Paging An Editor: Needless to say?
I'm trawling Paula Wolfer's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen for recipe ideas, and I just noticed the headnote to her "French Croutes with Onion Jam and Scrambled Eggs."
She writes:
In southwest France, slices of dense baguette, thinly cut on the diagonal, are called croutes. Such slices are the perfect size to hold this incredibly savory topping. Needless to say, eating it requires a knife and a fork.
I've used "needless to say" in my own writing, but it always irks me when I do: If you don't need to say it, then why are you doing so? However, in this headnote it makes less sense than normal. When I cut diagonally across a baguette, I end up with something a bit longer than the diameter of the baguette: A perfect bit to hold in your fingers. So why would I naturally assume, and have it be "needless to say," that I need a knife and a fork for this dish? (As a side note, I've noticed a fair number of exclamation marks in the text, which is never a good sign, quality of recipes notwithstanding.)
Labels: Paging An Editor
posted by Derrick @ 8:41 PM
3 Comments:
What the author means is it's needless to say that you need a knife and fork to eat this substantial dish: large slices of baguette topped with mounds of scrambled egg and garnish. It's called figurative language.
I can appreciate that the dish requires a knife and fork, but the headnote doesn't jibe with that. The word "heaped," for instance, doesn't appear there or in the recipe.
I still think that in a world that has become accustomed to crostini (which these would seem to be on a cursory read) and even bruschetta as finger food (less so on the latter, though), it's an odd juxtaposition.
But even so, why not just say, "Eat this substantial dish with a knife and fork." The "needless to say" always catches my eye as an admittedly picky reader. Like "no pun intended" (which the author contradicts by noticing the pun and then leaving it in, claiming to have done so unintentionally).
I think writers use "needless to say" when they're pointing out a very simple point that is counter intuitive. In this case, we assume that the food described is finger food but because of its size and shape, Wolfert thinks it important to inform the reader. Sometimes the phrase is used to inform readers of something that ought to be obvious but may not be widely known, for instance, that you can eat asparagus with your fingers. I can imagine a writer finishing a recipe with the sentence,"Needless to say, the asparagus can be eaten with your fingers." And that little phrase allows a reader to say to himself, in the privacy of his thoughts, "Oh, I can? How nice."
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