Beyond the Elements of Style

2009’s New Vocabulary

Well, it’s that time of year again. When popular culture is acknowledged in the musty tomes and corridors of academia, and new words are admitted into the sacred space of the dictionaries.

Well, the Oxford English Dictionary, anyway.

Then again, the OED’s “new” word of the year is “unfriend.” But it’s probably news for Facebook users that unfriending has been around for a very long time indeed. The OED itself notes:

1659 Fuller _App. Inj. Innoc._ iii. xxxjb, I hope, Sir, that we are notmutually Unfriended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.

In addition to unfriending people, this year we’ve added zombie bank, hashtag, sexting, birther, ecotown, and tramp stamp, among others, to the list of accepted vernacular vocabulary.

Pleased? Disconcerted? Time marches on, and like it or not, someone you know is already using these words. Or maybe it’s you. In any case, try some of them out! 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!

No Double Spaces, Damn It!

Some very smart people hire me to either write for them or to edit what they have written. I call these very smart people “clients,” and I like to think that I provide a valuable service to their businesses. Most of them appear to believe that I do, as I have ongoing contracts with many of them; in several cases, I’ve been writing for the same companies for ten years or more.

And yet I occasionally find that these same smart people do not actually trust the very person … in whom they’ve theoretically put their trust.

It usually has to do with something that they all believe they “know to be true.” In these cases, I apparently play the renegade by trying to change something that everybody “knows” to be correct. And it almost always has to do with the old rule of placing two spaces between sentences. Time and time again I write or edit client copy, placing only one space between sentences, only to have the client gently correct (and, occasionally, admonish) me about it.

I may have pointed you to this site before; if so, bear with me. Read it. Read other articles. Read Robin Williams’ books. You do not have to take it on faith that I’m correct: do your own research.

And then repeat after me: It is incorrect to place two spaces between sentences. In fact, according to a colleague of mine, it has been incorrect in the typesetting world since 1954; if that’s true, then the change in practice is not even due entirely to the advent of computers (and the subsequent demise of monospaced type).

The simple truth is that your eye doesn’t need those two spaces to know that another sentence is about to begin. Your brain is smart enough to sort that out.

So, smart people, unite: learn the rules of usage so that you can write correctly, or — alternately — keep on employing me to do your writing and editing … and trust that I know what I’m doing! And then you’ll be .. beyond the elements of style!

Individual Voices in Fiction

All right, I’ll admit it: this is a case of “it takes one to know one.” And to be honest, I look at some of my earlier novels and short stories and cringe. I’m an educated middle-class intelligent white woman; all my characters sound like educated middle-class intelligent white women. How bland can you get?

Once I had this problem pointed out to me, I started listening to people more attentively. All writers are eavesdroppers; but we generally eavesdrop for content, not delivery. Yet if you spend some time listening to how people talk rather than what they say, your characterizations will benefit from it enormously.

For example, listen to American teenagers sometime (one of them lives with me, so I have a fair number of opportunities to hear this particular flavor of English), and you’ll hear something like this:

I’m like talking to her, right, and then suddenly she’s, like, I’ve heard this already, right, and I’m like, I don’t care…

The person who helped me select paint down at the hardware store on Commercial Street was a second-person sort of narrator:

You want to give this one two, maybe even three coats. You prime it and you do another coat and then you wait. You wait for the right color to show up, that’s when you know not to paint no more.

Certain occupations tend to call for an excess of courtesy in language if not always in deed. Get pulled over and you’ll observe how the police talk; my friend Steve, who used to be in the army, has the same habit.

Yes, ma’am, that’s correct. Ma’am, you need to step over here. No, sir, I didn’t ask you to step over there…

Individuals tend to find expressions they like and stick with them. Many people will use the phrase “I’m just saying,” as a way to segue into a repetition of a statement they just made (and as a way of not listening to anyone else’s opinion on the subject!); I used it in my play Tokens of Affection to give a character wrapped up in herself a way to show it verbally. I expect that you could make a list of similar verbal crutches used by those around you. Ask yourself what those verbal crutches do for the individual, so that when one of your characters needs that, you’ll have the expression to hand.

Want to find out how people sounded (at least in the United States) at different times and in different places? The Library of Congress at memory.loc.gov is where you want to go.

A word of caution: don’t perpetuate stereotypes! For example, people from the northern US states tend to unfairly think that the drawling rhythm of “southern” speech denotes someone who is a redneck, slow, or both; don’t fall into that trap. It’s a lot of -isms that you really don’t want to be part of … and it’s rarely accurate. Characters who are fresh and interesting are characters whose authors have gone deeper than the surface in creating them.

When you’re getting to know your characters, assign each of them a phrase or pet expression to use; it will go miles toward showing rather than telling what that person is all about. And when you’re out and about, listen to how people talk — it will keep giving you fresh ways for your characters to express themselves.

And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

A Catalogue of Foibles

I’m not often moved to write book reviews in these pages, and I’m not actually reviewing one today, either, as my own copy is still on order; but I do want to pass on a pointer to what looks like an exceptional book: a New York Times review that had me purchasing the book from Powell’s within the hour (an impulse I often have but am usually able to resist).

The book? Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea (223 pp. Perigee. $21.95). Yes, Shea did indeed read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, from beginning to end, and chronicled his experience in his new book, noting that the OED is, in fact, “a catalog of the foibles of the human condition.”

From the review by Nicholson Baker:

Shea decided to make the attempt and to record his progress in this book. Each letter gets its own chapter. In Chapter A the volumes arrive, wrapped in the “regal and chitinous gloss” of their dust jackets. Shea sits near the window, his feet up on an ottoman, and begins to read. Difficulties ensue. He gets pulsing headaches and sees gray patches on the edges of his vision. His back bothers him. His neighbors make salt cod, and the odor is distracting. He’s tempted to look things up in his other dictionaries, comparing definitions, which slows his progress.

So he ventures out into the city, reading on park benches and in public libraries. No place is right. Finally he settles on a location in the basement of the Hunter College library, among books in French that don’t tempt him away from the task at hand. He drinks many thermosfuls of coffee. He gets eyeglasses and finds, much to his surprise, that they help him see better. His headaches continue.

That introduction leaves most book people nodding in agreement: Yeah, I can picture myself there, doing that (though I’d choose a language other than French to provide for a lack of distraction — Urdu, perhaps, or Swahili); but I know I’d falter where Shea pressed on.

Shea arrives at another bad patch partway through Chapter U, with the “un-” section — more than 400 pages of words of self-evident meaning. “I am near catatonic,” he writes, “bored out of my mind.” But he doesn’t skip; he is lashed to the tiller, unthimbled and unthrashed.

There is beauty in it nonetheless; as Baker himself concludes, “Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.”

I’m glad that Shea read the OED and even more pleased that he shared this experience with the world; I’m grateful to the NYT to have opened my eyes to this treasure (one hesitates to think how many equally terrific books have passed one by because one simply didn’t know of their existence!). And I’m looking forward to reading it (Shea’s work, not the OED, thank you very much).

Not to mention Nicholson Baker’s own most recent book … but I’m getting ahead of both my reading and my budget! In any case, check out the possibilities of learning more about your own language and 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!