Comments on: Is anything really unique?

By: Andy Jarosz

Andy Jarosz — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:52:13 +0000

I reckon you can get away with unique when you’re trying to sell your type of destination James. But again, perhaps the selling point of the Crapping Leopard Monastery is in fact it’s name – truly unique.
But in most cases I think people will be far more sold by a well-told story that captures the magic of a place and inspires the reader to want to experience it for themselves than they will be by a lazy adjective dropped in without any effort to back it up with evidence.
Quite unique is a good one.. someone trying to use up their quota of ‘q’s, I suspect.

By: james willcox

james willcox — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:53:55 +0000

I stand before you guilty of using Unique in my travel writing….

But it highlights one of the biggest problems with travel writing especially when trying to sell destinatons.
You have to get across the reason why, for example, the “crapping leopard monastery” is worth spending 2 grand, staying in unheated rooms and bouncing for 12 hours on an unmade road to see it. You have to give a reason why it is better than staying at home in Watford and ordering a take out pizza.
Unique is therefore the perfect word. You can’t get this experience anywhere else in the world!!
That is why superlatives are also incredibly common with travel writing. “Come and see southern Derbyshire’s second largest, fuly intact functioning 19th century commode… “etc….
Without these tricks how else are we to sell our destinations?
That is not a rhetorical question… i would like some help.

Steering the ship of prose through the maelstrom of cliche is best left to the experts like you Andy. However, one thing that is worse than seeing “unique” is seeing “quite unique”.

By: Andy Jarosz

Andy Jarosz — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:17:36 +0000

Wat Phou in Laos: “Angkor Wat without the crowds” according to some UK travel article.

Fully agree that using unque without explaining why – in fact using amazing, awesome, breathtaking etc etc – without any justification – is lazy writing. That ‘over used words’ list just keeps on growing.

Thanks again for the many different though not exactly unique comments.

By: pam

pam — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:25:30 +0000

A little cognitive dissonance is a good thing, I like it from time to time. But oh, please please please file “unique” under “over used words” when it comes to travel writing.

I don’t agree that because there’s just one, it’s probably no good — after all, I’m not aware of more than one Angkor Wat, and that place, oh, it’s freaking amazing.

But it’s (here’s my axe to grind, yet again) lazy to call something unique without getting into WHY. It’s langague as decoration. Surely it’s enough to say that the indie retailers share space with the box stores, and that means there’s a lot on offer for shopping. There’s no need to claim it as unique, plus, it’s just NOT.

By: John

John — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:09:20 +0000

Sadly, “hidden gems” keep being discovered by all manner of travel blogger. I wish I employed them on my team when I was a Mining Engineer.

The next time I start to type “unique”, I’ll think twice to see if I really mean that. But then Jeruen has introduced the less than unique concept of “doublethink”,which doesn’t mean to think twice, but to think of two opposing views simultaneously.

With string theory holding out the possibility of infinite parallel universes, perhaps it can be scientifically proven that nothing is unique as it must exist in exactly the same form in a parallel universe.

As you can see I’m easily confused, but that is not unique either, I read it on a Twitter bio.

By: John

John — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:54:23 +0000

Yes, and my son is also 6′ 1″ in japan getting the same reactions. But as he has a liking for Japanese girls, he’s not complaining.

By: Traveling Ted

Traveling Ted — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:49:28 +0000

It used to be “hidden gem” and “undiscovered” were the hot cliches in travel writing, but you penned the new one. It is a shame that even a giant pineapple is no longer noteworthy.

By: Andy Jarosz

Andy Jarosz — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:43:46 +0000

Thanks Jeruen, I suspect we can look at the same situation with both viewpoints and argue a strong case either way. I’m with you though – it’s good to think of certain things (such as Machu Picchu) as unique. But then maybe we’re just using this label to mean ‘something amazing that we haven’t seen before and probably won’t see again’ – unique to us rather than unique in its existence. I’m getting tied up in complexity here – better stop

By: Andy Jarosz

Andy Jarosz — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:40:44 +0000

I know the feeling – we were recently in several small towns in Japan and I was approached by strangers as a novelty item (I’m 6’1″ as well). Wait, that means our stories are no longer unique

By: Jeruen

Jeruen — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:41:23 +0000

Andy, this is a great article. I often find myself bouncing back and forth from the two different perspectives you mentioned here, given what I do. As a PhD candidate and researcher in academia, I am inclined to believe that nothing is unique. Presumably, in any given topic in any research field, someone has done something related to it, that you have to cite it. Never is it the case that you do something and nothing is related to it at all.

As a traveler on the other hand, I go to places because I want to see things that are only available in that place. I am a big fan of historical travel, and visiting archaeological ruins is something I do every now and then. I visited Peru before because I would like to believe that Machu Picchu is unique, and I am visiting Guatemala this January for the same reason, that there are experiences I can have just by visiting that country and not anywhere else.

So, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to believe both points at the same time, no?