Comparison


In which Mike runs alongside a bandwagon, without actively jumping on it

I give in, surrender and generally crumple in the face of overwhelming evidence: I am the kind of scarily anal person I have come to fear.

I'm sure you can think of many things which may have occasioned this. In the ranks of the World's Most Relaxed People, acquaintances tend to give me, generally speaking, a low rating, somewhere alongside Mr. Richard Prior, Mr. Elton John, and other notable nose-powderers.

But in fact, you're all wrong (and very smutty and bad to boot: I know how your minds work). Two tiny words have caused this, it's not the fault of either of them individually, and it's a Sin! I am coming to loathe every bit as much as I loathe Mr. Jim Davidson.

Are you there yet? No? Then -- much as it hurts -- I'm going to have to say it out loud. Are you ready? (PG: children should definitely not be reading this --) "equally as".

Ouch. "One was bad; the second, equally so," yes. "One was every bit as bad as another," by all means. "One was equally as bad as the other," no. Please don't. It grates, it jars, it's redundant and obfuscates and is the kind of thing that gives English a bad name. (NB that here, I start to improvise my own grammatical language, since I never learnt a satisfactory formal one -- and that's a reflection upon my learning, not upon the satisfactoriness or otherwise of formal grammars.)

'As' and 'equally' are both (to me, remember) comparators, meaning that they serve to compare. "Equally as" seeks to use "equally" to qualify "as". In point of fact, this is not wholly so strange as it sounds; we qualify comparison all the time in such phrases as "nearly as bad," "almost as silly", "every bit as incomprehensible" and "just as parakeet". What we don't tend to do, though, is to use a comparator to do it.

Now, let's not get all frowny about qualifying a comparison. Adverbs (like, but not including, 'equally') can fit in: "He was, stupidly, as nice as me" is fine -- 'stupidly' is used in parenthesis and applies to 'to be' in the third person imperfect (well, it's imperfect in German "war" and Italian "era" - in English that's what we call an educated guess, save that it's not) past form, "was". "He was stupidly as nice as me" is something you'd probably parse unconsciously to have the same meaning as the first example -- that is, you'd automatically read in a parenthesis that's not actually in the text. Now try this with "equally". What's the problem?

Well, if I'm not talking complete nonsense, the problem is that you thought to yourself "He was, equally, as nice as me" and immediately thought "equally to what?" Now, if it had been preceded by a short sentence, to form, for example, "John was foolish. He was, equally, as nice as me," you could get some sense out of it: you'd think "Yes! I see a reason for the inclusion of the word, 'equally'! So far as John was foolish, to that same extent was he as pleasant as the speaker! Huzzah! Reginam nostram Elizabetam benedicat! and similarly mangled bits of SJC grace!"

But when you say "equally as", you imply two comparisons. And two comparisons between two things is kind of the ultimate definition of redundancy. "Not only am I mowing the lawn, I am also mowing the lawn!" you might excitedly cry on the occasion of your first guest slot in a suburban American situation comedy, only to see many very intense and highly-paid people looking your way, as though judging you harshly for being so very... repetitive. I am one of them.

Life is, if not nearly as short as generally advertised, at least currently something of fixed term, in which we should, according to my own ill-evolved ethics, spend as much time (not, note, "equally as much") doing things like "valuing our friendships", "talking late into the night", "loving imprudently" and so on, as is possible. The phrase "equally as" tries to achieve the debatably virtuous goal of saying the same thing twice and fails even at that; it adds nothing to a sentence except duration and confusion. Over the course of years "equally as" and phrases like it (note: not "equally as like it") have probably wasted whole minutes of my life (unlike this little rant, which has naturally taken me no time at all).

In summation: I like you. Please don't say "equally as" because it makes two things: 1) no sense, and 2) me mad. (Ah! Zeugma!, or Oh! Ovary! as someone famouser than me putted it.)

Posted: Sat - November 22, 2003 at 12:41 AM      

©