Grammar Moses: Kindly do not rebuff my refresher course

By Jim Baumann

jbaumann@dailyehrald.com

In the newspaper business, we wrongly assume that people read everything we write - and remember it all, too.

That ridiculous belief sometimes steers us away from stories that might be helpful to readers (But we wrote that last year!).

And it's what drives me to worry incessantly about coming up with fresh material each week when, clearly, you are not laminating every column for posterity.

That said, this column will serve as a refresher course on some grammar and usage issues that continue to creep up.

Refute/dispute

This issue reared its head a few days ago. I touched on it in a column roughly 75 weeks ago. I'm sure you remember it fondly.

As I am wont to say, the bigger the type, the bigger the error. In a story last week we used "refute" in a headline to describe a political candidate's taking issue with a claim by an opponent.

If the candidate were to show proof that the challenger was wrong, he would be refuting the claim. But he merely challenged the claim.

To refute is to disprove beyond a doubt.

To rebut is to attempt to refute. Or to "dispute" it.

I suspect people get confused because both words end with -ute.

While I'm on the topic of similar words, to "rebuff" is to reject in an ungracious manner.

To "rebuke" is to express strong criticism of one's actions.

Now that we have that straight, here is another thing I've railed on in the past:

Algebra in ads

Advertising is all about putting the best face on a product. It's bigger, it's better, it's faster, it's brighter, it's quieter.

But more and more, in radio advertising at least, it's about being "more" something.

And "more" is always sexier than "as much as."

There are two ways I know of when "more" makes no sense at all.

"We sell more than 37 varieties of widgets," one might claim.

OK, so is that 38 or 40 or 315 widgets?

Clearly, the company sells 37 widgets. Why else would one come up with such a precise number?

The second - and much more insidious - claim is that "Our product is four times more effective than the leading product."

If you think of this mathematically, for our product to be four times more effective than theirs, first it has to be as effective as the other guy's product plus four times more than that.

So, x + 4x = 5x, with x being the effectiveness of the other guy's product.

It would be so much better sounding to say something is "five times as effective as" than "four times more effective," right? The two phrases mean the same thing.

So why make the claim that something is four times more effective?

Because of the power of "more." If the claim is "four times more effective," I'll lay money that it's really three times more effective ... or four times as effective.

Caveat emptor!

Write - and shop - carefully.

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.