Random writing advice of the day:

[conuly]

So, midway through this article we come across this little gem of a statement:

The Inuit have many words for snow—because their experience demands that kind of exactness. (The claim had been disputed, but the latest research affirms it.)

So, first of all, that's not true. Our journalist cites an article from 2013, and that link there is a response. But more importantly, if you have to append a disclaimer to your comparison tired old cliche, true or false, then you should really just strike it out and say something else. Or don't say anything at all, because if you think you need a disclaimer on your cliches then you presumably think your readers are familiar with the cliche and don't need it to understand your point.

(Humorous disclaimers may be okay, especially if your name is Terry Pratchett.)

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

And there's just no need to evoke Inuit people or languages if you want to talk about a language having many words for snow. English has many words for snow! At least, if you live in a snowy place like I'm from it does. I grew up hearing about flurries, sleet, snow banks, snowdrifts, blizzard, powder, hard pack, and on the TV weather reports we'd hear words that are certainly in our passive if not active vocabulary, like "wintry mix" and "accumulation." We don't have to exotify marginalized languages to make this demonstration, English is actually a great example of specialized vocabulary.

[conuly]

This journalist doesn't want to talk about snow to begin with. They want to talk about different types of coup and why it's important to recognize them so you see a coup before it happens. There's no need to drag snow into this at all!

[oursin]

English terms for wet stuff falling from the sky - 'rain' - probably even more!

[cosmolinguist]

In a blog post where I wrote about this words for snow thing, the next paragraph is

We have words for as wide a variety of things as it makes sense to distinguish. Manchester and the UK generally have plenty of words for rainy weather that I hadn't heard before I moved here, like dreich or mizzle (which felt like such a modern portmanteau, but it's late Middle English!). Honestly more than one person I know here uses "Manchester" as a verb to mean that kind of fine but penetrating rain that defies almost any waterproof or umbrella and gets you wet no matter what. If I ask someone what the weather's like and they say it's manchestering, I know all I need to about how fun it will to go outside (none at all).

[melannen]

Yeah, I can't get over how obvious it is to go with "The English have many words for rain" instead, if you really need that comparison in your writing, and yet nobody ever does!

[oursin]

My most aaarghsome example of this was somebody gratituously including one of the most well-known factoids about Queen Victoria in the intro to a text they'd edited, adding 'not true, but such a good story I couldn't leave it out'.

[calimac]

There's even a term for that: ben trovato, meaning "so good (or so appropriate) that it ought to be true even if it isn't."

[conuly]

Did it at least make sense in the context of the intro?

[oursin]

No, it was really gratutious.

[silveradept]

Sensible writing advice. The language is already beautiful and complex enough to express all sorts of different ideas without having to rely disclaimer-strongly on stereotype (and especially not wrong ones).

[conuly]

Sometimes I read articles and I think "This is a paid professional."

Sometimes I read articles and I think "This is a paid professional!?"

[conuly]

(Though, to be fair, I have nothing against any of the rest of the article. Nothing at all. That's how egregiously wrong that one thing is.)