Jean Reynolds's Blog, page 59

Easy Ways to Avoid Sentence Fragments

Today we’re going to talk about sentence fragments (incomplete sentences). They’re a common problem with students and inexperienced writers. We English teachers hate them (with good reason!), and often we spend huge amounts of time trying to teach students how to avoid them. Which only creates confusion and anxiety.

And there, my friend, you have a sentence fragment: Which only creates confusion and anxiety.

You can’t start a sentence with which. (Questions starting with which are ok, of course, but not sentences.) I suppose it’s possible that someone could come up with a legitimate sentence that starts with which, but I don’t recommend making a habit of it.

As an English teacher with decades of experience, I could give you a long spiel about avoiding fragments. But why not make it simple? Here are three tricks that will help you avoid most fragments:

1.  Start every sentence with a person, place, or thing.

I tell police officers and other public safety workers to use this strategy for their reports. You won’t end up with fancy sentences, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Many everyday tasks don’t require fancy writing. What you will end up with are complete sentences – no fragments.

2. Memorize this list (it’s short!) of no-no ways to start a sentence: which (you know that already!), like, who, and such as.

Honesty compels me to add that yes, you can write a perfectly good sentence that starts with like. I often do it myself. But please don’t unless you’re sure you’re doing it correctly. Fragments starting with like are very common.

Like my cousin Jane who works in a big hospital.  FRAGMENT

Like many children, Blake loves to play with his Legos.  CORRECT

3.   Avoid starting a sentence with an -ing word unless (again) you’re sure what you’re doing.

Jumping up and down with joy when her father walked in the door.  FRAGMENT

Molly jumped up and down with joy when her father walked in the door.  CORRECT

Are you thinking I should include a correct sentence starting with an -ing word? OK, here’s one:

Dancing never fails to bring me joy.  CORRECT

There’s not a lot here to remember – and these tips can be a great confidence builder. Here they are again! When in doubt:

start every sentence with a person, place, or thing
avoid starting sentences with which, who, like, and such as
avoid starting sentences with an -ing word

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[image error] Instant Quiz ANSWER

Notoriety refers to fame that was earned for bad reasons. It’s the wrong word for today’s sentence. (Save it for bank robbers and other criminals!)

Gwen’s successful book prompted many TV appearances, and she’s enjoying the attention. CORRECT

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What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

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Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

Linda is the best of all the boss’ I’ve had over the years.

 

Manipulative Words

In 1996, 110 people were killed when a ValuJet flight crashed into the Everglades. For days afterward, news reports on TV and radio vividly described how the plane was lost in the alligator-infested waters of the Everglades.

Finally – FINALLY! – an NPR listener called in with a correction. Alligators, he noted, do not “infest” the Everglades: it’s their home.

A  news story in our local newspaper this week had a similar pro-human/anti-wildlife slant. A nearby town is rejoicing because it will soon be getting a new park: “Lake Emerges from Undergrowth as Property Reclaimed” is the headline. According to the newspaper story, the undergrowth that was “choking” the banks of a lake has been cleared. The natural resources manager (!) is thrilled with the “restoration” of the lake.

I wonder if the rabbits, birds, and other creatures who used to live there are celebrating. I suspect not.

Of course I like parks, including lakefront parks, and I’m glad the town is getting a new recreational area. Sometimes it’s useful to clear away plants. What’s bothering me is the bias in the language. Anyone reading the paper would get the idea that natural growth on a lakefront is always bad, unsightly, and useless. I wish the “natural resources manager” had made a statement stressing the importance of a balance between the needs of humans and the needs of wildlife.

“Manage” is a useful word that has – alas – acquired a scary connotation. Any time I hear a news report about “managing” resources – human or otherwise – I see dollar bills flying through the air.

The lakefront “restoration” reminded me of another recent news story that featured manipulative language: the removal of Dr. Dao from United Flight 3411. The CEO’s letter to UA’s employees was full of polite language about what quickly turned into a public relations nightmare for the airline:

Dr. Dao was “politely asked to deplane.”
The airline followed “established procedures” in dealing with “this incident” that involved a problem with “involuntary denial of boarding process.”
Dr. Dao was “approached…in order to gain his compliance.”
“Our agents…were left with no choice” but to call security “to assist.”
They “were unable to gain his cooperation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist” in “defiance of both our crew and security officials.”

Unfortunately for United Airlines, other passengers used their cell phones to video the “incident” – which involved a screaming passenger who needed medical treatment afterwards.

Many people (including me!) try to soften an unpleasant incident with manipulative language. I’m remembering a consulting job I did once with a public safety agency. I was brought in to help officers with their paperwork, and the reports I read were puzzling. Clearly everyone knew how to write well. But sometimes I’d come across a sentence or paragraph that was so garbled that I couldn’t figure out what the writer was trying to say.

The chief grinned when I showed him a few of those mystifying reports. “I know exactly what’s going on here,” he said. “The officer lost or damaged a piece of equipment and is trying to make it sound like it’s not their fault.”

I used to do the same thing with my parents. (It never worked. Not once. Sigh.)

Language is one of the most basic – and most important – tools we use in our everyday lives. Think of how smoothly the world would function if we all strove to use words unflinchingly and honestly. Sounds like a good resolution for us to make!

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Apostrophes don’t mean “more than one.” Add an -es to boss to make it plural: bosses.

Linda is the best of all the bosses I’ve had over the years.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

We’ll hold the meeting on Tuesday, (the conference room isn’t available on Monday) and then we’ll be finished with the project.

Learning from Lin-Manuel Miranda

I just read a terrific article about Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit Broadway show Hamilton. The article focused – surprisingly – on his writing practices.

I find Miranda to be an enigma precisely because he doesn’t seem to be an enigma. I watched (several times – it’s wonderful) the PBS special about the making of Hamilton. I was surprised to discover that Miranda is so laid back and – well – young. There’s something puppy-like about him, as if he were just discovering that the world is a really neat place.

And yet he started filming segments for the PBS documentary years before the opening night of Hamilton. That required a lot of business savvy, along with immense confidence in a show that wasn’t close to ready for a Broadway audience.

I haven’t seen the show yet, but I spent about a month listening to disc 1 from the cast album. (I didn’t like disc 2 as much, since it’s about problems that Alexander Hamilton created for himself.)

There’s a lot to learn from the show. Who knew that so much interesting stuff was happening during the Revolutionary War? And that rap could be so much fun to listen to? (It helps that the musicians who back up the songs in the show are world class.)

Several ideas jumped out at me when I read the article about Miranda’s writing practices. I loved his description of the phases of writing (such as “I’m a Fraud” and “I’ll Never Finish”). Maybe more people would do more writing if they realized everyone has doubts during the writing process.

The second powerful idea concerned a friend’s birthday party. On the way there, Miranda had a breakthrough moment with a song he’d been struggling with. He went to the party, wished his friend a happy birthday, and then went home to finish the song. Miranda’s point: when you have a breakthrough moment, it has to take priority in your life.

I have a similar philosophy. Nothing – and I mean nothing – is more sacred to me than sleep. I’m a hopeless mess if I don’t go to bed at a decent hour. But I’ll get up in the middle of the night and write for a couple of hours if a writing project wakes me up and insists that it wants my attention now.

Miranda’s third point – ironically – conflicts with his story about the birthday party. He’s a strong believer in writing on a schedule rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. When he was writing Hamilton, he had be onstage every night at eight o’clock for another show. So Miranda had to make a writing schedule and stick to it.

Miranda’s experiences with writing sparked two thoughts of my own:

1.  Successful writers constantly bounce back and forth between inspiration and toil. Writing requires discipline – but if that’s all you have, you’re going to produce some pretty dull stuff. You need a system for recording inspirations that strike when you’re away from your desk.

Miranda had his notebook with him when he was riding the train to his friend’s party, but he also needed a piano to work out the music, and that required a trip back home. I do a lot of the preparation for writing while I’m driving back and forth to ballroom lessons. Of course I can’t write anything down. My system is to find a place to stop the car and then call my husband (who always says “Think about your driving, not writing!”) and ask him to write a few key words for me to read when I get home.

2.  (This is about Hamilton, not just Lin-Manuel Miranda): Don’t be afraid of formulas and standard plots. After I’d listened to disc 1 from the Hamilton album, I tried to figure out why I didn’t like disc 2 nearly as much. Here’s what I came up with: disc 1 is a traditional rags-to-riches story – actually two of those stories blended together: How an impoverished orphan became an important political figure, and how a ragtag army from a small colony defeated a wealthy empire. No wonder Hamilton is such a huge hit!

I find it comforting to know that famous writers share so many of the same doubts and have to work through so many of the same problems. That’s something I need to remember the next time one of my drafts is so awful that I’m ashamed to admit that I’m the one who wrote it. Persistence, inspiration, toil, discipline – they all have a role to play in our quest for writing success.

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                      Lin-Manuel Miranda

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Never put a comma in front of parentheses. This is one of very few rules that always work!

We’ll hold the meeting on Tuesday (the conference room isn’t available on Monday), and then we’ll be finished with the project.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

Even though I’m disinterested in hockey, I’ve been following the Stanley Cup playoffs this year.   

Strong, Vigorous Sentences

I’ve been doing some reading in connection with a book I’m writing about Shaw. Last night I read an essay about Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion by Steven Cavell. (It’s included in a book called Cities of Words.) I didn’t like the essay and didn’t find much that would be useful for my book. But the essay did get me thinking about sentences – poorly written sentences and sentences that lack strength and vigor.

Today I’d like to pull a few sentences out of Cavell’s article and talk about what bothered me about them. (If you’re a Shaw enthusiast, be assured that I disagreed – sometimes vehemently – with the points Cavell is making. But my topic today is sentences, not Shaw.)

1. “But Professor Higgins will give Eliza Doolittle a little discourse defending the coldness of a way of life identifiable as one Shaw ratifies.”

“Identifiable as one Shaw ratifies” is…gobbledygook. Here’s what Cavell is apparently trying to say: For both Professor Higgins and Shaw, coldness is a way of life. (Not true of Shaw, by the way!)

2. “This writer, whose individual prefaces to his plays are as notable and interesting as the plays themselves that they preface, declares, in the opening sentence of his preface to Pygmalion, ‘As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place.'”

This sentence combines two unrelated pieces of information: 1) Shaw wrote good prefaces and 2) he wrote a sequel to Pygmalion. Weak writing! When you read good writing, you feel that you’re on a horse that knows where it’s going and wants to take you there. Here I feel that I’m just wandering around the scenery. 

(And why did Cavell call Shaw “this writer” instead of using his name? And what’s the difference between a “preface” and an “individual preface”? Nothing. That unnecessary “individual” is another sign that Cavell is a weak writer.)

3. My final example is such a mouthful that I’m not going to quote the whole thing. I want to point out something about the words in green:

“Shaw’s reading of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, as told in Ovid – where Pygmalion falls in love with his statue Galatea and asks the gods to bring her to life – in terms of a man’s training a woman in the further possession of language, brings the myth within range of the guiding demand for education….”

Here’s what jumped out at me: There are two clauses in a row. The first one is set off in dashes, and the second one is marked by a comma. That’s weak writing. There’s no connection between the clauses – no transitional word like because, so, but, therefore – to help readers figure out what’s going on. This long sentence (and I’ve left out a lot of it!) just drifts from place to place without a definite destination.

I have one more comment about Steven Cavell’s essay (and this will surprise you!). He writes like I do. Many of my sentences are just like his – wordy, weak, and purposeless. But here’s what’s different about my writing: I revise it.

Let me wrap this up with a few pointers I’ve picked up in my own writing career:

If  a sentence has more than three commas, I check to see if it’s too complicated. Often it is, and I revise it.
Breaking a sentence in two solves a surprising number of problems.
You’ll never impress anyone by writing “the fluid supply in my writing implement is exhausted” when what you mean is “my pen is out of ink.”
When writing is plain and simple, grateful readers think you’re a brilliant writer.
If something I’m writing doesn’t move forcefully across the page, I either revise it or throw it away.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Disinterested means “impartial.” (Interest here has the sense of owning an interest in a business.) The correct word is uninterested.

Even though I’m uninterested in hockey, I’ve been following the Stanley Cup playoffs this year.   CORRECT

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What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

Pamela is leaving early, her boss is working late.

 

Writing for a Professional Journal

My friend (and fellow Shaw enthusiast!) Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín just sent me a link to an intriguing article about academic publishing: Most Common Formal Grammatical Errors Committed by Authors. The writer is Dr. Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, a professor of education with a distinguished background in writing and teaching.

His article is based on an examination of 116 submissions to a professional journal over a six-year period. Onwuegbuzie classified 35 kinds of mistakes (he called them “formal grammatical errors”). The article lists them in order – from most to least frequent – and offers examples of each one.

Any writer – especially someone who wants to write for professional journals – will find a wealth of useful information here. For example, Dr. Onwuegbuzie counsels writers to avoid using this and these as stand-alone pronouns. That trick is a simple and elegant way to help writers avoid a problem grammarians  call an indefinite pronoun reference. Here’s an example:

Joe gave me the wrong flight number. That caused a delay when we tried to meet his flight.  INDEFINITE PRONOUN REFERENCE

Joe gave me the wrong flight number. That mistake caused a delay when we tried to meet his flight.  CORRECT

All you do is change that to that mistake, and the problem disappears!

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Now we’re going to take a detour. I have always been curious about how people think. What do psychologists think about during a social encounter? Do they analyze people’s behavior? What do professional dancers think about when they’re performing? What details and subtleties do they focus on that completely escape my attention? 

I’m hoping that some of you reading this post are curious about how a professional writer thinks. So I’m going to discuss some of the thoughts that went through my head when I read Dr. Onwuegbuzie’s article. Because his field is education, and mine is English, our thinking processes are (of course) different.

Often where Dr. Onwuegbuzie sees a grammatical error, I see a problem with usage (a topic I’m going to save for another day) or house style (which I’m going to discuss today).

Grammar is the system and structure of a language. (Another term for grammar is syntax.) Grammar issues are solidly embedded in the language. In English, for example, subjects and verbs have to agree (you can’t say “I are”). Pronouns have to agree with their antecedents. Word order is important in English: Joe likes Jane has a very different meaning from Jane likes Joe. (In some other languages, word order doesn’t matter.) Grammar is fixed and slow to change.

House style, on the other hand, deals with arbitrary choices and evolving issues that publishers have to contend with. Every publisher has a house style, and so do many businesses and other types of organizations. They create documents with names like “style guides,” “style sheets,” “guidelines for authors” to lay out their writing preferences. I’ve worked as a consultant for several organizations that wanted to create style guides to ensure that all their publications and correspondence were consistent.

You might be surprised how many writing practices fall into the “arbitrary” or “evolving” category. Here are some examples:

The Oxford comma – which do you prefer:  Jane, Joe, and Linda or Jane, Joe and Linda? 
Should you write healthcare, health-care, or health care? Childcare, child-care, or child care?
Is data singular or plural?
Should you write ok, okay, o.k., or OK? 1860s or 1860’s? Hallowe’en or Halloween? Catalogue or catalog? Theater or theatre?

Sometimes an organization will create a house rule to meet a particular need. For example, Yale University capitalizes Incomplete in explanations about students’ grades. Newspapers (to save space) don’t usually capitalize titles like president and director, but many colleges and businesses want to honor people in important positions by capitalizing those titles. And I could cite many, many more examples.

Another issue is that the ways we use words inevitably change over time. Manuscript comes from two Latin words that mean “written by hand” – but if you sent a handwritten manuscript to a publisher today, it would be thrown in the trash. You might be surprised how many everyday words were once controversial. Escalate – which wasn’t even allowed in the American Heritage Dictionary in 1960 – has become a perfectly respectable word.

Those changes continue to happen all the time. Only 8% of the experts recently polled by the AHD still treat data as a plural word: 92% accept the singular form (data is or data was). Snuck (for sneaked) isn’t there yet, but it’s moving toward mainstream status. Enthuse – a word I used to warn my students not to use – has crossed the line and now shows up even in formal writing.

How do professionals decide these issues? Google can help. When I do a consulting job, I also like to check the Chicago Manual of Style to see how they handled a particular problem. The Usage Notes in the American Heritage Dictionary are another excellent resource because I can track controversial words and usages as they gradually become acceptable.

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What does all of this mean to an ambitious writer? I’d suggest reading Dr. Onwuegbuzie’s article to make sure you’re familiar with some fine points of grammar and usage. If you’re thinking about submitting an article to a magazine or journal, go to the publisher’s website and learn about their house style.

You should familiarize yourself with the words that are in flux right now, and you should have resources at hand to help you stay in touch with what’s happening in professional publishing. What’s most important is to develop a healthy respect for both the big and small issues associated with writing.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Never try to join two sentences with a comma. The correct punctuation mark is a semicolon. Lower-case the next word (unless it’s a proper noun).

Pamela is leaving early; her boss is working late.  CORRECT

Pamela is leaving early; Ken is working late.  CORRECT

Many writers are needlessly afraid of semicolons! Here’s any easy way to get them right every time. Write two sentences. Then change the period to a semicolon. Check to see if you need to change a capital letter to lower case. You’re done!

The door creaked. A dog bounded in.  CORRECT

The door creaked; a dog bounded in.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Instant Quiz

[image error]Instant Quiz 

Can you spot the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

My friend Vivian dropped off some tomatoes from her garden for Charlie and I.