Quillified

1. Comma and Colon Confusion

So, this past school year I was in desperate need of lesson openers for my 11th grade English class.  I was in the middle of a grammar unit and was searching everywhere to find a funny illustration.  In a conversation with my mom during this search, she told me about a magnet that my grandmother kept on her refrigerator. My mom showed me the magnet.  After reading it, I smiled because my grandmother makes me laugh.  Why did she have this on her frig, I wondered? The answer is obvious.  Approaching 90 years of age, my grandmother’s daily crossword puzzles and novels, strong willed personality, and sense of humor rushed into my mind.  In the search for a good lesson, this magnet reminded me of a woman I admire. The magnet craftily states:

An English professor wrote the words, “a woman without her man is nothing” on the blackboard and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.

The men wrote: “A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

The women wrote: “A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

Punctuation is everything! Be aware of where you place commas and colons.

2. You’ll do what?!

I was reminded of something this morning.  I make writing mistakes all the time just like everyone else, and there is nothing wrong with becoming a student again.   Eric Bishop, my former high school English teacher, responded to and edited an e-mail I sent him pertaining to getting lunch this week.  Little did he know, his response would be a perfect illustration for this blog post. It reads:

My e-mail message: “I’m waiting on Bergey’s to call and let me know when I can pick up my car.  I’ll e-mail you when I find out.

Eric’s e-mail message in response: “You are strong enough to pick up a car?? ? You are definitely not the stereotypic Byronic English teacher! More of a Hemingway, I would say! Either that or married life is really giving you renewed energy!”

Choosing the right verbs is crucial to leaving your readers’ with the intended mental images.

3. I write myself, using reflexive pronouns!

When my dad and I get together, we often discuss matters of life, but sometimes our conversations leave the really important stuff and end up in a discussion about writing rules.  For some reason we both are wired to do this.  We must be related.  While enjoying a Sunday in Philadelphia discussing reflexive pronouns, my dad told me a story.  One of Dad’s professors at Houghton College was teaching my dad about the pronoun, myself.  Pronoun confusion happens all the time. However, during the editing process for a book the professor was writing, his editor caught a subtle pronoun error in the text.

“Mr. Leax…”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about writing, wholeness, and holiness, and…”

He swallowed.

“… and I want you to know that I’ve become a Christian.”

I swallowed myself and said, “Well, good. I’m glad.”

Having the ability to swallow one’s self must be a great skill.  The pronoun “myself” needs special treatment.  Clearly the meaning is easier understood if written like this: ”I swallowed, and said…”

So, either you cut the word “myself” or use these rules on reflexive pronoun usage.

Where we actually learn these writing skills, even if not in high school or college, is an interesting discussion.

So what is the ladder of abstraction anyways?  Of the many tools for writing, I think a clear understanding of how to go up and down this ladder should be at the top of any writer’s journey, especially when retelling a story.

Roy Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Online Institute, discusses how to use concrete and abstract details in writing.  He writes, “show and tell. Move up and down the ladder of abstraction. At the bottom are bloody knives and rosary beads, wedding rings and baseball cards. At the top are “meaning” words like ‘freedom’ and ‘literacy.’ Beware of the middle, where bureaucracy and public policy live. There teachers are referred to as “instructional units.” (Clark “Beware the ladder’s middle rungs”, pointer.org)  A good story not only holds large truths and concepts but also is magnified by the minute details.  The color of the mulch matters, the refreshing sunshine brings warmth to the page, and the drooling dog brings texture to the surface.

Liam O’Flaherty’s short story, The Sniper, contains concrete details as well as abstract concepts.  By the end of the story you are overwhelmed with gut wrenching images and dwelling on lofty notable truths of human nature.

One of Philadelphia’s most famous movies, Rocky, always makes me chuckle when I have those fat days.  Ya know, those days when my stomach droops prominently over my loose/tight belt.  Slotting that belt rung through the tightest possible hole at 7 am in the morning is supposed to make me feel svelt, but by 1:00 pm after those two slices of pizza, my method fails.  The belt has to be adjusted, and I remain discouraged and unimpressive. Akward, I know.  But, there is truth to this.

Rocky’s soon to be trainer, Micky, calls Rocky a bum.  Micky believes in Rocky but is sickened by Rocky for being out of shape, poor, and not living up to his boxing potential. Rocky is not credible.  His form is not inspiring, and his demeanor is less than persuasive.  Where else do we see this in life?  How do students, athletes, or professionals fail to live up to potential and in return be ineffective?  What causes this? 

One possible answer is that we forget about the tools or format of our profession or expertise, and then when we attempt anything at all, we are not in shape or in form to get the job done. The same is true in writing.  When we’ve not practiced, worked out, or battled with words or basic sentence structure, our writing will not be able to communicate, persuade, or even come close to making our readers adjust themselves in their seat.  Instead, our readers will simply fall asleep.  

I can’t stop talking.  Take me to a house party or an elegant dinner with respectable people, and I can’t shut up.   I try to sound exciting, get laughs, or even come across like an Oxford grad.  I shake myself into not speaking at certain social occasions for fear of rejection or outcast.  I cut the nonsense, and my social acceptability has changed, perhaps even increased.

Writers have this problem too.  Consider Truman Capote’s words: “I believe more in the scissors than I do the pencil.”  More is said with less.  I’ll let Zinsser, from On Writing Well, drive it home:

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Who can understand the viscous language of everyday American commerce and enterprise: the business letter, the interoffice memo, the corporation report, the notice from the bank explaining its latest “simplified” statement? What member of an insurance or medical plan can decipher the brochure that tells him what his costs and benefits are? What father or mother can put together a child’s toy—on Christmas Eve or any other eve—from the instructions on the box? Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important. The airline pilot who announces that he is presently anticipating experiencing considerable precipitation wouldn’t dream of saying that it may rain. The sentence is too simple—there must be something wrong with it.

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.

*Excerpt from On Writing Well by William Zinsser New York, Harper  pg. 9

Good writers watch, listen, smell, and sometimes even taste a possible tale to tell.  As hard as it may be, writers who desire the best words scour the earth 24/7 to find them.  Techniques vary, but you need to find your own. 

The shabby notepad your mother told you to use as a grocery list when you were young or the torn off heating bill that just keeps coming back, will soon capture the cracks in the pavement or the newsworthy incident at the corner of Broad and Market.  Subway to trolley or golden corn field to manure pile, inspiration can happen anywhere. 

Mr. Bishop, my writing and literature teacher, once pulled out a chunk of granite he found while visiting New Hampshire, the “granite state”. The New Hampshire setting of Our Town became tangible.  Your verbs and adjectives can magnify meaning. 

• Avoid Run-on sentences they are hard to read.
• No sentence fragments.
• It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
• Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
• Don’t use no double negatives.
• If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: resist hyperbole.
• Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
• Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
• Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
• Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.
• Kill all exclamation points!!!
• Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
• Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
• Take the bull by the hand, and don’t mix metaphors.
• Don’t verb nouns.
• Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
• Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

* from an enlightening email my father sent me

“The habitual use of the active voice,” Strunk advises, “makes for forcible writing.” So often writers sweat over and darken pages with passive writing. They play with prepositions and accent with too many adjectives. In every book I read on writing, whether it’s Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style or Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, active writing awakens my senses, and my mind’s eye sees more magnified images.

Now, here are a few very simple examples…

1.  Passive form: The house was painted by the men.

Active form: The men painted the house.

2. Passive form: The house was shaken by the thunder.

Active form: The thunder shook the house.

That is just the start. Below is a good way to remember if you are writing in active voice.

“Reduced to its essence, a good English sentence is a statement that an agent (the subject of the sentence) performed an action (the verb) upon something (the object).”         - John Ciardi, excerpt from A Writer’s Coach, by Jack Hart