Kind vs Nice
Here’s a post about words on a blog called Math With Bad Drawings, and yes, I am particularly amused to see Ben Orlin departing from math topics to hit an English topic.
There are two kinds of people in this world, and no, I don’t mean “kind” and “nice.”
I mean “people who use the words ‘kind’ and ‘nice’ interchangeably” and “people who care passionately about the difference.”
Certainly, kindness is the deeper virtue. A world without niceness would be a bit of a grind; a world without kindness would be unendurably lonely. If the internet were full of writers blithely conflating the two, or insisting that niceness is the key to life, then I would of course speak up in defense of kindness. But we find ourselves in the opposite world, where many are inclined to round niceness down to zero (or even treat it as a vice!). I thus offer the most banal conclusion any writer has ever uttered: being nice is Good, Actually.
Click through and read the whole thing.
Ben has done quite a few good posts. Here is a collection of some of the most popular.
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