Grammar for Real People, Part 4-4: Clarity Rule 4: Positive/Negative Unity (The Truth Behind "Double-Negatives") · 9:33pm Mar 3rd, 2016
Part 1: Magic and Science
Part 2: Sentences, Phrases, and Clauses
Part 3: Phrase Functions and Parse
Part 4-1: Modifier Confusion
Part 4-2: Specifier Logic
Part 4-3: Heavy Complements
Part 4-4: You Are Here!
Part 4-5: Scripts and Sleepy Phrases (The Truth Behind “Passive Voice”)
Part 4-6: Script Details (Coming Soon)
TL;DR at the bottom, as always.
Rule 4: Positive/Negative Unity
(Official name: Head-Unity Principle)
This one is kind of easy, but not as much as the last one. This one is the rule behind double-negatives getting such a bad rap. It's actually not much different from the traditional rule, but its roots are in logical clarity instead of pure writing high etiquette.
The rule is this: in almost any situation where negativity is involved, one negative word is enough to express it.
The vote defeated opponents of a bill to ban cameras at court.
Some of the unicorns didn't fail to forget to bring more curry.
(I wish I could see the look on your face as you try to untangle those messes. I have to admit, I rephrased them from examples out of my textbook rather than attempting to make something up completely. You would not believe how hard it is to purposefully form unclear sentences like this. It almost feels physically impossible.)
Notice that neither of these examples contain classic double-negatives. Instead, a lot of the nouns and verbs are just negative or contrary by nature: "opponents," "defeat," "ban," "fail," "forget," and "less," in addition to simpler negatives like "didn't" and "not."
A lot of these sentences, like the first example, have multiple possible fixes, because any of the negatives could be kept and the sentence would have the same ultimate meaning:
The vote kept courts camera-free.
The vote upheld a ban on cameras at court.
The vote did not allow cameras at court.
Others ultimately boil down to a single simplified phrasing, because the negativity is limited to a certain phrase (which is often simplified into a single word), like the second example:
Some of the unicorns forgot to bring more curry.
The reasoning behind this rule isn't about the negatives being pointless so much as just being really confusing, though sometimes they are pointless. Any given idea is usually best expressed with only one negative involved.
Negatives are tricky whenever they're used in groups, because of a couple different reasons: first, the reader has to mentally "translate" the negative to get what it's saying, and second because expressing an idea as a negative instead of a positive tends to change the meaning: "I can't do that" is definitely not the same as "I can do something else." A lot of negatives don't have exact opposites, and only loosely imply the closest ones. These implications are the things you're looking for when you "translate" a negative, and with more than one to worry about that gets really hard.
TL;DR
Try to write things positively whenever you can. When you have to write something involving any sort of negative, phrase it so you only have to use one negative word.
I'm going to have to speak against using this rule in a few cases. While it's definitely hard to understand the examples you posted, there is often value in using a double – and occasionally even a triple – negative.
Double negatives, I find, are most useful when you want to express a subtle difference between the strictly positive version of a construction and what you actually mean. Example: It's not that he can't lose; to avoid losing, he just has to avoid coming in the last three spots. He's even better than that, though: He can't not win.
You could technically say he can only win or he must win, but I feel that misses some of the nuance of the situation and changes the meaning.
Triple negatives are trickier, but that's sort of the point for their cases of usefulness. Specifically, I find them useful for subverting the audience's expectations. Then again, the only case I can call to the top of my head is the following example: Ah, Daring Do. Your intellect never fails to disappoint.
Apart from that case and maybe some similar ones, I totally agree that using 3+ negations on a single thing is far too unwieldy and confusing.
In other words, while I don't disagree with this rule, I don't entirely agree with it either.
Thanks for writing these posts out for us.
3791221 I think this post will need a little work, too.
I never said double-negatives were inherently bad, but I guess I never really mentioned that. That idea is the traditional rule I said was stupid and only partially based on this real rule.
As for your examples, I can address your points in a way that's helpful, I hope.
I agree that using two negatives together can give you an implication you couldn't express otherwise (and I almost got that across in the post, but not quite), but if there's ever an alternative, it's better than the double-negative. But these alternatives often come in other forms than just eliminating all but one negative. Usually they involve a complete rewriting to avoid having to use more than one negative, which is why I said "try to write positively." I'll have to go back and re-emphasize that.
For instance, I would leave out "to avoid losing" entirely, since it's kind of superfluous. Or, I would replace "losing" with whatever it really is he's trying to avoid, since "losing" is quite clearly not defined the same here as in the first phrase. If everything but the last three spots counted as not losing, then you wouldn't have just said that "It's not that he can't lose," because it would be exactly that.
As for "he can't not win," that's not really justifiable, because "not win" has not demonstrably different meaning than "lose." You have to weigh the added meaning against the clarity cost, and this phrase is definitely unclear.
Remember, these aren't all rules about things that just don't work; they're rules about what makes things unclear for the reader. Negatives get confusing really quick, even if you feel like they're the only way to express what you want (they're not; you just have to step back and rethink how you're trying to express the thought).
This is only a triple-negative because it's a joke-- a twist on another saying. Jokes and sarcasm and the like are like dialogue; they get a little more leeway because of what they are. These clarity rules apply most to narrative prose, but they all contribute to how easy text is to read. But since this means the example doesn't count as evidence of good triple-negatives, I'm going to keep saying that they're never good outside of jokes and unorthodox speech patterns.
This is a good example of a justifiable double-negative, though, in "never fails." The inverse would be "always succeeds," but that doesn't work because it's not the saying, and the implication doesn't feel right. Put simply, this example isn't confusing (I avoided using "unclear!" I've had to do that a couple times, to follow this rule.) because we've all heard it enough to know what it's saying without having to figure it out word-by-word. Essentially, we can skip the whole "translation into positives" step of negatives.
So in summation, while some double-negatives are necessary for specific subtle meanings, this rule is more about avoiding having to use them at all; if you find yourself using one, take a few steps back and try to rewrite the passage so you don't. It's kind of a bitter pill, but it's better overall, trust me.
3791291
Derp. I didn't mean double negatives in the sense of the old rule, either, but I didn't know how to verbally differentiate the two.
Thanks for the clarifications in general.
I don’t understand this sentence. Could you clarify that for me, please?
3880109 Huh. Looks like it's missing half. I'll have to figure out what that half is.
EDIT-- fixed it.