Jean Reynolds's Blog, page 61

Hello, Singular “They”!

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O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

I’m celebrating a recent story from the Associated Press. Last week the AP announced that it has started allowing journalists to use “they” as a singular pronoun. (You can read more about their decision here.)

You might be surprised that I – one of the crankiest grammar curmudgeons on this planet – am happy about the change. If so, I have another surprise for you: I switched over to the singular “they” several months ago.

Before I go any further, I probably need to explain what all the fuss is about. English teachers (including me) have long railed against sentences like this one:

Does each member know that they’re supposed to bring a covered dish to the meeting?  SINGULAR “THEY”

Here’s the corrected version:

Does each member know that he or she is supposed to bring a covered dish to the meeting?  BETTER

The reasoning is that “each member” is singular, so you need a singular pronoun: he or she. I used to be a believer, and some years ago I published not one but two English textbooks that come out sternly against the singular “they.”

Like many writers, I found that “he or she” clumsy and annoying, and I’ve always refused to use it. But there are workarounds, and I included them in my textbooks. My personal favorite has always been to make a problematic sentence plural:

Do members know that they’re supposed to bring a covered dish to the meeting?  BETTER

Last year, though, I finally started to rebel. I was writing an article for a police blog about strategies to help keep cops safe when they’re working alone during a traffic stop. One popular trick is for an officer to open and close a door on the police car twice to make it seem that there are two cops at the scene, not just one.

Another trick is for an who’s officer working alone to use “we” instead of “I.” So the officer might walk over to a waiting car and ask, “Do you know why we pulled you over today?”

So there I was, tapping away on my keyboard, writing “cops” and “officers” so that I could avoid that @#$%! “he or she”: But wait a minute! I wanted to emphasize that the cop was alone on the highway and dealing with a potentially dangerous driver. So I didn’t want to write “cops” or “officers.”

On the other hand, if I wrote “a cop,” I was obliged to write “he or she” and “him or her” throughout my article. The final piece would be wordy and clumsy.

And so – with trembling fingers – I used the singular “they” and “their” throughout my article. Here’s a sample:

An officer who’s working alone should always be aware of their surroundings.  SINGULAR THEY

When I finished writing my article, I nervously submitted it to the website. Guess what – the editor accepted my post and paid my fee!

Yes, I felt a few tremors under my feet. But I also thought regretfully about all the time I’ve wasted over the years revising sentences to avoid that damned “he or she” construction.

There’s another reason – and this one might surprise you – why I’ve decided to go with the singular “they”: It’s actually more correct than our clumsy “he or she” practice, at least from a historical perspective.

Grammatically speaking, our modern English language is a stripped-down and diminished version of what it once was. We’ve lost most of our verb conjugations and noun declensions. Many of the word endings that once denoted case, tense, and number are gone, and instead we rely heavily on word order.

Somewhere along the way, English also lost its gender-neutral singular pronoun. Our English-speaking forefathers and foremothers never noticed its disappearance. They happily used “they” – until Lindley Murray (an 18th-century attorney who’s the villain of this piece) declared that “they” was wrong.

Everyone caved in. Well, not everyone. Writers and teachers went along with Murray under the mistaken belief that he knew what he was talking about. (He didn’t). Meanwhile everybody else kept using “they” as they always had.

And so it is that centuries later, students walk into English classrooms and are surprised to learn that a language pattern they’ve always used in conversation – and heard their parents and grandparents and, well, almost everyone else using – is wrong.

That abuse of the English language is coming to an end, and I’m doing my bit to help the movement along. Last week I deleted the “no-singular-they” rule from a pronoun handout I’d been using for years.

It’s a new era! And guess what – life still seems pretty normal, despite the change. We will survive this…and so will the English language.

By the way – did you notice that I slipped a singular “they” into today’s post?

Meanwhile everybody else kept using “they” as they always had.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Be careful not to confuse then (usually a time-related word) with than (used for comparisons): 

I enjoyed the movie more than the original book. 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.

After alot of discussion, we decided to hold our annual fundraiser at the Springhill Country Club.

Fudging

Last week several friends and I did some emailing back and forth about a legitimate use of quotation marks that I had glossed over. Or you could say that I fudged it. So today I’m going to cover a legitimate but widely misunderstood way to use quotation marks.

A story might help. Last week my husband and I came across the word pusillanimous and realized we weren’t sure about the meaning. (I just checked the dictionary: it means “timid.”) I was annoyed because I remember struggling with pusillanimous when I took my SATs as a senior in high school. Some people never learn.

(Here’s another word I have to look up every time: nonplussed. Even though I know it means “surprised” and “confused,” I don’t trust myself.)

You probably noticed that I used quotation marks around “timid,” “surprised,” and “confused.” That’s because I had departed from the usual way of using those words. And that’s where we run into problems.

Writers often use quotation marks to signal an unconventional use of a word:

Many people mispronounce “nuclear” and “mischievous.”  CORRECT

But that doesn’t mean you can use quotation marks willy-nilly!

Dr. Caldon is researching the problem of nuclear waste.  CORRECT

With a mischievous smile, Sandra handed me the box.  CORRECT

What you don’t want to do – please, please! – is overuse this handy form of punctuation. Earlier in this post I said I’d fudged my previous explanations about quotation marks. Yes, that’s a departure from the usual meaning of fudge – but there’s no need to apologize for it.

I think observation is one of the best ways to learn how to use quotation marks (and to pick up many other writing skills). Pick some good role models and study them. You’ll learn a lot!

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

A lot is always two words. (I used it in the last sentence in today’s post: You’ll learn a lot!)

After a lot of discussion, we decided to hold our annual fundraiser at the Springhill Country Club.  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

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

I mailed aunt Cory’s birthday card this morning.

Etaoin Shrdlu

Today I learned something new about journalism. According to a recent article in the New York Times, reporters sometimes use nonsense words and expressions to mark unfinished parts of articles they’re writing. For example, a busy reporter might realize that he needs a fact or statistic for an article he’s writing. Instead of stopping to look up the information, he decide to finish drafting the article. He types in TK – meaning “to come” – as a reminder to himself, and then he keeps writing.

Or – something that used to happen before newspapers modernized their typesetting practices – a reporter discovers a mistake in a piece she’s been writing. Because of the peculiar way newspaper type used to be set, she can’t fix it herself. She types in the nonsense words Etaoin shrdlu as a signal that the printer needs to look for the problem and fix it.

But sometimes those signals were overlooked and found their way into a printed article. Readers who came across a TK or Etaoin shrdlu were – obviously – confused. Huh? What’s that about?

I’ve made similar boo-boos myself – for example, putting a reminder to myself into the subject line of a blog post, and then forgetting to remove it before I clicked PUBLISH.

And now you’re probably expecting a reminder from me about the importance of slowing down and carefully proofreading what you’ve written.

Or maybe – if you’re a regular visitor to my blog – you know that I try to avoid posting obvious advice, and I’m going to swerve off in an unexpected direction. (Good for you – you’ve hit the jackpot!)

What I want to tell you today is that language has an unlimited supply of tricks and pitfalls for sabotaging your earnest efforts to do quality writing.

After I read the New York Times article about TK and Etaoin shrdlu, I remembered something that happened to a close friend (now deceased, sadly) who wrote religious books for young readers. Joan wanted to write a book about Teresa of Avila, a dynamic 16th-century woman whose spiritual writings are still popular today.

Joan sent a letter to her publisher to see if they were interested in a young people’s biography of St. Teresa. But Joan (a notoriously bad speller) made an error in her letter, asking if the publisher was interested in a book about St. Theresa. Back came a letter saying the company would be delighted to have a book for young people about Therese of Lisieux, a saint Joan was not even slightly interested in.

Common sense (and the opportunity to write another book and make some money) won the day, and Joan really did write that book about St. Therese. (It’s a fine book and still in print!) But Joan never got a shot at the book she really wanted to write.

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How many writing instructors have you heard droning on and on about the importance of checking your work for errors? How many literature instructors have lectured endlessly about trying to uncover the theme in a novel, or short story, or poem – or analyzing the structure – or explicating the historical context?

All of those activities are useful and important. But wouldn’t English be a far more exciting subject if we sometimes approached it from the perspective of language – that untamed force that resists our mightiest attempts to control it?

My life changed – that is no exaggeration – when one of my professors casually mentioned that he saw Bernard Shaw as a writer “struggling with language.” Those three words have kept my brain busy for years, and there’s no end in sight.

How about you? Do you ever struggle with language – or ponder how a particular writer battled against this wonderfully slippery communication tool of ours? It’s a project I heartily recommend to you!

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

In this sentence, aunt is part of her name. Capitalize it.

I mailed Aunt Cory’s birthday card this morning.  CORRECT

Now compare the sentence below. Because aunt isn’t part of her name, there’s no capital letter:

I sent a birthday card to my aunt this morning.  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.

There’s two ways to correct the problem.  

Down with Lists!

Everybody knows what a list is, right? Wrong. Many’s the time I’ve sat down to edit an article or memoir for a friend or client – only to discover that I was actually reading a list. Not fun, and not what the writer was trying to do.

It’s easy to be fooled, especially when you’re the writer. You think your piece sparkles. It’s charming and lively. It couldn’t possibly be a list, right?

Wrong.

If the piece you’ve written doesn’t make a point, chances are it’s a list. An essay about a visit to Costa Rica might actually be a list. So could an account of your family reunion last summer, or an examination of the pros and cons of small-ship cruising. If what you’ve written doesn’t make a point – if it just stacks up a series of events or facts – it’s probably best described as a list.

So what constitutes a point? It’s an idea with an attitude. “My trip to Canada” isn’t a point. “I was amazed by the wildlife in Canada” is.

Your point doesn’t have to be a lesson. In fact often you’re better off if you’re not trying to convince your readers that you’re passing on age-old wisdom. It’s hard to pull off that kind of writing without sounding stodgy and superior.

I remember a conversation I overheard once between two young mothers – “Carol” and “Betty.” Carol had a six-month-old infant, and she was asking Betty – who had four children – to share the best parenting advice she’d ever heard.

Betty was thoughtful for a moment. And then she said, “Always make your children sit down while they’re eating something messy. Especially chocolate.”

Not profound – but you get a feeling for the kind of mother Betty is. She sounds real. And that’s what you want your writing to do – and what won’t happen if you recount, in order, the 15 sites you saw on your last visit to Chicago. (I’m going to add some practical advice of my own: If you have a sinking suspicion that you’ve written a list, you probably have.)

Lists have been on my mind this week because I’ve been reading a wonderful new biography of one of my favorite writers – Shirley Jackson. In an earlier post I remarked that I’d read Jackson’s memoirs Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons over and over. She was a writer, not a list-maker.

Jackson enjoyed motherhood and was fascinated by her children – which doesn’t mean that went on and on about what a good mother she was. I don’t think there’s a single piece of parenting advice in either of those books. Often she’s looking wryly at either her own foibles as a mother or the odd behavior of her children.

There’s Jannie, for example, who had a string of imaginary friends, all named Marilyn. And Sally, who was a practitioner of magic. There’s also Barry, who insisted on having a fried egg for dessert every night while everyone else had chocolate pudding, and Laurie, who – after recovering from a serious accident – insisted on taking another ride in an ambulance because he’d been unconscious during the first one.

You get the idea.

So what is Jackson’s point? I’d venture that it’s something like “this is what families are like.” Every tale in Life Among the Savages takes a fresh look on the four children and two adults who live in Jackson’s large and disorderly New England house. The family members all have distinct voices, and the two adults (who strive mightily to keep the household in order) have a completely different outlook from the four children (who couldn’t care less about brushing their teeth and helping out in the kitchen).

When Jackson makes a list, it always a point. For example, on pages 18 and 19 Jackson describes an old house they were renting. She mentions a desk, a clothesline, a rocking chair, and a highboy. Not interesting at all – except that this house, in Jackson’s telling, had strong preferences about those four things, and Jackson and her husband finally stopped fighting the house and simply let it have its way.

I’m remembering an article that Maya Angelou wrote about houses she’d lived in. She thought one of her marriages might have survived if she and her husband hadn’t been living in a house that hated the two of them.

Could you find a way to give a house a personality? More important, can you give yourself a personality? On paper? It’s easy to come across as an interesting person when you can use your voice, mannerisms, and facial expressions in a conversation. But can you do it solely with words on paper or a computer screen?

If you can do that, you can ignore my warnings about writing lists. You writing will be alive and real – still worth reading, decades later, like Jackson’s wonderful family memoirs. 

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Many writers mistakenly use “There is” and “There’s” when “There are” is needed. You can easily figure out which one to use by flipping the sentence around. (It’s easy!)

There’s two ways to correct the problem.  

Two ways to correct the problem IS THERE.  INCORRECT

Two ways to correct the problem ARE THERE.  CORRECT

THERE ARE two ways to correct the problem.  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.

The picture that Joe took of Alice and I was out of focus.

Writing Secrets

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I were talking about some writing tips we’d picked up – almost by luck or by accident – on our way to becoming professional writers. We both came up with a list of “I wish someone had told me sooner” pointers. Today I’m going to talk about four of them.

1.   Break up long paragraphs.

Somewhere along the way both my writer friend and I started breaking long paragraphs in half (in defiance of what English teachers always tell you about unifying a paragraph). Nobody – as far as we can remember – ever told us that it’s ok to just split a paragraph into two shorter ones. Any writing task is much more readable that way. What we find really funny is that nobody – not even the most sharp-eyed editor – has ever caught on to what we were doing.

 2. Use dashes to enliven your sentences.

This was another practice we were surprised to discover that we had in common: dashes. We use lots of them. (Confession: sometimes I overuse them.) Alas, I’ve never been able to work out a system for teaching writers how to use dashes. But I can tell you this: if you do a lot of reading, you’ll figure it out. Give yourself permission to use dashes – they’re wonderful!

3.  State ideas strongly.

There’s nothing new about this gem of advice, which you’ll find in most books that teach writing. But it’s easily overlooked. Avoid writing “This was not easy” or “I didn’t like to do those tasks.” State what you DID feel: “This was difficult” or “I disliked doing those tasks.”

4.  Beware of joining sentences with and.

I wish I could thank the professor who urged me to break my and habit – and I wish I hadn’t had to wait for graduate school to be told that it was a problem. Joining sentences with and is easy, and most beginning writers overdo it. (There’s an example for you.)

Here’s the problem: It’s juvenile. If you listen to small children talk, you’ll hear strings of sentences – one after another – joined with and. Strive to use more sophisticated joiners: if, when, because, although, and so on. Show relationships between ideas rather than just gluing them together:

Clouds were rolling in, and I grabbed my umbrella.  JUVENILE

Because clouds were rolling in, I grabbed my umbrella.  SOPHISTICATED

I just reread this post, and I was struck by the simplicity of these bits of writerly wisdom. Try them – you’ll quickly see a big improvement in your writing!

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Although I might sound more elegant to you, the correct word in this sentence is me. The trick here is to make the sentence shorter. Instead of thinking about Alice and I, just think about I: 

The picture that Joe took of Alice and I was out of focus. INCORRECT

The picture that Joe took of I was out of focus.  INCORRECT

Clearly I is the wrong word! Let’s try me:

The picture that Joe took of me was out of focus.  CORRECT

The picture that Joe took of Alice and me was out of focus.  CORRECT

So how do you know when to use I – and when to use me? This “shorten the sentence” trick is a quick and easy way to get both pronouns right. I call it the “Thumb Rule” because you can use your thumb to cover up part of the sentence. You can download a free handout at Scribd.com under my name: Jean Rafenski Reynolds.

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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.

I often heard my father sing “I Wonder Whose Kissing Her Now.”