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. Those
girls could get out of work faster than a grasshopper could slip
through your fingers.
“Momma, you promised me and Brenda we could go to
Millsburg 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 to
have 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 and
saying 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 rules
Real-sounding dialogue
Using 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?
What does informal
mean?
When would we
use this type of
language?
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
neither
nobody
nor
Nothing
hardly
never
none
not
nowhere
Contractions that end in
n’t are also negative words.
wouldn’t
didn’t
can’t
won’t