Question about "first ever"

Since this thread is essentially jacked ...

I feel like I use in my writing and allow in my editing far more contractions than most. The 'he's' from earlier being the prime example. I think it makes for a far more conversational tone. And considering we're writing sports, the breezier the better.

Interested to hear other opinions.

And, nothing personal Albert, but you're wrong on both counts. The good news: Now you know and you won't make the same mistake again.

Ain't nothing wrong with being wrong once in a while.

 

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a second ...

I'll buy the ban on first-ever. Fine. It seems to be a standing rule at most places, and it's easy enough to write around.

But ... I'm not quite buying the reasoning given on this thread, which basically is: "First-ever is redundant. First means first."

OK, but most of the time, when you're talking about the first something, there has to be some context.

"David Ortiz hit his first home run."

Of the season? Of his career? What?

Someone on this thread said, in such a sentence, he just assumes it means first of the season. With someone like David Ortiz, a Major Leaguer everybody knows has hit home runs before, that's probably a safe assumption.

What if it were a high school gamer, involving a player we've never heard of? Did the kid hit his first home run of the season, or of his life? I can't tell just by looking at the sentence. I suppose I could make some assumptions ... but why are we making our readers assume things? Why don't we just tell them?

"Ah," you say, "You still don't use first-ever. You can qualify it with 'first career home run' or 'first home run of the season.' " Which is fine. Like I said, easy and painless enough to write around.

Except, if we're now having to add qualifying words to clarify what we mean, then maybe the defintion of "first" isn't so cut and dried to begin with. Which would seem to make "first-ever" not so redundant at all. Which would make me question why we can't use it again?

Sometimes, I think we in this business tend to stick with our rules because they are rules, at the expense of our readers' comprehension.

My No. 1 rule -- Be clear. If you are clear in what you are trying to say, you've already won half the battle.

 

That's six cliches in two sentences. There might be a seventh in there I may be missing but I just can't give it another breeze.

 

I got no problem with the writing, though I might have used "combusted" rather than "exploded" in the first example. Just sounds classier, dammit!

 

You want to borrow my aforementioned cinder block?

 

I like using inaugural.

 

That's a little too narrow for me. When a team holds another team scoreless it remains a shutout. It can involve a combination of things, including great relief pitching and defense. It just becomes a team accomplishment instead of an individual one. Same with two or more pitchers combining on a no-hitter.

 

Some guy, this is pretty convincing. Meybe we should let "first-ever" fly in some instances (I will now duck ... oh, the horror).

 

Problem is, if you let first-ever in, are you going to hyphenate it then?

 

You can say the team had a shutout if more than one pitcher holds an opponent scoreless. Indeed, you can say, ``Three pitchers combined for a six-hit shutout.''

All 2MCM and the others are saying is that writing, ``Joe Schmoe pitched a complete-game shutout'' is redundant. ``Joe Schmoe pitched a shutout'' is sufficient, because Joe would not have received credit for a shutout if he had not worked a complete game. That's different than saying ``Joe pitched six shutout innings,'' which is not a shutout (though it would probably sound better to say Joe pitched six scoreless innings, or Joe shut out the Hosers for six innings).

Make sense?

 

I do, too. Comes off less stilted. I especially dislike it when people edit out contractions in quotes. People just don't speak like that.

 

"First-ever" is cablespeak, but has bled over to print media. I suspect the source of this gimmick is broadcast school, where the motto is "always be intensifying" ("very first", "single most", "every single", "this particular", "absolutely no", "actually [any verb you like]", "both...as well as", "huuuuge", etc.). Some of you believe "first" alone can be ambiguous. Even assuming that is true, the place for "ever" (or any other expression of time) is after the noun being modified, not before (and cutely hyphenated to boot). For example, you might say "this is my first doughnut today", but not "first-today doughnut." "First-ever no hitter" is no better. That's my last-ever word on this topic...