Eh too, Brute?

Eh TOO, Brute?

 

    Just how much is TOO much?  

That's the biggest problem with using too in such a construction: You are quantifying something that often is subjective and can't be classified/measured with a simple list.

TOO in this case should suggest crossing a certain boundary, as in more than one can manage, more than one can bear, more than is acceptable or appropriate. 

In some cases, using too is perfectly appropriate and obvious because you CAN quantify the thing in question. Some examples:

1) The police officer stopped the driver for driving too fast -- 50 mph on a street with a posted speed limit of 35 mph -- and wrote him a ticket. Any speed of 36 mph and above on that street correctly can be called too fast because it exceeds what the law has deemed appropriate.

2) The storm proved too much for the tree,    toppling it right onto the roof of the home. The storm's effects passed the point at which the tree could endure it, and the tree was unable to keep from falling over. The storm definitely was too much for the tree to withstand.

3) She was too loud and got thrown out of the cafe by the owner when she refused to quiet down. The customer crossed the line of acceptable behavior and exceeded the acceptable level of noise. Although you might not be able to quantify it in a numerical manner, you clearly can quantify it in the sense that a certain amount of noise -- shouting as loudly as you can, for example -- definitely exceeds the proper level of noise a customer is permitted to make while inside the restaurant. 

4) If you let yourself get too tired while behind the wheel, you might fall asleep and find yourself in a life-threatening situation. The level here is definitely measurable -- becoming too tired in this case results in the driver losing consciousness.

5) He was disciplined too many times and wound up getting expelled.    Here we realize there was a definite point at which the school considered the transgressions excessive and unacceptable, and once the person exceeded that point he was thrown out of the school. 

Many other too constructions, however, have no such quantifiable or measurable means of making such a determination and thus end up being wrong because they apply an objective measure to something entirely subjective. 

What do I mean? Here are some examples in which too is simply wrong, no matter how many thousands of times you have seen it that way:

1) It shouldn't take him too long to do his chores. Unless he's racing the clock, with some ironclad deadline to get the work done or face some kind of meaningful consequence (punishment, eviction, death, imprisonment), there's simply no amount of time that constitutes too much here. In other words, no one can objectively state that any certain time span passes over into too long because we have given no measurable time frame in which to judge.

What we should write instead of too in this and hundreds of constructions is very. That is the point of today's lesson.

2) I wouldn't be too worried about the lack of rain this week. Again, who is to say at what point worrying becomes too much? The answer is no one. The writer should recast it as very worried.

3) You can play in the yard but don't go too far. There might seem to be an obvious distance that constitutes being too far, but the speaker has not specified it, so we really mean very far, not too far. You have no way of knowing just how far is too far here. Ten feet from the door? Twenty feet? We don't know.

4) They weren't too far into the movie   when the power suddenly went out inside the theater. There's absolutely no objective point in the movie that anyone can agree was too far in this case. We simply should say very far to indicate that the film had been running for a short time (perhaps only a few minutes, certainly less than half of its running time) when it was stopped because of a power failure.  

5) I'm not doing too well in that class. Is it even possible to do too well in a class? Of course not. Getting a perfect score is wonderful and a great goal but certainly never could be considered doing too well by any reasonable person. The student obviously means he's not doing very well, that he is struggling.

This again goes back to what I have mentioned from the beginning of this blog back in May: Parrot's Disease. Here is another reminder:  

PARROT'S DISEASE:  

  Be skeptical and look things up to be sure! Do not trust myths and rumors or repeat things you have seen or heard, no matter how common. This is how such atrocious writing as the examples cited becomes so common. Be uncommon and be sure something you write is correct. Don't just parrot what you read and hear!

 

 

It's time to wrap it up.
 

My next post will deal with the puzzling Abuse of Capital letters in Stories. Let's hope You are Not one Of those writers Who is guilty of Such a Transgression. Stay tuned ...