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A Float of Bubbles - Double Negative

CanDaMan

CanDaMan

Active Member
The description of the building contain a double negative. The last sentence: " No one in the audience is not amazed" is an English grammar mistake. It should be changed to "Everyone in the audience is amazed".
 

Deleted User - 849192770

Guest
ok while i admire your great grammar really no one cares but if it really bugs you try support?
 
Aritra

Aritra

Well-Known Member
I agree with @Sprite1313
It's not wrong.
I understand general preference for the non-double negative common use, but it is not wrong. In my opinion, this variation creates a greater emphasis on a point (which was not likely the intention here, just side effect of imperfect language translation). I would not say all the time, but I do use this technique. I sure hope my readers understood English enough to not think I was an idiot for use of it. :rolleyes:
 
LisaMV

LisaMV

Well-Known Member
I disagree that this is a grammar mistake, it is simply another way of expressing the idea:
"No one in the audience is not amazed" = you scan the audience for a face of boredom and 'ho-hum' response, and you find none!
"Everyone in the audience is amazed" = that is just a fact, flat and clear.

Language is not binary thinking, it is full of nuance, and the meaning lies between the words. Should all poetry be corrected as well?
That being said, no sentence is not subject to grammar rules.
lol
 
Alistaire

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
Darielle

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Sprite1313 said:
It’s also not an English grammar mistake. It is just another grammatically correct way to say “everyone in the audience is amazed”. Don’t you just love the English language? Nothing is easy.
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Yeah, it is. Double negatives are a no-no. Of course, nowadays, almost everything is okay, lol. I think "no" and "none" are more common in German than they are in English. After all, if someone asks you if you speak a certain language like German, you never say, "I speak no German." You say, "I don't speak German." But there, you specifically say, "I speak no German," or "Ich spreche kein Deutsch." But I guess if you were in Germany, you wouldn't be saying that, LOL.
 
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Pheryll

Pheryll

Set Designer
Darielle said:
Double negatives are a no-no.
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Double negatives are not necessarily unneeded (note that removing both not and un- from that sentence will create a different sentence with a different meaning). They have been used for generations even in analytic and professional work. The simplification that all appearances of double negatives consist of a grammatical taboo is mostly due to the binary nature of the romance languages (where sentences are positive or negative and adjectives/adverbs are switched to the negative state in negative sentences, thus a double negative would not undo itself). In English, where this rarely occurs (see neither nor construction) multiple negatives not only can be used to undo themselves, but also can be used to express a thought that neither a fully positive statement nor a fully negative statement are capable of without having to restructure the whole sentence.
 
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Darielle

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Pheryll said:
Double negatives are not necessarily unneeded (note that removing both not and un- from that sentence will create a different sentence with a different meaning).
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I'm not sure which sentence you mean. I didn't see anything with "un" in that sentence. Double negatives of this type are frowned upon by publishers. (I've had to deal with enough of them in my lifetime, and they are a grumpy bunch, lol.) I was referring to sentences of this type, not every possible instance. Check AP or Chicago style guides for reference.

"No one in the audience is not amazed" could be changed to "everyone in the audience is amazed" without a change in meaning and much better flow.

But you are right in that there are some cases where double negatives are okay, particularly in technical writing. I should have been clearer when I made my statement on double negs.
 
Moho

Moho

Chef
CanDaMan said:
The description of the building contain a double negative. The last sentence: " No one in the audience is not amazed" is an English grammar mistake. It should be changed to "Everyone in the audience is amazed".
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In my opinion, this sentence does not break the rules of English grammar because there isn't a double negative here. The sentence only seems to contain a double negative.

Here is an obvious example of double negative, where the mistake is easy to identify: "Nobody isn't here." The sentence starts with a negative pronoun (equivalent to "no one") and "isn't" is the negative form of "is". To rectify the statement, we need to remove "not" from the verb as follows: "Nobody is here."

The statement mentioned by the original poster above does start with a negative pronoun, but the sentence does not include a verb in the negative form because "not" determines the adjective, not the verb, just like in the following sentence: "The fox refused to eat the grapes because they appeared to be not quite ripe." Although "not quite ripe" can be replaced by "unripe", many authors prefer the former expression whose ambiguity confers a richer meaning.

On the other hand, the sentence "No one in the audience is not amazed." includes the adjective "amazed" whose opposite form "unamazed" seems so weak that certain sources don't even mention it (such as this one or this one). The second source in the brackets mentions "not surprised" as an antonym for "amazed". This means one can use "not" to turn an adjective into its antonym, and the sentence "No one in the audience is not amazed" does not include a double negative, only a negative pronoun and the antonym of "amazed". The correct equivalent of "No one in the audience is not amazed" is not "Everyone in the audience is amazed", but "No one in the audience is unimpressed." Technically, one can be impressed or moved but not necessarily amazed.

Last but not least, this is a form of art. The statement "No one in the audience is not amazed" does seem to include a double negative and it does so on purpose. It is impossible for one to definitely tell whether "not" determines either the verb or the adjective, and this ambiguity is a literary technique which can create multiple meanings. Poetic license is often used in literature when a writer ignores grammar rules to induce artistic effects, and (although it only seems to break the rules) in this respect "No one in the audience is not amazed" is superior to both the sentence proposed by the original poster and to the one suggested by myself.
 
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Aritra

Aritra

Well-Known Member
I believe that "No one in the audience is not amazed" does not mean the same as "everyone in the audience is amazed." It moves the emphasis from characteristic to quantity. With "everyone in the audience is amazed," the natural stress is on amazement. "No one in the audience is not amazed" emphasizes the significance of quantity of persons being referenced. It shows that no one was unaffected (which is still not the same as everyone being affected, here we go again).
 
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