I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about reading.
Generally I do it a lot, and don’t think much about it; but as I’m currently writing a book about reading, it’s probably a good thing to have on my mind. And today I interviewed someone for the book, and was amazed to hear a story of growing up with dyslexia, and not discovering the joys of reading until this individual was in her fifties.
Think about that for a moment. Not be able to read for half a century!
It’s just a reminder of all the things we take for granted. Recently there was a memorial service in the virtual world Second Life, for a person who was able to spend the last few years of his life experiencing activities such as sailboat racing without leaving his room – because he couldn’t leave his room.
I complain about my own disability – cluster headaches – and don’t stop to think of how little I really am incapacitated by it. I grew up with books as my best friends, and fell in love with words before I fell in love with any person; the thought of being without them is frightening.
The point? If you read (and I assume you do, since you’re reading my blog!), take a moment to be grateful. Grateful that you do. Grateful that you can.
I know that’s what I’m feeling, today. And that puts us all … beyond the elements of style.
A recent conversation with an editing client who was unsure as to when “said” could be replaced with “stated” brought up a whole lot of responses when I shared it with some colleagues. And it seems that a number of those responses are worth sharing here.
Many writers believe – mistakenly, to my point of view – that using “said” as a dialogue tag is to be avoided. Not so! The point of a dialogue tag is to be invisible: what you want readers to focus on is not how something was said, but on what was said. Using too many other words, some of which require mental gymnastics to read and assimilate, calls attention to the wrong place altogether.
One colleague introduced me to “Tom Swifties”: a word game where people compete to come up with particular apt over-the-top ways to avoid or embellish “said,” in the manner of the Tom Swift series of boys’ books, as in:
There’s room for one more, Tom admitted.
I like modern painting, said Tom abstractedly.
And so on. I know what we’re playing the next time my family is on a long car trip!
“I am of the school,” says Chad Skaggs, a writer from Decatur, Georgia, “which maintains that “said” never can be overused. I will allow use of such words as “he screamed” or “she shouted” when that is what happened. When I was professing journalism I used to tell my students that “said” is like bread: It will go with almost anything without affecting the flavor. It adds no flavor of its own. In these ways it is unlike such terms as “he noted” (implies that it’s a fact of which he took note), “she retorted” (implies a snarkiness which may be inappropriate to her reply), “he stated” (suggests formality which may not have been there). Like bread, “said” will go with every meal without our being likely to notice it or tire of it. That’s not true of most other terms of attribution.”
My friend Katie, who teaches writing, has a lot to say on the topic. “I was first introduced to all these said-substitutes under the delightful term said-bookism. Apparently there was a spate of books published in the early years of the twentieth century listing alternatives for “said” so that writer could avoid the dread repetition.
Some writers whose work I enjoy and admire have a problem with said-bookisms, but I try to squelch the tendency among my students. In particular, I get rather emphatic on said-bookisms that are not methods of speaking. As I tell them, no one can smile a sentence.
Some verbs that produce sound also need be handled with extreme care: hissing sentences that have no S sounds in them, for example. Or my favorite, from one of my books. (This was a copy-edit from hell, from the writer’s POV.) By the third page, I’ve already established that my protagonist is irritated and has been dealing with prank phone calls. So the phone rings yet again. I had “She snatched it up. ‘Hello!’”
I thought this was perfectly clear. The CE felt it necessary to change this to “She snatched it up. ‘Hello!’ she barked into the phone.” YOU try barking that word. I promise, you’ll sound like Scooby-Doo. I got it put back the way I’d had it.
I cannot cite chapter and verse, alas, but I’ve read studies that have been done with readers that show the humble “said” is damned near invisible. Readers absorb it as a marker, without losing the thread of the dialogue. I believe they tracked eye movements. ALL the said-bookisms disrupted the flow.
For “state” and “say” specifically, I would point out that to state something implies a Jovian assurance. Take this pair of sentences:
“It’s cold,” she said.
“It’s cold,” she stated.
The first simply makes a simple declaration of an opinion. The second defies argument and makes the susceptible feel as though they’re personally responsible for the temperature!
One final note: when I warn my students about said-bookisms, I also tell them that one way of avoiding an overuse of “said” is to use what I call “action tags.” Took me a while to come up with a good concise definition and I’m open to suggested alterations, but here’s what I currently use. An action tag is one or more sentences that do NOT contain a quotation but which identify the speaker by means of a non-speech verb.
Example:
“It’s cold.” Katie shivered and crossed the room. The thermostat insisted it was seventy degrees. She shook her head. “I don’t care what that thing reads, it’s still cold in here!”
No confusion about who is speaking, action is incorporated into the dialogue, and I didn’t use the word said or any said-bookisms. Action tags are a fiction-writer’s friend. (But they work just as well in nonfiction.)
******
So there it is, she said. Use tags correctly and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Okay, I haven’t given any good advice or resources for a while, so this week’s column is about literary agents.
Need to find one? There’s a searchable database at AgentQuery. (Thanks to Katharine O’Moore-Klopf for pointing it out to me!)
Are you considering sending material to an agent, but want to “check him/her out” first? The best place to start is with the Association of Authors’ Representatives. In order to join the AAR, an agent must have handled the sales of at least 10 works in the preceding two years and must sign a code of ethics.
Many beginning writers express concern that their ideas will be stolen by agents who view their work and eventually turn them down. Aside from the common sense factor, which reminds people that ideas cannot be copyrighted, only the expression thereof, and that in any case agents have probably seen your idea once or twice in passing, there is that code of ethics that should be reassuring. It also prohibits agents from working for publishers, from offering editing services as a prerequisite to representation, and adds an agreement that client funds will be kept in a separate escrow account for disbursement.
Checking the Preditors and Editorssite is also a good first step in assuring yourself that your potential agent is on the up and-up.
Once you’ve found someone who is a member of the AAR, however, you’re pretty safe: go ahead and submit – and good luck! It will take you … beyond the elements of style!
Okay: I know that no one’s being taught to diagram sentences anymore, and that most people apparently believe in scattering apostrophes randomly when making nouns plural (a restaurant down the street from me is currently advertising Martini’s, which raises a whole lot of questions that I need to regretfully put aside for another essay); but as the geeks at Slashdot have pointed out this weekend, there’s little wonder when teachers – as one in California has done recently – issue homework “expections.” (Slashdot included the link, but I expect that the text will soon change; and that’s not the point here anyway: I come not to criticize errors but to bury them.)
Typo, you say? Hardly: the menu bar was carefully retyped with the same spelling. And the teacher doesn’t stop there: children, she notes, should be reading a minimum of 15 every night. Fifteen what, exactly? Not one to limit her enthusiasm as she limits her usage, she uses three exclamation points to emphasize her directions (most of us generally feel that one suffices). Puzzles are “fun activities that parents can help”– um, help do what? One could go on and on – it’s far too much fun, and too patently unfair, to pick something like this apart.
And it’s worse than you think. I entered “expections” in Google in order to locate this article — and came up with several more examples of its usage. All from teachers.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad that there are “expections” of students. And I have made errors far more grievous than these, myself, and just as publicly, so I feel for the teacher in question – and will even more so on Monday morning when she discovers that over the weekend her errors became internationally famous. But this is an example of why the restaurant down the street offers Martini’s, and why no one in this country could diagram a sentence — unless, perhaps, they were doing so as part of a reality-show challenge.
Maybe that’s what we need. “Grammar Factor” — the thrilling new program where you can win a million dollars by showing that you actually have some command of your native language.
Think anybody would apply?
