Sentence of the year

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by MLipton:
Science fiction fans might be familiar with Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye.

Bingo.

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Dan McQ:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
"tautened" ?

Amazingly it seems to be an actual word...

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www.merriam-webster.com

Something to pull out of nowhere for the next scrabble game.

OK, if George, Charles, and Noah say so.

I'd still probably reach for "tightened" instead.

Tight isn't completely interchangeable with taut. This one could say "his muscles tautened in apprehension," but one couldn't use the word tighten there. If you really object to the word, which really is hardly an arcane one, you might replace it with became taut in that sentence and with other like constructions elsewhere.

Back to taut in the context of writing: In my view tighten would have been a better word choice, and it’s the one I use on a daily basis, to describe the editing process and the end goal of that process. The argument I would make is that the purpose of tightening a writing is to make it as concise and clear as possible, stated in as simple a manner as possible, to convey the writer’s meaning. That is more difficult to achieve using a word less known like tauten.

Here is the tighter statement of this argument: tighten is tighter than tauten.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

Sleep taut and don't let the bedbugs baut.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Dan McQ:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
"tautened" ?

Amazingly it seems to be an actual word...

Loading…

www.merriam-webster.com

Something to pull out of nowhere for the next scrabble game.

OK, if George, Charles, and Noah say so.

I'd still probably reach for "tightened" instead.

Tight isn't completely interchangeable with taut. This one could say "his muscles tautened in apprehension," but one couldn't use the word tighten there. If you really object to the word, which really is hardly an arcane one, you might replace it with became taut in that sentence and with other like constructions elsewhere.

Back to taut in the context of writing: In my view tighten would have been a better word choice, and it’s the one I use on a daily basis, to describe the editing process and the end goal of that process. The argument I would make is that the purpose of tightening a writing is to make it as concise and clear as possible, stated in as simple a manner as possible, to convey the writer’s meaning. That is more difficult to achieve using a word less known like tauten.

Here is the tighter statement of this argument: tighten is tighter than tauten.

This example is the opposite of mine, making the same point as mine above. Tighten means something different from tauten. You are quite right about editing. So perhaps the issue was always about word choice and not about the existence of the word. If so, the original criticism is correct as far as it goes, and we can all go home.

It strikes me that there is a chance that the original writer did mean tauten with regard to editing. If his point was that the editor made his prose more taut, more tension filled, more stretched to the point where it might tear, tauten would be correct. I have to say, the article didn't convey quite that tension to me. So I'm back to thinking it may have been sloppy word choice.