06.20.08
Attack of the solemn wooden dummies
One of the points I stress in Write Tight is avoiding stating what the reader already understands, from their experience, pure fact, or what words and language imply. Case in point, from the 6/18/2008 Cincinnati Enquirer:
This is as opposed to all the somber ventriloquists on stage these days—you know, the ones who use wooden dummies to explain the theory of relativity, cardiovascular circulation, and transcendental philosophy. How many ventriloquists aren’t comedic, so why the need to identify Dunham as such?
So at its heart, “comedic ventriloquist” is redundant—and yet I’ll argue with myself now that this is very likely a needed redundancy (how’s that for an oxymoron—in essence, the “needed unnecessary”?) given a general newspaper audience. If one doesn’t know Dunham’s work, simply describing him as a ventriloquist is not as strong an introduction as is appropriate; simply calling him a comedian doesn’t distinguish his style of comedy.
So, the comedic jury is out on this one, and I’ll further waffle by pointing out that fewer words are good, but when considering redundancies and what words imply, always consider what might be lost in meaning, nuance and rhythm when you begin trimming.
By the by, speaking of transcendental: Presidential campaign buzzword alert from Stephen Colbert.
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