Writing It Right: A (Most) Unique Situation
by Carolynn Carey
We all know language changes. Words come and go; their popularity waxes and wanes. (Come to think of it, does anybody use the phrase “waxes and wanes” anymore?) But that’s beside the point. The problem often becomes whether we, as fiction writers, are on top of the changes.
For years, I’ve heard language purists insist that the word “unique” must not be modified. If a thing is unique, then it is one of a kind. It cannot be more unique than another thing. Yet people continue to use the word “unique” as a synonym for “rare” to the point that it could almost be considered standard usage.
So what do authorities have to say about “unique”? The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage includes “unique” in its listing of Misused and Easily Confused Words and says of it, “Unique means unequaled, one of a kind—not rare or unusual—so there are no degrees of uniqueness, such as ‘most unique.’”
However, the Prentice Hall Encyclopedic Dictionary of English Usage is less strict. While agreeing that technically, the word means “the only one of its kind,” the dictionary also explains that colloquial usage allows for the sense of “rare” and even points out that Webster’s lists “rare” as a synonym. This source also says a thing can be almost unique, truly unique, certainly unique, perhaps unique, or “in many ways unique.”
So what’s a writer to do? I say do what is most comfortable for you, and if you choose to write that a thing is “most unique,” then do so, but be aware that you may be pulling a language purist out of your story and irritating that reader to the point of throwing your book against the wall.
But still, it is your right as a fiction writer to break the rules if you wish.
Or, as Dwight V. Swain says in Techniques of the Selling Writer, “To keep rules in proper perspective, violate them by design only.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Copyright © Carolynn Carey.
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