Do your sentences make sense?

Maybe not, if you're focused on what you mean to say and not on what you actually put on the page.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, a member of The New York Times Editorial Board, notes that often a writer speaks the language, knows the vocabulary, and tries to honor the rules of grammar and syntax.

Yet he regularly produces sentences of whose literal meaning he’s completely unaware. In its own way, this is fantastic, like setting out to knit a cardigan, producing an armoire, and wondering why it’s so loose in the shoulders.

Here’s an example, written by a student several years ago: “I also had my father’s thick fingers, fingers that I often hid underneath thighs.” You see the problem of course. The author apparently hides his (or her) fingers under anyone’s thighs, not just his (or her) own. This is what the sentence actually says, though not what the writer is hoping it says.

Readers help a bad writer along, Klinkenborg says.

Readers also fail to catch such mistakes because they’re good at guessing what the writer really means. It’s not that they’re under-reading — skipping past the problem in a sentence. They’re nearly always over-reading, alive to the writer’s intention, as if the writer were somehow immanent in the sentence, looking over the reader’s shoulder, expecting the benefit of the doubt. We do this all the time in conversation. And so the sentence ceases to be a sentence — a verbal construct of a certain length, velocity and rhythm with, at bottom, an unambiguous literal meaning. It becomes a sign instead that telepathic communication is about to commence.

What to do?

You’ll need to write, and revise, as if your intentions were invisible and your sentences will be doing all the talking, all on their own. This may be the hardest thing a writer has to learn. Looking at a sentence you’ve made is like looking at yourself in the shard of a mirror. A part of you has to be dreadfully literal-minded (and impervious to self-flattery) in order to do the work of making good, clear sentences. Seeing what your sentences actually say is never easy, but it gets easier with practice. There’s even a certain pleasure in discovering the booby traps you’ve laid for yourself in your prose.

"Inexperienced writers," Klinkenborg concludes, "tend to trust that sentences will generally turn out all right — or all right enough. Experienced writers know that every good sentence is retrieved by will from the forces of chaos."

A quick primer on serial commas

Bill Walsh at the invaluable Blogslot offers guidance on the serial comma:

Newspaper style generally eschews the serial comma. I'm fine with that. Toast, juice, milk and Trix. But sometimes that comma is useful. If I write about a city's departments of housing, parks and recreation and well-being, do I mean there's a department of parks and recreation or a department of recreation and well-being? And what if my series consists of three or four full sentences? For many serial-comma-phobic journalists, the answer to those questions tends to be: Semicolons! Ugly, unwieldy semicolons. Clearly, those journalists did not actually read the stylebook to which they are slavishly devoted. AP specifically says that the serial comma is needed in those cases.

IN A SERIES: Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series: The flag is red, white and blue. He would nominate Tom, Dick or Harry. 

Put a comma before the concluding conjunction in a series, however, if an integral element of the series requires a conjunction: I had orange juice, toast, and ham and eggs for breakfast. 

Use a comma also before the concluding conjunction in a complex series of phrases: The main points to consider are whether the athletes are skillful enough to compete, whether they have the stamina to endure the training, and whether they have the proper mental attitude. 

So, Walsh writes, it's The departments of housing, parks and recreation, and well-being, notthe departments of housing; parks and recreation; and well-being. Once one of the elements in a series includes a comma, then you want those ugly, unwieldy semicolons: The committees on appropriations; health, education and welfare; and labor.

Elmore Leonard's10 rules of writing

1. Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks."

3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs".

5. Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants", what do the "Ameri­can and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you'reMargaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

George Orwell's rules for writing

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

She might be cut out of cabbage

Today is the 303rd anniversary of the birth of that quintessential 18th-century curmudgeon Dr. Samuel Johnson, the literary lion of Georgian London for much of his lifetime (1709-1784). A poet, critic, lexicographer, and wit, Johnson compiled the first respectable English dictionary between 1747 and 1755, following several years of writing critical articles for London magazines such as The Idler.

He was the master of the insult:

Of Polly Carmichael, a member of his household:
I took to Poll very well at first, but she won't do upon closer examination... Poll is a stupid slut. I had some hopes for her at first, but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her. She was wiggle waggle: and I could never persuade her to be categorical.

Of Lady Macdonald of Sleat:
...she was as bad as negative badness could be, and stood in the way of what was good; that insipid beauty would not go a great way... and such a woman might be cut out of a cabbage, if there was a skilful artificer.

Of a man hired to sit with him during a convalescence:
The fellow's an idiot; he is as awkward as a turn-spit when first put to the wheel, and as sleepy as a dormouse.

Of Thomas Sheridan:
Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in nature.

What's the best word ever?

Blogger Ted McCagg has been hosting a "Best Word Ever contest." That there seemed to be no rules, no criteria and apparently no "contest" except for Mr McCagg's own choice is no matter.

Brackets of competing words like like whirligig and scalawag and zydeco and angina have faced off in a gradually narrowing contest over the course of months. The entrants seemed to be chosen for the sheer fun of saying them.

Now we have the winner ... dipthong.

Darn. I kinda like kerfuffle myself.

As we all know, a diphthong, literally "two sounds" or "two tones", also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most dialects of English, the words eye, hay, boy, low, and cow contain diphthongs.

A sure winner.

Check out the runners up here.

Somebody fact check this

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.

I have issues with that ... no problem!

"In his Studies in Words, C.S. Lewis remarks on our 'responsibility to the language,' and adds that 'it is unnecessary defeatism to believe that we can do nothing' about language change. Lewis affirms that 'language which can with the greatest ease make the finest and most numerous distinctions of meaning is the best.' The question for Lewis is always does a new word add to the richness of the language or does it diminish it. He also cautions his readers to be on the qui vive for words that suggest 'a promise to pay which is never going to be kept,' which applies to three-quarters of the language of psychology and fully half that of contemporary social science.

"Inspired by Lewis, I am for putting a 20-year moratorium on the use of the inflationary word icon to describe anything other than a small religious painting. Nothing to be done about it, I realize, but it is worth noting that the perhaps perfunctory phrase 'You are welcome' has now been replaced with 'No problem,' which does not seem a notable advance in elegance or manners. I'm for banishing the word workshop—which is also available as a verb—to describe what is little more than a classroom discussion of undergraduate poems or stories; 'workshop' used in this sense, Kingsley Amis once remarked, implies all that has gone wrong with the world since World War II. 

"Allowing the word issue to stand in for problem—'I have issues with that—is as pure a case of verbicide as I know: a useful word, issue, distinctly different in meaning from problem, describing a matter still in the flux of controversy in a way that no other word does.Impact and focus deserve a long rest from overuse, and process is surely one of those words that never keeps its promise. Perhaps, too, the time has come to call a halt to people describing people as 'highly literate,' given that literate means no more than that one can read and write; what they really mean, presumably, when they say literate is 'literary' or possibly "cultivated," which is not at all near the same thing. 

"Or consider the word disinterested, with its core meaning of impartiality or above personal interest, which has now all but melted into the condition of a pathetic synonym for uninterested. If we lose disinterested do we not also lose the grand ideal that it represents? I fear we may already have done so, at least insofar as I find it impossible at present to name a single disinterested figure on the stage of world politics. Ideas Have Consequences is the title of a once famous book, but words, being the substance out of which ideas are composed, turn out to have even greater consequences."

-- Joseph Epstein

An adjective! Yikes!

"When you catch an adjective, kill it."

-- Mark Twain

"The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech."

-- Clifton Fadiman

"The adjective is the enemy of the noun."

-- Voltaire

"If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective."

-- J. Anthony Lukas

"Don’t say it was 'delightful'; make us say 'delightful' when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers 'Please will you do my job for me?'"

-- C.S. Lewis

"Forward motion in any piece of writing is carried by verbs. Verbs are the action words of the language and the most important. Turn to any passage on any page of a successful novel and notice the high percentage of verbs. Beginning writers always use too many adjectives and adverbs and generally use too many dependent clauses. Count your words and words of verbal force (like that word “force” I just used)."

-- William Sloane

Getting a sentence straightened out

Look at this sentence:

He had told her that his illegal drugs were actually vitamins for months.

What's wrong? Mark Nichol explains:

This sentence, like many others that include a misplaced modifier, suffers because it reads as if the perpetrator had told someone that the illegal drugs in his possession were vitamins intended as nutritional supplements for the periods of days known as months, after which they were not so intended. This is a “You know what I meant” mistake, which is still a mistake. A better rendition — one that appropriately positions the modifier directly after the verb it modifies — places the key detail in the final position: “He had told her for months that his illegal drugs were actually vitamins.”

And consider this:

It’s not just losing in the regular season that strengthens your core, but losing in the playoffs as well.

Isn’t “losing in the playoffs,” rather than “losing in the regular season,” the point of the statement?

Actually, as demonstrated in the previous sentence, contrasting phrases are best positioned together in the midst of a sentence. The key detail is what the two types of losing have in common: “It’s not just losing in the regular season, but losing in the playoffs as well, that strengthens your core.”

More ailing sentences at the link.

Some tips on the craft

Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of Write to Done, offers these.

Use simple, declarative sentences.
Avoid passive voice.
Limit your use of adjectives and adverbs.
Keep it simple.
Cut the crap.
Don’t overwrite.
Go easy on descriptive narrative (settings, people, etc.).
Re-examine every word that’s three syllables or longer and see whether it could be replaced by a simpler word.
If you have a sense of where you want your piece to wind up, start there instead and see what happens.
Avoid these three weak words – unless absolutely necessary: Ifs, Buts, and Can’ts.
Never rescue your hero.
Practice monotasking. Set a timer for uninterrupted writing.
Work on brilliant headlines.
Start with metaphors and stories.
Write the opening sentence or headline last.
Write solely from the heart and shun copying others.
Think before you include an expletive.
Ask, “Can it be turned into a list?” Think of at least five things you can list about it.
Use the mini-skirt rule: Make it long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting.
Write in small paragraphs in order to get to the point immediately.
Visualize the person you are communicating with: What do their eyes reflect as they read this? What will the first thing they might say in response?
Do what works for you.
Always call a spade a spade. It’s never a long-handled gardening implement!
Try writing without accuracy. Not worrying about errors (left brain) allows for easier flow of thought (right brain).

Is anyone checking their speeches?

"Grammar and style were problems for most speakers at both party conventions, alas, but a bipartisanship of low standards is not good. The president said, for example, “when you pick up that ballot to vote [what else would you do with it?], you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation.” Strike “of any time,” please. I’m reminded of his speech a few years ago when he hailed ordinary Americans’ “doing their business.” He meant “attending to.” Has he never walked that expensive dog of his?"

-- Charles Kesler

It's not a sin to make a living

"Don’t be content just to call yourself a writer and then bitch about the crass publishing world that won’t run your stuff. We’re still a capitalist country, and writing to some degree is a capitalist enterprise, when it’s not a total sin to try to make a living and court an audience…

"I think that maybe what young writers have lost is the sense of writing as a trade. When I was young it was still a trade. There were enough magazines — middlebrow magazines, so-called general interest magazines — they ran articles but also fiction, and you felt that there was an appetite out there for this sort of fiction. The academic publications run fiction, but I don’t think they have quite replaced them in this sense. Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it. 

"So I don’t sneer at writers like Stephen King who have managed to capture the interest of a large audience. Any way that you can break through. I figure if you don’t have any audience you shouldn’t be doing this. Tom Wolfe, the journalist, has spouted off very eloquently about the failure of the American writers to galvanize readership the way he thinks Zola and Dreiser and some others did. I think you can force this. We can’t do Zola now exactly. Somehow it just doesn’t sing. So you’re sort of stuck with being a — whatever — post-modern…"

-- John Updike

What makes it easier for the audience

“I mean, if I’m not writing for the audience, if I’m not writing to make it easier for them, then who the hell am I doing it for? And the way you make it easier is by following those tenets: cutting, building to a climax, leaving out exposition, and always progressing toward the single goal of the protagonist. They’re very stringent rules, but they are, in my estimation and experience, what makes it easier for the audience.” 

– David Mamet, interview with The Art of Theater, Spring 1997