#double negatives

Actual Water - Boutique Neighbourhoods

Double negatives are a big no-no in advanced writing! Here’s a short post explaining why, and how to avoid them. 

Before I tell you why you shouldn’t use double negatives, let me remind you of what they are:

I don’t want no cake! 

You can see that in the sentence, I have two negative words: “Don’t” and “No”. 

The main reason you can’t do this sort of thing is because it confuses the reader. Technically, I don’t want no cake means that you do want cake. People who are well versed in the written language will notice this, and assume you mean that you do indeed want cake. Others, who may not be as well aware could think that you don’t want cake. Readers will misinterpret your sentence, which is not what you want. To make sure that you are clear in what is happening, just avoid double negative sentences all together!

Essentially, when you have two negatives in a sentence they cancel each other out. When you’re speaking, double negatives might make more sense, but they are very confusing and render a sentence useless when written. For example, We don’t need pie, and we need no pie mean the same thing. But when you add them together, they cancel each other out. 

If you’re having trouble spotting a double negative, try this: rewrite the sentence with each of the negatives given. If each one is grammatically correct and still mean the same as one another, you have a double negative. Here are some examples:

I hardly never drink milk. 

I hardly drink milk. ✔

I never drink milk. ✔

She wasn’t going to not go.

She wasn’t going to go. ✔

She was not going to go. ✔

There! Now hopefully, you won’t ever have to deal with the complex confusingness that are double negatives! And remember, don’t never be not happy while writing. 😉

I’m reminded of the example of a librarian in the US who was approached by the FBI about possible terrorists accessing material in her library. She knew that was not the case, they were in no way terrorists, but the FBI told her she would be arrested if she told the ‘suspects’ or alerted them in any way. They said they would put agents undercover to surveil.

She put a sign up on the wall saying ‘No FBI agents are here today”.