Pet Peeve #001 - On the matter of humming.

This might not be worthy of a blog. Okay, well, it might be. I just wanted everyone to know my displeasure with a certain... thing I've seen cropping up in people's writing.

Jason hummed. "Well, I guess things couldn't possibly get any worse."

Or,

"Hmm, well, I guess things couldn't possibly get any worse," Jason said.

Which one of those two sentences do you think flows better?

When I read that someone "hummed", what my brain hears is someone doing it musically. I don't think of the exclamation "hmm", which, by the way, is an actual word in actual dictionaries. That you can use. With no consequences.

There is nothing wrong with using sounds in your writing. Hmm, huh, heh, eh - all of these things are fine. Who the heck is teaching kids these days to write "hummed" when they mean "hmm", eh? It doesn't make your writing look more formal. It makes it look like your characters are humming a tune. The effect is more perturbing than it is natural. It tears the reader from their immersion instantaneously.

I know my grammar's not perfect, and I deal with some excessive wordiness and adverb abuse in my own writing, but I just thought you all ought to know that I think "hummed" has to go. Unless your characters actually are humming a tune. Then, it's fine.

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[Misty Spell]