Hardly ever used as a trope: Understatement

I second the idea that we should rename the trope. Understatement For Emphasis is a good one; it reinforces the focus of the trope, rather than just being any understatement.

—ignore

edited 1st Sep '11 12:11:22 PM by peccantis

Two problems with renaming it to Understatement For Emphasis that I can see.

One is that it's not always for emphasis; sometimes, it's simply for comedy.

Two is that I think that will be just as prone to misuse; many of the examples I'm removing are theoretically attempts at using it for emphasis.

"Comedy" and "emphasis" aren't mutually exclusive. Understatement is a humorous way of emphasis. If you ask someone what it felt like to be set on fire and their answer is "warm", then they're emphasizing that it was, in fact, extremely warm, for comedic effect.

They're also not mutually inclusive, though.

Would changing it to something like Understating The Situation help? It means basically the same thing but takes a lot longer to type.

Yeah, this has basically become a wiki meme. I wasn't going to bring it up because most of the time, people sinkhole it when they actually are understating things, but then that didn't save Take That! from massive meme-wiping way back before we had TRS.

Someone should collect the name suggestions and start an alt-titles crowner (unless we need a single-prop despite the massive meme infection). I like the existing Putting It Mildly redirect.

Putting It Mildly works for me.

For my next round of sinkhole zaps, I'm going to start recording just how often the statement in question actually is understatement. I know I was surprised to discover just how often words and phrases like "extremely," "incredibly," "a ton of," "rather," "unbelievably," and the like get sinkholed to understatement. It's one of those things that easily get overlooked, but there are quite a few examples of misuse according to definition that go hand-in-hand with misuse according to policy.

Another that appears is folks using understatement to state the bleedingly obvious. If not for the fact that Captain Obvious also gets more than its fair share of sinkholes, I'd swap that in instead.

I wasn't keeping count, but I'd say about half of the sinkholes Ive killed so far have been attached to a statement that clearly wasn't an understatement at all, either because of the words ("extremely, very, huge) or the markup (bolded, italics, ALLCAPS, or some combination of the three.). There was one that was in italic bold ALLCAPS and was still sinkholed to Understatement....

Yeah, I couldn't keep count either. After the fifth Badass subtrope that I ripped sinkholes out of, I just gave up on counting. And I too have found the ever popular combination of italics, bold, capitals, the word "extremely," and a sinkhole to Understatement.

Slightly related, I've added "different Pot Hole to every word in a statement regardless of appropriateness" on my list of TV Tropes pet peeves. Among other things, slipping in a weasel word just to link it to Understatement is one variation that I've grown quickly unhappy with.

To answer Jules' question from Pulp Fiction from years ago, no, they don't speak it.

"The C" through "The D" taken care of. It's kind of sad that I get into a groove of just deleting the potholes that I sometimes overlook legitimate examples just because it was potholed. (Jon Stewart cutting himself on a wine glass, requiring stitches "Oh that's not good.")

edited 2nd Sep '11 4:04:57 PM by KJMackley

KJ, I hope you don't mind that I've been using my magical mod powers to edit your OP in the Special Efforts thread with a running tally of what's been checked.

No that's fine, actually I think I meant to put my last post in the Special Efforts thread, but got confused.

Incidentally, are we allowed to remove examples in the Understatement page itself that's just the troper making an understatement about something? (See: last two examples under Real Life)

edited 2nd Sep '11 7:10:32 PM by Servbot

Misuse is to be removed, regardless of what page it's on. Sounds good to me.

@Servbot: That's misuse (by virtue of being a Verbal Tic and not an example from a work of fiction), so it's gotta go. Just remember to rewrite the example to make sense without the Pot Hole.

Done removing the bad examples I saw in the page itself.

Ah, so that's what's going on. I was wondering why someone removed the "understatement" tags on my page.

On "your" page? Which page?

Not "my" page, I suppose... but a page some very nice tropers put together about my webcomic, The Dragon Doctors. (I contribute to the page too, a little, just for fun).

Yeah, I definitely needs a rename.

Vote to rename.

While a rename would probably be helpful in curbing misuse, I would be hesitant to permanently redlink Understatement, simply because that is the correct name for this trope outside this wiki.

Wow.

I've always wanted to make a thread about this. I used Understatement as a pothole exactly once, and I regret it. When I read it for the first few times, I thought it was funny, but the incredible overuse was starting to get unbearable. It's just extremely predictable.

Could it be sent to the Permanent Red Link Club to discourage the verbal tic?

edited 4th Sep '11 5:52:36 PM by Teraus

The problem with that is that it's not just a verbal tic, it's a legitimate trope.

edited 4th Sep '11 6:09:03 PM by BadWolf21