Comparatives and Superlatives

As best as possible

One of my sweetest and most loyal readers sent me the idea for today’s column.  It seems that another local publication recently printed a story containing the phrase, “as best as possible.”

Excuse me for a moment.  That’s so awful that I need to have a convulsion just to recover.  Thank you.

I didn’t see the article myself, so I’m hoping that the paid writer didn’t put together that doosey.  I hope it was a statement made by someone in the heat of the moment.  Someone whose emotions overrode his good grammatical senses.  Or something like that.  That sort of excuse would even give the editor an excuse for not editing out such a horror.  Otherwise, that copy editor is in serious danger of being fired.  Or he should be.

You see, when you construction the phrase “as ______ as possible,” an adjective or adverb in the blank cannot be comparative or superlative. 

Did I lose you with those fancy grammarian’s words?  Sorry about that.

Comparative adjectives and adverbs are ones that generally show the relationship between two things: better, worse, flatter, squishier, more, less.  Superlative adjectives and adverbs show something in relationship to several other things: best, worst, flattest, squishiest, most, least.

Because most comparative and superlative adverbs are formed by adding more or most (or less or least) to an –ly adverb (more slowly, less likely), the error with those is hardly an issue.  I mean, seriously, can you imagine constructing something like, “I want to move as more slowly as possible.”?  You’ll hit your head from the convulsion that construction induces.

And really, most adjectives and adverbs ending in –er or –est aren’t going to make it into that construction, either:

                as flatter as possible

                as squishiest as possible

                as less as possible

You’d have to be medicated in order to stop the convulsions.

But for some reason, some people put comparatives and – more often – superlatives into the “as _____ as possible” construction.  But not you, my faithful readers.  If you didn’t know better before, now you do. 

And the convulsions?  I’ll have as few as possible.