Instantaneously

Okay, I don’t go “Grammar Nazi” in general, because I believe people should be able to write whatever they want, and use whatever words fit the situation. However, I’ve seen this same issue come up in three different podcast fiction stories, from three different professional authors, and I gotta find closure on this.

I hate the word “instantaneously”. Let’s put aside the general writing advice that says, “Kill all the adverbs”. If you want to say that something suddenly happened, it seems like “suddenly” isn’t good enough anymore. “Instantly” is better than “suddenly” because it means something happened even faster. But “instantaneously” is even better than “instantly” because it’s even faster-er!!

This is bad writing, because it’s being used as a cheap trick to make something seem hyperbolically amazing. The thing that really bugs me is that it’s not just bad, it’s wrong.

When you say “instantaneous” you’re talking about the time between two events. Specifically, you’re talking about zero time between events. You can say that the sun instantly blew up, but you can’t say that it instantaneously blew up. That’s one event, untethered by time to another event, indicating that zero time elapsed between the sun blowing up and . . . no other event. It doesn’t make any sense.

You could say “The cannon fired and the sun instantaneously blew up,” but even that is bad, because it couldn’t happen that way. Once the cannon fired, the bullet (cannonball, plasma shot, whatever) had to leave the barrel, traverse that distance to the sun, penetrate it’s circumference, start an explosion (implosion, whatever), and shrink or dissipate the sun. . . However you do it, there is more than zero time between events. That’s just physics.

So, yes, I am being “Grammar Nazi” and I know I’ve made bigger mistakes in my writing, but seriously. When I read about something happening “instantaneously”, it takes me out of the narrative and leaves me with one thought. There’s a writer who doesn’t think their story can stand on it’s own without illogically inflated adverbs.

Now, get into the comments, and tell me why I’m wrong. Go cut and paste definitions, and tell me why I’m priggish and stuffy. Do it now, instantaneously.