I will never read your story if…

[Euphony]

I was gonna say that I could only see it being used a long with two "very's" for emphasis as dialog.

It can read as (unintentional or not) snark if any of the surrounding context remotely supports it.

"Do you still love me?" He asked, and there was a sense of hurt in the question which made her want to cry all over again.

"I do!" She exclaimed, reaching out for him. She coiled her thin arms around his form and buried her head into his chest. "So much! So very, very much!"

That isn't horrible, right?

Nope. As with every "rule," they're more suggestions or generally best practice. Those who understand the underlying concept can play with it a bit and will find valid outliers.

But as long as we're being pedantic, "cringey" is a bad word too. "Cringe worthy" is the proper term, or so I've been told.

I'd use "cringy" to date the person saying it or show them as try hard. "Cringe" was youthful slang for a time but I think we may have jumped that shark. It feels more "hip cat cool daddio" than actual parlance these days.

 

[djrip]

It can read as (unintentional or not) snark if any of the surrounding context remotely supports it.

Nope. As with every "rule," they're more suggestions or generally best practice. Those who understand the underlying concept can play with it a bit and will find valid outliers.

I'd use "cringy" to date the person saying it or show them as try hard. "Cringe" was youthful slang for a time but I think we may have jumped that shark. It feels more "hip cat cool daddio" than actual parlance these days.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

View attachment 2255307

MUSICBAND

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I'd use "cringy" to date the person saying it or show them as try hard. "Cringe" was youthful slang for a time but I think we may have jumped that shark. It feels more "hip cat cool daddio" than actual parlance these days.

I'm actually pretty sure that the expression "jumped the shark" is outmoded and barely understood these days. I'm probably the youngest person alive who still remembers it, and I saw it on a rerun.

 

[Euphony]

I'm actually pretty sure that the expression "jumped the shark" is outmoded and barely understood these days. I'm probably the youngest person alive who still remembers it, and I saw it on a rerun.

Anyone not versed in Arrested Development in jokes feels someone not particularly worth knowing.

https://imgur.com/qkbznjD

 

[Euphony]

I'm actually pretty sure that the expression "jumped the shark" is outmoded and barely understood these days. I'm probably the youngest person alive who still remembers it, and I saw it on a rerun.

Meh. The underlying specifics, sure, the "yutes" may not know them but the named concept of something passing over a quality line to never return to its heights seems common enough.

"Sight for sore eyes" is everywhere but doubtful kids are up on their Jonathan Swift “A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation”these days.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Meh. The underlying specifics, sure, the "yutes" may not know them but the named concept of something passing over a quality line to never return to its heights seems common enough.

"Sight for sore eyes" is everywhere but doubtful kids are up on their Jonathan Swift “A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation”these days.

You have a point. Kids these days don't even know why we "hang up" the phone. The expressions are all antiquated now. Like literary skeuomorphs

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Meh. The underlying specifics, sure, the "yutes" may not know them but the named concept of something passing over a quality line to never return to its heights seems common enough.

"Did you say "yutes"?

 

[Euphony]

"Did you say "yutes"?
View attachment 2255380

Reference humor is a fetish and condition the DSM steadfastly refuses to acknowledge.

It destroys lives. Ask me how I know.

 

[lovecraft68]

You have a point. Kids these days don't even know why we "hang up" the phone. The expressions are all antiquated now. Like literary skeuomorphs

I catch myself writing hang up, and have to switch it to "ended the call"

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I catch myself writing hang up, and have to switch it to "ended the call"

I'll still write "hang up," modern technology be damned.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'll still write "hang up," modern technology be damned.

I'm putting a rotary phone in my next story.

 

[TxRad]

I'm putting a rotary phone in my next story.

Thanks for reminding me. I need to find that story and finish it.

 

[Casual_Writer21]

So, I'm guessing, based on what I'm reading here, that this isn't the best way to start, for some:

"I'm cummmmmmmmming, Brad!!!!!!!!!!" cried Bunni Cum-Slurper as his manrod plundered her honey hole.

I would unironically read this, especially under the "humor/satire" category.

 

[Casual_Writer21]

If the text looks like a brick wall, I'm going around it.

 

[FifthEstate]

So, I'm guessing, based on what I'm reading here, that this isn't the best way to start, for some:

"I'm cummmmmmmmming, Brad!!!!!!!!!!" cried Bunni Cum-Slurper as his manrod plundered her honey hole.

BRAD and MANROD need to be CAPITALIZED…

 

[joy_of_cooking]

We had one of the old Ma Bell rental phones. The cord on that thing was amazing. I could walk all over the living room, and if I carried the main unit in my hand I could go all over the apartment. Except I never lost it, because I could always follow the cord from the wall.

 

[djrip]

We had one of the old Ma Bell rental phones. The cord on that thing was amazing. I could walk all over the living room, and if I carried the main unit in my hand I could go all over the apartment. Except I never lost it, because I could always follow the cord from the wall.

I wish my TV remote was on a cord.

 

[Trionyx]

I wish my TV remote was on a cord.

They used to be.

 

[lovecraft68]

Thanks for reminding me. I need to find that story and finish it.

Back in your day you probably had the one on the wall with the crank.

 

[Britva415]

“So very” acts as a double intensifier without resorting to vulgarity.

My idiosyncratically personal dislike for writing which contains it isn't about grammar at all.

It has at least as much of a place in the vernacular as

Well that's what I'm saying - grammatically there's no reason for people not to say it, but they just don't. Saying "it has a place" is shoehorning it into where it doesn't exist - the vernacular.

Unless this is a dialect thing and there really are modern, contemporary native English speakers somewhere who do talk like this?

"So much! So very, very much!"

That isn't horrible, right?

Not grammatically, no. But nobody talks this way. People write this way, sure, but, my entire objection is to making characters talk the way writers write.

I’m a say one more thing, and this is just in general: linguistic prescriptivism never works. Embrace linguistic descriptivism instead. It’s cringe to do otherwise.

Exactly what I'm doing! It's not prescriptivist to say "people don't talk like that."

But as long as we're being pedantic, "cringey" is a bad word too. "Cringe worthy" is the proper term, or so I've been told.

Touché!

You should see these kids today who just say "cringe" as an adjective. "You're cringe!"

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Not grammatically, no. But nobody talks this way. People write this way, sure, but, my entire objection is to making characters talk the way writers write.

I absolutely feel like I would say that in real speech. Again, as NTH said, I would probably say "So fucking much." because I swear like a sailor, but if I wasn't cursing, I would say, "So very, very much" in that context.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My idiosyncratically personal dislike for writing which contains it isn't about grammar at all.


Well that's what I'm saying - grammatically there's no reason for people not to say it, but they just don't. Saying "it has a place" is shoehorning it into where it doesn't exist - the vernacular.

Unless this is a dialect thing and there really are modern, contemporary native English speakers somewhere who do talk like this?


Not grammatically, no. But nobody talks this way.

Sorry but this is a bizarre assertion. One doesn't even have to look further than these very forums for plenty of examples of people using "so very" in conversation:

"tired, so very tired"
"So very very compelling"
"Naughty and so very nice"
"I am so very hungry this morning"

etc. etc. etc.

Or we're focussing specifically on spoken English, googling on "interview transcript so very" will find examples:

"we were all so very poor" (Janis Kearney, sharecropper's daughter from Arkansas, born 1953)
"They wrote a very nice editorial, so very good" (Ivanka Trump)
"The West itself demonized him, they painted him to be so very terrible, with a nuclear weapon in his hands." (Volodymyr Zelenskyy)
"thank you so very, very much" (Andrew Sorkin of NYT)
"It’s immigrants and the poor that are so very often the targets of these abuses." (Yanilda María González, Assistant Professor, U. Chicago)
"Democrats have lost so very many elections in the last several years" (Steve Inskeep, NPR)
"Everything was so very close" (Arvid Carlsson, Nobel-winning medical researcher)

Exactly what I'm doing! It's not prescriptivist to say "people don't talk like that."

Not prescriptivist. Just incorrect.

 

[Britva415]

One doesn't even have to look further than these very forums for plenty of examples of people using "so very" in conversation

WRITTEN conversation.

 

[Britva415]

WRITTEN conversation.

And, I should say, affected. It's an affectation. As an affectation it can work in the written medium as well as spoken, but these writers I've been talking about aren't writing characters who are deliberately speaking with an affectation, they're putting their own, probably unconscious, writing affectation into the mouths of unironically speaking characters.

Anyway, I'll stop making this be about "so very" and just say that any story which has characters speaking how people write (badly) instead of speaking how people speak does this to me. "So very" is just probably the most glaring example.