![]() ![]() ![]() In fact, you’re usually better off avoiding these “bad” double negatives altogether. However, they may not be formal enough for academic of business writing, so you should be careful about using them in such documents.įurthermore, never use the “I didn’t do nothing” type of double negative in formal writing. “Good” double negatives like “not bad” are common in everyday language, so you can use them freely in less formal writing. (Photo: VMusic2016/wikimedia) When Should I Use a Double Negative? There are some dialects of English that use a double negative, and sometimes in Standard English they are mimicked for dramatic effect. So when Tom Jones sang “it’s not unusual to be loved by anyone,” what he meant was “it’s fairly normal to be loved by someone.” Which, we’ll admit, is a less catchy lyric. ![]() ![]() In practice, though, “not bad” is usually a way of saying “quite good.” This double negative is therefore a form of ironic understatement, sometimes known as litotes. Taken literally, for example, the phrase “not bad” would simply imply that something is not bad. This includes phrases like “not bad” and “not uncommon,” which combine two negatives to make a positive. In fact, some double negatives are so common you might not even recognize them as double negatives. Due to this, many students have a difficult time realizing that using double negatives is incorrect grammar. People frequently use double negatives in song lyrics and informal speech. A double negative is when you use two negative words in the same clause of a sentence. Students may often misuse negatives in writing, especially by using double negatives, or two negative words in a sentence. Teaching Students about Double Negatives. Some adverbs, like barely and seldom, are treated as negatives. Sometimes, using a double negative is fine. Negatives are mostly the no words, such as no, not, and never, along with contractions, like don’t and won’t. A descriptive grammarian might say, Some communities use double negatives and some. However, you can use them to create an informal tone of voice in literature, since some people do use them in real life. For example, a prescriptive grammarian might say, Don’t use a double negative because it is illogical. We encourage writers to learn how to negate sentences using the standard grammar - especially for professional settings - but we love the diversity of English (and language in general) and think that use of dialectal grammar is fine in open, less formal environments.Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter!Īs a result, you would not typically want to use this kind of double negative, especially in formal writing. So, while double negatives are not correct in standard English, that doesn’t make them any less useful in other dialects. Ne is the primary negater and ni reinforces that, so a ne with any number of nis remains negative, but two nes are indeed a positive. (For example, a line about the Friar, “Ther nas no man no wher so vertuous,” literally means “there wasn’t no man nowhere as virtuous.”) Not only does English with the right intonation use two negatives to make a positive, Russian has two different negative particles (ne, ni). In general, whether a double negative makes a positive statement or not, relies on the context and choice of words. Not only does it sound awkward, it isn't actually grammatically correct. Greek is a negative concord language, meaning that the grammar allows for two or more negatives to occur in a sentence without necessarily turning the statement into a positive one. Negative concord is even used several times in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. What Is a Double Negative A double negative is using two negative words or phrases in a sentence. To make it more complicated, it’s not just foreign languages that conventionally employ double negatives but some dialects of English do as well! African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Southern American English, and some British regional forms use negative concord constructions. “I don’t want nothing to eat.” meaning “I don’t want to eat anything.” “There isn’t no problem.” meaning “There isn’t a problem.” In many languages worldwide, it is grammatically incorrect to use anything but the double negative! (This is called negative concord.) Though it’s easy to assume that double negatives are simply unnatural aberrations, this assumption is wrong. Learning standard English negation is difficult because many languages and some English dialects use double negatives conventionally. ![]()
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