When you care just enough to confuse readers

A headline for a movie review in yesterday's Washington Post reminded me of yet another of my many pet peeves, namely writers settling for a vague term when the tiniest extra effort could turn the vague into the specific (and more helpful).

See if you spot the offending word in the review's headline.

‘Stillwater,’ with Matt Damon, is four movies in one, and only some of them work

If you chose "some" you are on my wavelength. How many equals "some," we might ask. And the headline writer DID focus on a specific number of movie themes (four) before growing tired (?) and not choosing either one or two, which must be the number of movies "not working."

Words like some and many and a few, along with a long list of similar words, never work very well in persuasive writing, or any other kind of writing.

"I have some money" tells you absolutely nothing. Now if I say, "I have some money BUT not enough to help you out with that problem," then I have at least offered some information. Or "I have some money AND I want to donate to that cause" offers some sort of action.

The former president loves to say, "Many people are talking about..." and has never in his lifetime offered any specific numbers of those doing the talking or hinting at who they might be. Vagueness is a very common rhetorical fallacy, and it's so common that we just get tired of asking the logical follow up, something like, "Well, how many are your referring to when you say 'some' " Or "How many is A LOT in this case?"

Another quibble with that headline about the new film is that it is not parallel, with a much stronger version lurking to be chosen, like "...four movies in one, and two don't work."

That specificity helps organize the structure of the review itself, since the headline forces the writer to include (probably) at least four sections, with each dealing with one of the four movies.

Good writing is hard, certainly, but being too lazy to go beyond vagueness? That has nothing to do with difficulty and everything to do with not caring all that much.

At least, that's what a lot of people are saying.