Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Simply Easy

It's Wednesday, and time for our midweek grammar post!

Don't forget, if you see some really bad grammar out there and would like me to discuss it in my blog, or if you have a grammar pet peeve that you'd like to explore more deeply, comment or message me to send in a request! I look forward to seeing what you have for me.

Today, however, we're going over another of my peeves.

Simple vs. Easy




You see, things that are easy are not always simple, and things that are simple are not always easy (which also doesn't mean that they're complex, which we'll discuss next week).

Simplicity deals with singular, generally. Things are simple when they're laid out before us, when we know what it is that we need to do and we know that it's more than possible to be done.

Things are easy when we can do them with one eye closed, when we can work out how to do them in our sleep, and when we can do them without even thinking about doing them.

That doesn't make much sense, so we'll add a definition, courtesy of Google:

  • Simple:
Easily understood or done; presenting no complexity
Composed of a single element; not compound

  • Easy: 
Achieved without great effort; presenting few difficulties


Catch the difference? It's a little harder to understand between simple and easy, because the terms are so similar, but a lot of the time I've noticed people getting it wrong before they get it right.

Things are easy when you know you can do them with little to no effort whatsoever.

Things are simple when they're easy to understand, but not necessarily when they'll be very easy to deal with.

It's like this:

Loving your mother is simple. It's a concept that we all know very well, and we're presented with every day. But if she's annoying you today, it's not so easy to love her. The simple concept became difficult, because new variables were added (it did not, however, become complex).

I promise, it'll all make much more sense next week, when we discuss the differences between difficult and complex and throw the four definitions together.

For now, I hope this clears at least a bit of confusion.

[simple love]

{RD}

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