Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Everybody Needs An Editor - a continuing series


Dec. 29, 2012

In yesterday’s Denver Post I found this in a guest column from Meredith C. Carroll, titled, “Playing around with violence”:

“While I was at a supermarket in Aspen just a few days ago, a boy not older than 4 sat in a shopping cart being pushed by his mom while creating a war – complete with imaginary bombs and noisy explosions – between an apple and potato. Like the planes flying overhead on 9/11, the sound of even pretend detonations affected me gutturally.”

Adverbs can be powerful, certainly, but they often cause problems. This use of “gutturally” is the latter sort of adverb.

The writer obviously meant something like “it affected me at a gut level,” or “like a punch to the gut.”

The definition of “guttural” is gruff-sounding: characterized by harsh and grating speech sounds made in the throat or toward the back of the mouth. The connection with “gut” is there, of course, as in the sound seems to come from deep inside the person.

Did the writer mean she actually starting making some gruff noises upon hearing the toddler’s fake explosions? Doubtful.

The writer wanted to emphasize just how much the noise affected her, and “affected” just doesn’t carry enough power… so she needed an adverb. She might have chosen “viscerally,” I suppose, or “profoundly,” rather than using the wrong word.

Better is to choose a different, more vivid verb, and avoid having to search for an adverb at all.

“…pretend detonations disturbed me… upset me… frightened me… alarmed me…” None of these may be just right, but they avoid the misuse of “gutturally.”

Or the writer might have rejected the passive voice in the sentence in favor of “I flinched at the sounds of those pretend detonations.” This avoids various problems with “Like the planes flying overhead on 9/11,” a comparison that only seems apt if she actually heard the planes overhead that morning.

But let’s not get into similes today.

No comments: