by Ben Yagoda
Sometimes, you need to just be listless:
[He has experience in copyediting, graphics, and has won two professional awards.]
He has experience in copyediting and graphics, and has won two professional awards.
The alluring phrase as well as creates a parallel problem in 1, below. It’s technically fixed in 2, but the sentence is awkward (a word you will run into again in Part III, many times).
1. [World AIDS Day is devoted to spreading further awareness of HIV and AIDS, as well as a time of remembrance for the millions who have died because of the virus.]
2. [World AIDS Day is devoted to spreading further awareness of HIV and AIDS and is a time of remembrance for the millions who have died because of the virus.]
3. World AIDS Day is devoted to spreading further awareness of HIV and AIDS. It’s a time of remembrance for the millions who have died because of the virus.
e. The Sports Conditional
This isn’t exclusively found in a sports context, but for some reason, athletes, fans, and commentators are unaccountably drawn to the phrase would have in considering scenarios that didn’t happen.
[If Johnson would have caught that ball, the Bisons would have won the game.]
If Johnson had caught the ball, the Bisons would have won the game.
The sports conditional seems particularly irresistible when wishing or hoping is involved:
“I wish I would have took a swing at that ball,” Prendergast said.
Well, you can’t change a quotation, but if Prendergast were writing his sentiments, the correct grammar would be:
I wish I had taken a swing at that ball.
Not technically an error, but pretty hackneyed, is “the sports present,” in which athletes and sportswriters recite hypothetic or conditional events in the present tense.
[If he makes that interception, the whole game changes.]
If he had made that interception, the whole game would have changed.
f. Between You and I, This One Bears Some Study
Take a look at this sentence and try to spot the problem word:
[It would be great if you could come to the concert with my wife and I.]
It’s the shortest and final one, I. Traditional grammar dictates that it should be replaced with me, on the principle that prepositions (such as with) are followed by the objective (me) rather than the subjective case (I).
It would be great if you could come to the concert with my wife and me.
When only one pronoun is involved, absolutely no one has trouble with the principle. No one, that is, would write:
[It would be great if you could come to the concert with I.]
Yet many, many people have problems when there are two or more elements in the noun phrase, especially when one of the elements is a pronoun indicating the speaker or writer.
[Between you and I, that project is a disaster.]
[The teacher gave the assignment to she and I.]
Between you and me, that project is a disaster.
The teacher gave the assignment to her and me.
Some authorities, notably Steven Pinker of Harvard, have argued in favor of the subjective case in this situation, thus provoking the wrath of traditionalists. The argument is that (drawing from the above examples) my wife and I, you and I, and she and I are better viewed as self-contained units than as a combination of pronouns. And, as units, they can be either object or subject. It’s the same (Pinker would contend) as a title like The King and I. And no one would write, I won two tickets to see The King and Me.
I have to admit I see the logic in the argument. But it doesn’t matter. Long and at this point unbreakable custom dictates that you must write my wife and me, you and me, and her and me in these cases.
g. Whomever
This word has only slightly higher grammatical standing than ain’t, but it’s used by millions more people. It yields 11.7 million hits on Google and more than 1,000 on Google News, which consists of articles written in the last month or so by professional and semiprofessional writers. The most recent (posted just two hours ago as I write) came from the Web site of New York City’s Fox News affiliate:
[Meat Loaf has a bone to pick with whomever started the rumor that he passed out at a balloon festival in New Jersey this past weekend.]
Like an overwhelming majority of the examples on Google News (and in my students’ work), whomever is incorrect here. You can see why the writer made the mistake—with is a preposition, and prepositions are traditionally followed by the objective case. But whomever started the rumor, etc. is a unit—a noun phrase, to be exact—so the correct word to kick it off is whoever.
Whomever has gotten so popular that people have started to use it even when there’s not a preposition to be found in the immediate area. A subject heading on a gamers’ bulletin board reads: “ATTN: Whomever owns zombieland server.” No excuse for that.
As you proceed on life’s journey, you may be tempted to use whomever. Resist the temptation, except in two relatively rare cases.
It’s the last word in the sentence and is immediately followed by a verb other than to be or by a preposition. I’ll go with whomever.
It’s a true object. The doctors will treat whomever the sick boy coughed on.
Looking at the awkwardness of those two sentences, I’m going to amend my rule, as follows:
Never use whomever.
h. Fragments of My Imagination
Sentence fragments (SFs) are a weird mistake. For one thing, virtually every professional writer uses them. Including me. Including me, of course, is a SF. It’s defined as a collection of words that’s treated as a sentence (that is, the first letter is capitalized and a period, question mark, or exclamation point comes at the end) but, because it doesn’t contain both subject and verb, doesn’t have the grammatical standing of a sentence.
Despite their popularity and usefulness, SFs earn some serious wrath in virtually every writing handbook on my shelf. The trouble is the examples these books give. Almost none of them are recognizable as anything that comes across my desk or appears on my computer screen. For example, The Little, Brown Handbook gives this as an instance of what not to do:
With the links, users can move to other Web sites. That they want to consult.
In twenty years of teaching, I’ve never had something like that handed in to me. There are a dozen or more examples in the chapter, and the only one that rings slightly true is this:
Uncle Marlon drew out his tales. And embellished them.
The thing is, I don’t particularly mind the Uncle Marlon SF. Which leads me to a possibly useful generalization. (I hope you noticed that the previous sentence was a SF.) Sentence fragments can be acceptable and effective, in all but the most formal writing, if they come following a deliberate pause for effect. And if they’re used sparingly! (I can’t stop.) Reading aloud is especially important here. If you do, you’ll find that sometimes the pause is for humor (that talkative Marlon), sometimes for drama, sometimes for irony, and sometimes merely for emphasis.
So.
All that being said, an ill-conceived SF can be a really bad mistake. I do occasionally get them handed in to me. For example:
[Of the students surveyed only 138 knew it was advised by the CDC to be tested for HIV annually when engaged in risky behavior. Classified as having multiple partners, unprotected relations, or regular work in risky medical fields].
Of the students surveyed, only 138 knew the CDC advises annual HIV tests for people who engage in “risky behavior,” defined as having multiple partners or unprotected sexual relations, or working in risky medical fields.
If an SF is pointed out on a piece of your writing by a teacher, supervisor, or writer, I would advise you to eschew fragments for six months, during which time you’ll likely come to a better understanding of what a sentence is and isn’t. At that point, you can start playing around with SFs again. End of advice. And end of Part II.
* Sticklers w
ill put a comma after the but in that sentence. See the next footnote.
* That’s not to say that sound is never a factor in comma use. In many situations, a comma is optional, and the rhythm of the sentence is an important factor in deciding whether to use one. For example, if a sentence-opening conjunction is followed by a parenthetical phrase, you may (but aren’t required to) use a comma after the conjunction. But, as far as vacations go, my whole family prefers the beach. In this case, it makes sense to choose based on whether you hear a pause after But.
* If you’re going for an old-fashioned, Henry James kind of thing, you can use a semicolon before an and, but, yet, or for.
Congress voted to fund twenty-seven pork-barrel projects this term; but the president had other things in mind.
* I haven’t been able to find a source to back me up on this, but I have always maintained that less should be used when the quantity is one, as in the song lyric “One less bell to answer.” I also insist that supermarket signs reading “Five items or less” are correct, since the phrase than that is understood at the end.
PART III
How to Not Write Bad
If you’ve absorbed the previous chapter, you’ve achieved—or are well on your way to achieving—the goal of removing the mistakes and errors from your writing. The next step is getting rid of a collection of qualities that aren’t technically wrong but are eminently undesirable. The best way to sum them up is with a simple chart:
Bad Not Bad
Wordy or pretentious Concise, straightforward
Vague Precise
Awkward Graceful, fluid
Ambiguous or misleading Clear
Clichéd, hackneyed, or pat Fresh
That’s pretty much it. Of course, there are a lot of additional elements associated with writing well, or very well: brilliant similes and metaphors, masterful deploying of irony and other registers, humor, a personal voice, an ear for and ability to mimic other writers’ and speakers’ voices, a command of pacing and structure, the ability to construct long and complex sentences in the manner of Samuel Johnson, a sure and creative hand with metaphor and other figures of speech, a capacious vocabulary and the ability to use it, a sense of audience, an appreciation for subtlety, and so on.
But those are topics for another book. Writing not-bad is quite enough for this one. Before getting to the particulars, I’ll review the general approach to take. First, turn off the radio, the iPod, the television; put your phone on silence and in your pocket; X out of or minimize all screens other than the one you’re writing on. Multitasking = bad writing.
Second, know what you want to say. Any sort of uncertainty, fuzziness, or equivocation in your thoughts multiplies on the page and yields very bad writing. The boys in Entourage are always telling each other to “Hug it out”; my mantra for you is “Think it out.” You will often realize that you have to find out some more about your subject before you set words to paper. This is called research. Do it.
Third, be a mindful writer. A good homemaker doesn’t just fling silverware and plates on the table, but arranges them consciously and carefully. A stylish dresser chooses an outfit carefully. Be that kind of writer. Read each sentence aloud—literally, at first. Eventually you will develop an inner ear that will allow you to note the awkwardness, wordiness, word repetition, and vagueness that are the hallmarks of mindless, bad writing. And eventually, you will streamline the process and “hear” yourself write. And that is pretty cool.
A. Punctuation
1. QUOTATION MARKS
As a rule, stay away from using quotation marks except to indicate a title (“Gone with the Wind” was Clark Gable’s greatest role) or a quotation (“Take me home,” she said). Avoid, that is, the use of air quotes and scare quotes.
[I have always considered him a “brother from another mother.”]
[My roommate thinks Lady Gaga is “the bomb.”]
[After a while, things got “hot and heavy.”]
That is bad writing. My sense is that the quotes are the punctuational equivalent of a phrase like “just kidding” or “I’m just sayin’”—that is, a way to absolve yourself after using a cliché. People: a cliché is a cliché, whether or not it’s in quotes. There is no absolution. (See III.B.4.) Some of the time, you’re going to have to do the work of finding a fresh way to say what you mean.
Ever since we showed up on the first day of first grade wearing the same Star Wars T-shirt, there’s been this odd mystical bond between us.
However, if you really believe in the phrase, have the courage of your convictions (not “courage of your convictions”) and use it naked:
My roommate thinks Lady Gaga is the bomb.
After a while, things got hot and heavy.
2. EXCLAMATION POINTS, DASHES, SEMICOLONS, COLONS, PARENTHESES, ITALICS, AND RHETORICAL QUESTIONS…
…can all be effective if used correctly and in moderation. Common mistakes and misuses are addressed in Part II. The overuse issue is worth taking a couple of minutes with. When I was a magazine editor a few decades ago, I noticed that when some of the writers I worked with underlined or italicized a word for emphasis, sure as shooting, another underlined word or phrase would pop up within a couple of lines. And then another. I have continued to note this in published work, and have come to think of it as comparable to a phenomenon that occurs in concert halls: just as the sound of one person coughing makes other audience members powerless to resist the urge, so one use of italics can be contagious.
Sometimes the issue is less power of suggestion and more personal predilection. Tom Wolfe is enamored of exclamation points, John Irving of semicolons (examine his books and you’ll see what I mean), the New Yorker magazine of commas, and Ben Yagoda of parentheses. Emily Dickinson was quite fond of dashes. I don’t know about those other worthies, but quite a lot of my revising time is spent getting rid of parens (while still keeping enough of them for my writing to sound like me). If you’ve got a go-to typographical move, this is the strategy to follow.
A couple of pieces of punctuation are worth special mention. The first is exclamation points! Or, rather, the first is exclamation points. They’ve spread way beyond Tom Wolfe: if you’ve spent any time on e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter these days, you know that they are the punctuational coin of the realm. Sometimes, one isn’t enough, and you need two, three, or even four to show adequate enthusiasm. In fact, when I first got into texting with my twenty-two-year-old daughter, Maria, I was ending sentences with periods, as is my wont. She told me to use either exclamation points or nothing: the periods made it seem that I was being ironic or pointedly unenthusiastic. But what’s good for texting is bad for text. That is, stay away from exclamation points, except, as a matter of fact, when you’re being ironic or playful. Like this! Even then, use them sparingly.*
And what of the rhetorical question? It’s definitely overused, often serving as nothing more than artificial throat clearing at the beginning of a paragraph. Instead, it usually works better to just dive right into what you want to say. The RQ can be a useful device, but it has to be deployed skillfully. As my first boss, Myron “Mike” Kolatch, the longtime editor of the New Leader magazine, used to say: “When you ask a question, answer it immediately”—the way I did at the beginning of this paragraph. That’s as opposed to something like:
[Is City Hall in compliance with new federal energy regulations? In 2007, Congress passed legislation requiring…]
No good: that question just lies there, unanswered, puzzling or bewildering the reader. First tell us about the regulations, then address the issue of whether or not City Hall is following them.
B. Words and Phrases
1. REALLY QUICK FIX: AVOID THESE WORDS!
Some writing adjustments are hard. But eliminating or at least sharply reducing these words from your prose is painless and shows swift results.
a. Unique
Unique is a much-hated word, but I actually hate it for different reasons than most people do
. The most frequent complaint is that it technically means one of a kind but is commonly used to mean unusual:
[The most unique thing about him is that he has a fauxhawk.]
The argument goes that there are no degrees of uniqueness; either a thing is unique or it isn’t. Consequently:
He has a fauxhawk.
Or take a look at these two sentences from a student’s profile of a librarian (whose name has been changed):
[When the thought of a typical librarian comes to mind, Associate Librarian Raymond McCarthy tries to steer clear of the typical stereotypes associated with the other employees working in the campus library. His everyday attire and approachability prove that he is much more unique than the average librarian.]
Unique is hardly the only problem in the passage; wordiness, stereotyping, cliché, and a dangling modifier come to mind right off the bat. But the U-word, along with the repetition of typical, is probably the most easily addressed. That is, if you want to say he’s approachable and wears everyday attire, just say so, and leave the issue of uniqueness out of it. (Of course, it would be better to specify exactly what he’s wearing, and give an example of his approachability.)
Nonunique unique is certainly something to be concerned with, but even worse, to me, is the now very common use of unique as a synonym for admirable, impressive, or some quality that is vaguely positive but has no other attributes. For an assignment in which students were asked to nominate a Web site for the Pulitzer Prize in online journalism, someone in my class wrote:
