Oh, adjectives. Sometimes you are indeed the banana peel of the parts of speech. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Authors Against Adjectives”
Grant, how do you feel about adjectives?
Love them.
Yeah?
They’re great.
They’re excellent.
They’re good.
They’re wonderful.
I get it.
You know, a lot of writers advise against them.
Yeah, I’ve seen that.
Yeah, there’s been a lot.
Where are you headed with this?
Because I have opinions.
Okay.
Let me just throw out a few things that writers have said about them.
Clifton Paul Fadiman said, the adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
That’s a good line.
Yeah, isn’t that good?
And the road to hell is paved with adjectives.
That’s what Stephen King said.
I think they’re being a little extreme, though.
Yeah.
Don’t you think?
Well, it would be a mistake to read that, as some people have done, to say that you shouldn’t have any adjectives at all.
Right.
What they’re all suggesting is very judicious use.
Right.
Exactly.
And that’s exactly what Mark Twain advised, and I think this is my favorite piece of advice about adjectives ever.
He wrote, when you catch an adjective, kill it.
No, I don’t mean that utterly, but kill the most of them.
Then the rest will be valuable.
They weaken when they’re close together.
They give strength when they’re wide apart.
An adjective habit or a wordy, diffuse, or flowery habit once fastened upon a person is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.
Nice.
I think that makes sense.
That’s wonderful.
That’s it.
Because you can’t do without them completely.
Correct.
But if you’re stacking them up because you can’t think of a strong verb or you’re stacking them up because you don’t know the right word for a thing.
Right.
Or you’re going to the thesaurus and just pulling out a bunch of them.
Which is always dangerous.
Yes.
Yes.
Very dangerous.
We’ve talked about the young boy that I was told about who was trying to sound fancy for a school paper about what he did.
Yeah.
And he wanted to write that he ate pizza, but he wrote, I corroded pizza.
Corroded.
Oh.
Because he went to the thesaurus and a synonym of to eat is corrode.
Word to the wise.
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