The Subtleness of Verbiage by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

The other day, I was watching videos online and came across one in which a father talked about his daughter having had a math test that day at school.

Apparently, her teacher had told the class if they could answer just one question correctly, they would get an A without taking the test. Everyone wrote their answers down, folded the paper, and handed it in.

The father’s daughter did not answer the question correctly, so she asked him if he could. Then, she reiterated the question in more detail than given here, but it starts with a butcher with two kids and a wife and then goes into the weight of his family members. It ends with the question, “Now what does the butcher weigh?”

The father in the video looks at the screen, his expression seems to say, “How should I know!”

Without thinking, I responded, “Meat.”

Now hear me out if you don’t believe me that I am right. The question wasn’t, “How much does the butcher weigh?” but rather, “What does the butcher weigh?”

This is a bit ambiguous, but I was sure the story before the question was more a misdirect than a clue. Ergo, the butcher weighs meat.

And in a way, I am surprised I got it. I have never considered myself as clever as say, Hermione Granger, who figured out Snape’s riddle about which bottle contains what. I found that confusing as all get out. And hats off to J.K. Rowling for producing that.

Though wording does matter. It can make a huge difference. Understanding the subtleness of verbiage teaches you that wording changes everything.

Case in point, when someone prefaces a request with the words, “Would you mind,” in general most people will respond, “Yes,” when they in fact will grant the favor asked, but if you look at the phrasing of the request, and really think about it. It is clear the correct favorable answer would be, “No.”

A fact I have used against people on several occasions, twice this last week.

The first time I asked a young lady helping me clean my house, to get me a refill of water, using the aforementioned phrase.

Her response was of course the standard, “Yes.”

I responded, “You would!” with as shocked an expression as I could muster. She didn’t seem to understand what I was saying and just took my mug to refill it.

Now, Monday night, my cousin Steve was over to visit, and I’d received a rather heavy package at some point during the day and I asked him if he would mind bringing it in for me.

He did respond with the standard, “yes,” but when I retorted with my shocked, “You would!” he chuckled and said, “Okay, you got me there!”

He is the first person to ever respond that way when I’ve done it, and I’ve done it a lot.

I am also correct. If you would not mind doing the favor, the correct response is no, not yes.

That is the subtleness of wording, which is what makes writing so hard. Ambiguous wording makes the text stronger or the mystery deeper, but it could also lead the reader astray. Finding just the right word can be extremely difficult. Especially if you have innate issues with spelling.

In point of fact, I spent several minutes trying to figure out the correct spelling of “subtle.” I knew it was the root of the word I needed, but I didn’t know how to spell it!

Most of the time when this happens, I can think of another word that means the same thing and find the word I am trying to use via the thesaurus on my computer. However, that doesn’t always work. Sometimes because there is no other word or because, I picked a word for which that similar meaning is obscure and not in the thesaurus, making me doubt what I remember of etymology.

And for those of you who don’t know, etymology is the history of a word. It is its root, origin, and current and original meanings.

Etymology is why I excelled in my college class, “Concise Business Writing.”

Something I think I have mentioned before. It was in that class that the professor asked us to reduce a Cossel quote to as few words as possible. I did not use my Etymological dictionary for that assignment. I didn’t need it.

However, I admit it wasn’t because I knew the etymology of all those words in the quote. It was because of an earlier incident involving our big sister, nicknamed Dictionary.

But anyway, I aced the assignment!

Happy writing everyone!