It Was a Little Bit Heartbreaking

 I always cringe when I see a sentence like that: “I was slightly devastated. It was sort of horrible. It was a little bit heartbreaking.” No, no, no.

As writers, one of our main goals is to be clear. Those are confusing sentences. Let’s take the subject title about heartbreaking. If something is truly heartbreaking, you feel emotionally ruined. Usually, we are talking about a death or a serious loss when we talk about something heartbreaking. But by putting the phrase “a little bit” in front of heartbreaking, we diminish it completely. The reader has no idea what you are saying. If you were a little bit heartbroken, does that mean that you were simply sad for a couple of hours? Or were you indeed devastated? If that was the case, just say devastated. You don’t need a phrase before it that will diminish its meaning.

Likewise, if you only felt a bit sad, there’s no reason to use a strong term like devastating, heartbreaking, or horrible. Just say sad. “I felt sad. I felt upset.” You can say, “I felt a bit upset,” but once again, be careful using diminutives. Be clear. The solution to this confusion is to write those sentences in one of two ways, depending on what you’re trying to say:

“I was devastated” or “I was sad.” It’s an easy fix.

This also happens with terms like sort out and kind of. They seem to be very popular now on public radio, NPR, or even in progressive circles. It’s the same thing if you say, “I was kind of a wreck.” No, either you were a wreck, or you were slightly off balance. Choose one, and make sure that your writing clearly expresses the emotion that you want to convey.