"And it wasn't that close"

[sirvaliantbrown]

ESPN.com today:

HANGZHOU, China -- Controversy is almost as foreign to the United States women's national team as losing, but coach Greg Ryan's team found both all too easily against Brazil on Thursday.

A 4-0 loss in the Women's World Cup semifinals that wasn't even as close as the score indicated was bad enough, relegating the team to Sunday's meaningless third-place game for the second World Cup in a row.
--

It wasn't even as close as...4-0?

How not-close was it, then?

 

[chazp]

In a football story it's often used when the losing team scored one or two late touchdowns to make the score look closer. In this case, I don't have a problem using it.

 

[BTExpress]

If you're going to use that line, you'd better be able to back it up in the story.

Well, duh.

But the "not really that close" line allows you to tell the reader in the first two paragraphs that the game was decided early.

If you ignore that line, then depending on how it is written, the reader may not find out how uncompetitive the game was until halfway through the story.

You can't just assume saying "took a 35-0 halftime lead en route to a 35-27 victory" does the job, because many teams DO make legitmate comebacks that make the score every bit as close as the game was. Other times it's simply the winning team milking the clock or putting in its reserves that caused the "closer" score. So there is a place for the line.

Of course we don't "need" the line.

But then, we don't really "need" about 99 percent of the lines we write. There are always other ways to say things. But given space and deadline constraints, most writers don't have the time to search out that "other way" just to avoid a line that is a pet peeve with some people.

These kinds of things are all over the place in sportswriting. Not much you can do about them. Certainly not worth getting all bent out of shape about.

 

[luckyducky]

Echoing what some other folks said, there are other ways to say it. Personally, I hate the phrase and I hope I never become so lazy in my writing that I feel the need to use it. If you're really a good writer, you can get the point across without sounding like you're giving the 30 second highlights on sportscenter.

 

[Some Guy]

Some of the phrases that pass for "lazy" or "cliched" around here are astounding. If I followed the advice of everyone on this forum, there would be no words left to write.

Everything should be banned.

 

[Jesus_Muscatel]

Actually I prefer, "The score was closer than the game indicated."