Writer’s Secret

The Double Negative

Double Negative

A double negative occurs when two negative words are used incorrectly in a sentence.

Please copy into your writer’s notebook.

Mentor Text“I got plenty of chores need doing around here this morning,” his mother announced as they were finishing the frits and red gravy. His mother was from Georgia and still cooked like it.

“Oh, Momma!” Ellie and Brenda squawked in concert. Thosegirls could get out of work faster than a grasshopper could slipthrough your fingers.

“Momma, you promised me and Brenda we could go toMillsburg for school shopping.”

“You ain’t got no money for school shopping!”“Momma. We’re just going to look around.” Lord, he wishes

Brenda would stop whining so. “Christmas! You don’t want us tohave no fun at all.”

“Any fun,” Ellie corrected her primly. “Oh, be quiet.”Ellie ignored her. “Miz Timmons is coming to pick us up. I told

Lollie Sunday you said it was OK. I feel dumb calling her andsaying you changed your mind.”

“Oh, all right. But I ain’t got no money to give you.”Any money, something whispered in Jess’s head. “I know, Momma. We’ll just take the five dollars Daddy promised us. No more’n that.

-Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

What can Katherine Paterson teach us with this passage? (go back to passage)

Dialogue rulesReal-sounding dialogueUsing other words instead of “said”The double negative

What do you think is going on with the correctingy Why do you think Jess and Ellie correct the sister, Brenda, and not the mother, at least out loud?

Formal vs informal forms of language

What does formal mean?

When would we use this type of language?

What does informal mean?

When would we use this type of language?

The double negatives used by the author (Paterson) reveal something about Momma and Brenda.

The use of the double negative in dialogue is effective in “showing” rather than telling information about the character.

Let’s list all the double negatives

I will go back to the passage and on the whiteboard let’s list all the double negatives we see (Informal).

Let’s revise the informal to make them formal. INFORMAL FORMAL

Please copy into your writer’s notebook

“Avoid the Double Negative.”

Sneaky Negative Words

barely hardlyneither nevernobody nonenor not Nothing nowhere

Contractions that end in n’t are also negative words.

wouldn’tdidn’tcan’twon’t