"It is not entirely easy to tell when Ben Yagoda's pieces in The Chronicle of Higher Education are evidencing his dry wit and when they are serious. But if there is meant to be anything serious at all about his claims that experts on writing all agree that adjectives are bad, I really don't know how any of them managed to reach the stage of being thought expert. How could it "one of the few points on which the sages of writing agree" possibly be that "it is good to avoid them" when to utter the very thought you need the adjective good? How could William Zinsser possibly be serious in saying that most adjectives are "unnecessary" when he couldn't finish his sentence without the adjective unnecessary? How could Yagoda himself suggest that writers mainly use adjectives because they are "they either haven't, or are afraid they haven't, provided sufficient data", while using the adjectives afraid and sufficient in order to say it?"

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