# When is a 'double-negative' bad?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-a-double-negative-bad/404908>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 21, 2007, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-a-double-negative-bad/404908 "2007-05-21T10:06:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 34

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2012, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-a-double-negative-bad/404908/34 "2012-11-21T14:12:21Z")

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There was another thread about double-negatives almost 3 years ago. In my post there I mentioned a sentence with a quadruple-negative that I had to read carefully when I came across it in a newspaper:

> [@Double negatives make a positive! No, they don't!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/double-negatives-make-a-positive-no-they-dont/528150/17):
>
> There are many examples where a negative is actually an emphatic _positive_:  
> "Wow, isn’t that girl pretty?’  
> “Isn’t she!”
> 
> There are also examples where a sentence has three or more negatives and _does indeed_ conform to the rule that a negative is intended if and only if the total number of negatives is an _odd_ number. (Am I the only one that sometimes has to stop and actually count the negatives to understand the meaning of such a sentence?) An example, paraphrased, from a N.Y. Times editorial is the sentence:
> 
> In a court case brought by environmentalists against the coal mining industry the judge found that the defendant had failed to demonstrate the damage would not be irreversible.  
> Not counting “damage” this clause has four negatives (failed, not, ir-, -revers); thus it _affirms_ the environmental damage.

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