01.17.09
Uninterest rates
In a news story titled “Dell to offer refunds to customers” comes this sentence:
Some never got promised rebates, while others applied for zero-percent financing but were charged higher interest rates.
Everything I know about math is wrong, too, but am I incorrect in assuming that charging interest of any sort would constitute a figure higher than zero? Therefore, “but were charged interest rates” without the higher is clear. For that matter, the word rates is superfluous, as well. ” . . . others applied for zero-percent financing but were charged interest.” (I’ll leave the discussion of the difference between applying for something and being guaranteed something to another day, when I talk about how I’m suing the government because I applied for negative taxation but taxes were levied nonetheless.)
Sometimes extra words hinder prose not necessarily by adding tiny physical length, but by lading considerable “mental length” onto the reading experience, as readers disconnect from the story to mentally note the wording. If the goal is lower interest, then in my case the sentence quoted above has accomplished that goal, by reducing my interest in the story it tells as I (in my occasional role as general reader) focus on how it is told.
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The Ridger said,
January 21, 2009 at 5:56 pm
“Higher interest rates” invites one to read it as “higher rates than those who didn’t apply for zero-percent financing.”