if there were seven deadly grammar sins
one of them would surely be the sin of
doubles what do I mean by that well
oftentimes people will use double
negatives in a sentence
double prepositions or double subjects
and sometimes it can alter the meaning
of their sentence or make their sentence
really clunky so we want to avoid
doubles I'll give you an example the
other night I was watching Saturday
Night Live with my husband and Justin
Timberlake came on and I said that guy
can't do no wrong my husband turned to
me and he said first of all you're
married second of all you just committed
the sin of a double negative let me show
you what it looks like so if we say he
can't do no wrong we have two negatives
in the sentence one is the word can't
the positive would be to say he can do
the negative is to say he can't do and
the other negative in the sentence is to
say no no wrong as opposed to just wrong
by doing this by putting a double
negative in the sentence we actually
changed the meaning to be the exact
opposite of our intention what this
really means is that he can't do
anything right and that's not what I
intended to say
now I'll show you what a double
preposition looks like in this sentence
we say he jumped off of the stage well
here we have two prepositions
prepositions indicate the location of
words in relation to one another our two
prepositions are off of in this case
they don't change the meaning but
they're unnecessary it would mean the
same thing if we just said he jumped off
this stage it gives us a more
streamlined sentence to drop one of the
prepositions finally I'll show you what
a double subject looks like in this
sentence Justin he can see we have two
subjects Justin and he they both mean
the same thing and they're further both
unnecessary again it's much crisper and
clearer if we just say Justin can sing
so that's a little tip about avoiding
the deadly sin of doubles in your
writing