Beyond the Elements of Style

The Best Of …

I do marketing writing for a living, so PR campaigns, taglines, and claims of product purity don’t do much for me. I’m pretty good at separating hype from quality when I do my own shopping.

Unless, of course, the claims are true.

In three cases, I’ve found them to be. The World’s Best Cat Litter is, in my experience, the world’s best cat litter. I am owned by two cats and know whereof I speak. Likewise The World’s Best Glass Cleaner really is amazing—streak-free cleaning, a glorious shine.

And, finally, to something that’s relevant to this blog: The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need, by Susan Thurman. It’s a slim, small volume, which puts a certain pinched look on the faces of most language enthusiasts who think that bigger is better. In this case, not so much.

If you hold any linguistics degree, if you edit medical journals for a living, if you spend your free time wagering on the existence of esoteric words, then you’re right: this isn’t the book for you. But for most people who simply want to get by without misplacing their apostrophes or without confusing their and there, it’s a great tool.

For solving tricky grammar questions, avoiding embarrassing errors, and getting your thoughts organized enough to put pen to paper, this compact work will provide you with all the tools you’ll ever need.

The book’s subtitle is A One-Stop Source for Every Writing Assignment, and it’s possible that it was in fact developed with students in mind. But think of all written communication as a writing assignment, and you’ll enter into the spirit of the thing.

Here you’ll find help understanding the parts of speech and elements of a sentence, avoiding common grammar and punctuation mistakes, using correct punctuation in every sentence, and writing clearly and directly. I suspect we all have colleagues to whom we’d like to gift this book based on those claims alone!

The most damaging mistakes a writer can make are probably misspelling or misusing words. Just a few of these errors will make a reader lose confidence in what you’re trying to say. Here are basic rules of English spelling and the most commonly misused words …

Oh, yeah … (insert blissful sigh here)

The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need is published by Adams Media, is affordable, easy to slip into a jacket pocket or purse (or keep in the top drawer of your desk!), so head out to your local independent bookseller and order a copy today. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

What is Copyediting?

Ah, copyediting. That catchall phrase so often used—and misused—to cover everything from proofreading to ghostwriting.

The reality is that copyediting comprises a very specific set of tasks done to a manuscript. When in doubt, start with Wikipedia:

The “five Cs” summarize the copy editor’s job: Make the copy clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent. Copy editors should Make it say what it means, and mean what it says.

Typically, copy editing involves correcting spelling, punctuation, grammar, terminology and jargon, timelines, and semantics; ensuring that the typescript adheres to the publisher’s style.

Copy editors also add any “display copy”, such as headlines and standardized headers, footers.

Copy editors are expected to ensure that the text flows, that it is sensible, fair, and accurate, and that any legal problems have been addressed. Some newspaper copy editors select stories from wire service copy.

Copy editors may shorten the text, to improve it or to fit length limits. This is particularly so in periodical publishing, where copy must be cut to fit the layout, and the text changed to ensure there are no “short lines.”

So a copyeditor begins with a stylesheet, either one used by the publisher or one that he or she creates. The stylesheet ensures consistency: one makes a decision about how to spell something, for example (as in copy editor or copyeditor!), or what one chooses to capitalize, etc.

Using this stylesheet, the copyeditor goes through the manuscript and makes sure that spelling, grammar, usage are all correct and that usage is consistent throughout. Copyediting may also include format editing—in other words, making sure that headers and subheaders are used correctly and consistently throughout the manuscript.

Copyeditors use terms that may sound like jargon to the uninitiated (as indeed does the language used in most specialized fields) but are helpful in deciding what changes to make and explaining why one is making them.

Want to learn more? Sign up for the copyediting elist published out of Indiana University and you’ll learn everything you ever wanted to know about dangling participles, poorly constucted sentences (and how to fix them!) and compound sentences. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Nothing “Beyond” Here

Well, in view of the title of my blog, I feel obligated to pause and note the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White’s famous contribution to the world of writing, The Elements of Style.

A recent article by Geoffrey Pullum in the Chronicle of Higher Education waxes, it has to be said, less than wildly enthusiastic about the book. “The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.”

Pullum is, in fact, just warming to his topic.

The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn.

“Put statements in positive form,” they stipulate, in a section that seeks to prevent “not” from being used as “a means of evasion.”

“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs,” they insist. (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to me.)

And then, in the very next sentence, comes a negative passive clause containing three adjectives: “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”

The reality is, as Pullum points out, that not only is The Elements of Style not in fact about style, its advice on things grammatical is pretty awful. He is neither the first nor the only person to point this out.

His is not the only opinion on the book; Michael Leddy has a different take on … well, on Pullum’s take.

Geoffrey K. Pullum’s recent piece on William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, is snarky and sensational enough to appeal to a reader suspicious of a dos-and-don’ts approach to writing. How refreshing to be told — by a grammarian no less — that Strunk and White are “grammatical incompetents,” “idiosyncratic bumblers,” purveyors of “uninformed bossiness” and “misbegotten rules.”

“My evidence,” Leddy says, “is anecdotal, but I have never had a student mention Strunk and White as a significant part of her or his writing education. The Elements of Style now seems far more popular outside the world of English instruction (particularly among tech types, whose work writing code would foster respect for clarity and concision).”

And yet the book lies anchored in our consciousness in the same way our mothers’ voices replay in our heads, with rules and admonitions half-learned, helf-rejected, and still able to instill guilt. Its slender size gives students the illusion that matters of style and grammar can be encapsulated in a few chapters, and at least one of its authors can be connected to real-life literature (E.B. White’s wonderful Charlotte’s Web and The Once and Future King), both of which considerations could contribute to its long life.

So … if it’s not a style guide and it’s a dreadful grammar book, what is the point? For those of us who make our livings with words, it is, perhaps, part of our history. Uncle Ernie may have been the black sheep of the family and Grandmother’s teeth may have been crooked; but we embrace them as part of who we are. In the same way, perhaps, The Elements of Style might be part of who we are, as well. Not consulted with any frequency, but reassuring to have on our library shelves. And anyone would have to admit that the illustrated version is a lot of fun!

For now, both versions are staying on my shelf. Much of my own academic work was in history, so there is a part of me that believes in seeing where we came from … as long as we keep looking to the future. And that will keep us … beyond the elements of style!

POSTSCRIPT: My own favorite style manual? Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Not Ready For Prime Time: E-Prime

Or maybe it is, and it’s me who’s not ready for prime time. In any case, I’ve been struggling a bit with the concept of E-Prime ever since a colleague on one of my subscription lists called my attention to it.

E-Prime is English for people who want to be extraordinarily clear in terms of meaning, and really don’t care what the content sounds like (or, possibly more importantly, reads like).

From the Wikipedia article, always a good place to start (but never to end) research:

By eliminating most uses of the passive voice, E-Prime encourages writers and speakers to make explicit the agent of a statement, possibly making the written text easier to read and understand.
E-Prime is used as a mental discipline to filter speech and translate the speech of others. For example, the sentence “the movie was good”, translated into E-Prime, could become “I liked the movie”. The translation communicates the speaker’s subjective experience of the movie rather than the speaker’s judgment of the movie. In this example, using E-Prime makes it harder for the writer or reader to confuse a statement of opinion with a statement of fact.

Frankly, some of it sounds like a fad diet. There are “allowed” words and words that are “not allowed.” One may never, ever, ever use the high-fat verb “to be.” Presumably one should also experience the same guilt when slipping back into saying the forbidden “is” word that one does when snagging that piece of forbidden chocolate cake.

Robert Anton Wilson in Toward Uniderstanding E-Prime notes:

Korzybski felt that all humans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on, as “semantic hygiene” against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emotional distortion, and “demonological thinking.” E-Prime provides a straightforward training technique for acquiring such semantic hygiene.

Indeed, those interested in semantics have long been discussing the problem of the verb “to be,” inviting along the way some wordplay (To Be In Their Bonnets) and inspiring a new way of editing (E-Prime As A Revision Strategy).

I’m already hearing the voices of some of my writing students and clients, who have experienced (ad infinitum, ad nauseaum) my calls to tighten their writing. “Isn’t this what you’re talking about?”

Well, no.

There’s a difference between tightened, good writing and writing that removes the ability to make it sing. Or, as one of my correspondents would have it, “If is was good enough for the Bard, it’s good enough for me.” Ambiguity is often the very stuff of great literature, and that requires access to all of our vocabulary and myriad ways of using it.

Perhaps here, as elsewhere in life, context is everything. I don’t want flowery writing in the manual that accompanied my new DVD player (where, due perhaps to the writer’s lack of command of any English—E-Prime or otherwise—the directions are far from clear); but I just finished reading the superb novel Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, and was overwhelmed not only by her ability to tell a wondrous story, but by the language with which she told it. And I like that feeling. I want it again, the next time I open a book and take the time to revel in the sheer sensuality of words.

Perhaps the best last word on E-Prime is by the witty and wonderful Elisha Webster Emerson, who gives a lively history of the E-Prime movement and her own take on it in A Review in E-Prime. While you’re there, stay for a few minutes and read other articles on the blog: they are truly well worth your attention. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Subjunctive, Anyone?

A client recently confessed to me, “I wouldn’t know the subjunctive if it bit me on the nose!” He sounded, if anything, somewhat pleased with the assertion, and part of me mourned as I heard it … just as I mourn the passing of any part of the language I love so well.

It reminded me of a conversation with Terry Bates, publisher of a wonderful series of ESL books, and I happily received Terry’s permission to reprint that conversation here:

Many people insist that English use the subjunctive mood more. This will probably never happen looking at the tendency during the last one hundred years. Other languages still heavily apply the subjunctive and this can be an essential learning experience for English speakers who usually have a weak subjunctive understanding.

First of all, you must remember that the subjunctive is not a verb tense in the sense of directly expressing time. Rather, it tries more to express attitude or manner. For that reason it is called mood.

The structure of the subjunctive in English is very easy in relation to other languages. It usually uses the root or base form and that’s it. Other languages go through very complicated conjugations of which are sometimes even difficult for native speakers. Even modern English has some complicated subjunctive structures. Many wish that the subjunctive were easier to understand.

In the examples that you give (”If she finish the day without company,” “unless she be blonde,” and “whether he do it or not”), they all express condition. If, unless, and whether communicate a sense of condition. Put into their historical context, they are put into a subjunctive mood.

Modal auxiliaries are related to mood. Notice that the word modal comes from the word mood. With the modal auxiliaries we express requests, possibilities, necessities, intentions, ability, etc. The English language has developed a very complicated and intricate use of modals for daily expression. This could be a answer to the slow loss of the subjunctive mood.

Mood and modals expose a very interesting aspect of language. They go beyond the superficial act of simple communication and begin to reveal the human condition. They reflect a people, their culture and the way they deal with each other. By fully understanding mood and modals, you begin to be more aware of the language and life of a society whether it be in the historical past or in the present.

The use of mood and modals is in constant change reflecting the change of society and the communication it demands. Even though many people feel that it is necessary that language stay static, changes within the English language reflect modifications that have taken place with the cultural demands of its speakers. Language changes just don’t happen illogically. They are due to cultural and historical reasons which in many cases are deeply hidden within tradition and trends of a society.

May the subjunctive live forever!

Terry Bates
terrybates@andeanwinds.com
www.terrybates.andeanwinds.com

And I think you’ll agree that Terry Bates (and Andean Winds!) is far … beyond the elements of style!

Who or Whom? A Quick Cheatsheet

It comes up in working with clients and students alike, and over the holidays my stepdaughter asked me when to use “whom” versus “who” in writing. (There was no point in asking which ought to be used in speaking: she is thirteen, and firmly entrenched in the Sullen Adolescent Communication Syndrome, which appears to involve much more grunting, hissing, and gesturing than it does actual words.)

I gave Anastasia my standard explanation, after which she said, “huh?”

So here is my who/whom cheatsheet: for Anastasia, for students, for clients, for anyone who needs it: don’t think in terms of rules, think in terms of substitution.

And the general usage is, if you can substitute “she” for the troublesome word in the sentence, you should use “who.” If you can substitute “her,” the word should be “whom.”

Here’s an example: “Who/whom was supposed to walk the dog this morning?” Make it a statement: would you say, “She was supposed to walk the dog this morning,” or “Her was supposed to walk the dog this morning”? Clearly she; clearly who.

“To whom/whom were you speaking?” can easily be answered: “I was speaking to her,” therefore, “whom” is the correct word in that context.

There’s nothing wrong with a grammatical cheatsheet, as long as it points the user to better grammar usage! And by now I’m hoping that it will help Anastasia be … beyond the elements of style!

Alphabet Soup, Anyone?

Okay, count me in with the old fogies, the curmudgeons, those who speak of the good old days (even when, lurking in the backs of our minds, is the sure knowledge that there never was any such thing).

I love email. I love the fact that I don’t have to wait days or weeks for replies to questions I send out. I love the fact that I can email twice as many people in half the time it used to take me to write a note by hand or typewriter.

But … but. There’s email, which is a semi (at least) articulate form of communication, where typos may exist but are regarded with friendly acceptance, and yet which obey the general grammatical and stylistic rules to which we have all become accustomed.

And then there’s text-messaging-speech.

A member on a list to which I subscribe writes incessantly in text-message format. It’s not the silly abbreviations that bother me as much as the punctuation (or lack thereof) that follows no rule with which I am familiar, an almost complete absence of capital letters, and a rigorousness of thought to match.

It’s like reading messages written with alphabet cereal … in the bowl.

Perhaps as we move toward a new year we can remember that the point of all this is communication, and that rules of grammar and usage are in place for a reason: to facilitate said communication. And then we’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

How Happy I Am To See You, He Burbled

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!

Grammar Factor? Any Takers?

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?

Correct Grammar: Back in Style?

“Clauses and Commas Make a Comeback: SAT Helps Return Grammar to Class”

Yesterday’s Washington Post (http://tinyurl.com/y62s8j) carried an article about grammar coming back into style. The teacher profiled isn’t unique (and thank goodness for that – perhaps a new trend is starting!); and the article itself is full of generalizations and oversimplifications; but it’s a trend worth noting and applauding. Anything emphasizing the value of learning correct grammar, usage, and so on can only be… beyond the elements of style!