant proposal! Needless to say, he changed it to “fail to overstate”. Thanks!
I took a test a couple of years ago where the point of it seemed to be not a test of your knowledge. Oh no! This was a test of how well you could decipher the questions or choose the least wrong answer. By the end of the 3 hours I spent taking the test, I was livid. Fortunately, I somehow managed to pass but one of my co-workers failed when he took it and he refused to re-take it.