December 20, 2021

Garden-path sentences, zegumas and syllepses

TOPICS: ZEGUMA

A sign in front of a restaurant reads: “Today’s special. So’s tomorrow.” Not the best way to tempt hungry passersby, but an excellent way to catch the attention of language buffs like Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty, who asked on Twitter: “Is there a linguistic term for a play on words like this?”

I didn’t know a language term to describe that (presumably hypothetical) restaurant sign, either. In comedy, a play on meanings like this is called a “reverse.” You lead an audience or reader down one line of thinking, then you end with a twist that undermines your setup. For instance, you might want to offer your wife as an example of a point you just made, “Take my wife …” Then you pull the rug out from under the audience by adding “please!”

Turns out, there are language terms that describe this kind of wordplay, too.

The best known is probably the garden-path sentence. The concept is very similar to the comedy reverse. “A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader’s most likely interpretation will be incorrect,” says Wikipedia. “‘Garden path’ refers to the saying ‘to be led down (or up) the garden path,’ meaning to be deceived, tricked or seduced.”

Garden-path sentences aren’t always funny. When they happen by accident, they can confuse readers: “The man who whistles tunes pianos.” Here you might start off thinking that “tunes” is a noun because it’s so standard to say someone whistled a tune. But when you read on you see that “tunes” is a verb: He tunes pianos.

Other language terms describe similarly confusing sentences: Here’s my recent column covering zeugmas, syllepses, paraprosdokians and garden-path sentences.

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December 13, 2021

What's a clitic?

TOPICS: CLITIC

T’was just weeks before Christmas 2021 when I heard a word I probably should have learned decades ago: “clitic.” It’s a language term. I’m supposed to know those. But this one has eluded me till now — just in time to explain the “t” in my cheery holiday “t’was.”

I’ll let Merriam-Webster sum it up: “Clitic: a word that is treated in pronunciation as forming a part of a neighboring word and that is often unaccented or contracted.”

In most cases, a clitic is a piece of a contraction. The “t” in “t’was.” The “ve” in “could’ve.” The “c” in “c’mon.” The “m” in “I’m.” The “ll” in “this’ll.”

A clitic represents a real word — usually a pronoun, auxiliary verb, determiner or particle. But instead of standing on its own, the clitic influences the pronunciation of a neighboring word. So in “t’was,” you have “t” representing the word “it,” but it’s pronounced like it’s all a single word, “twuzz.”

The clitic can also be pronounced as its own syllable, like “ll” in “that’ll.” Or it can be purely a spoken thing that doesn’t get expressed in written form, like the “t” you hear when someone says “He loves t’ dance” even though they would probably spell out “to” if they wrote it.

Here's more about the clitic in my recent column.

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December 6, 2021

Should you put a comma before too, either or also?

TOPICS: COMMA BEFORE TOO, COPY EDITING, PUT A COMMA BEFORE TOO

I don’t remember much from school (who does?) but I do remember quite clearly being told that “too,” “either,” and “also” are set off with commas in uses like:

Greg saw it, too.

I’d like some, also.

Tina didn’t come, either.

The idea is that when one of these adverbs modifies a whole sentence, and especially when it comes at the end of a sentence, it should be set off with commas. That’s what I was told and that’s what I believed.

But lately, more and more professionally written and edited material seems to eschew these commas.

Greg saw it too.

I’d like some also.

Tina didn’t come either.

When they come midsentence, the commas don’t seem quite as expendable. Changing “I, too, saw the accident” to “I too saw the accident” creates a weird and perhaps momentarily confusing relationship between the adverb and the verb that follows. But these commas don’t seem quite as common as they once were, either.

Turns out that, as austere comma use continues to be the fashion, commas setting off “too” and similar adverbs are less important.

How do you know whether to use them? Well, many experts point out that the comma before a “too” or “either” can give it extra emphasis, setting it off from the pack and letting it stand alone. By skipping the comma, you deemphasize the “too” by integrating it into the sentence.

If you’re looking for a guideline, use the comma when you want the extra emphasis. Otherwise, skip it. Me, I find that old habits die hard. I’ll continue to use commas before “too,” “also,” and “either” whenever possible.

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November 29, 2021

Verbs easily confused in the past tense

TOPICS: COMMONLY CONFUSED VERBS, RANG RUNG

For some verbs, past tense forms are easy to confuse. Here’s a list of commonly misused past tenses and past participles. For some, Webster’s New World College Dictionary lists more than one correct options. In those cases, the dictionary often puts its preferred form first and uses "or" to introduce other acceptable.

 DIVE. Past tense: dived or dove. Yesterday he dived. Yesterday he dove. Past participle: dived. In the past he has dived.

 SPIT (meaning to eject from the mouth). Past tense: spit or spat. Yesterday he spit. Yesterday he spat. Past participle: spit or spat. In the past he has spit. In the past he has spat.

 SPIT (meaning to skewer on a stick). Past tense: spitted. Yesterday he spitted the roast. Past participle: spitted. In the past, he has spitted many roasts.

 SWIM. Past tense: swam. Yesterday he swam. Past participle: swum. In the past he has swum.

 GET. Past tense: got. Yesterday he got a lot of attention. Paste participle: gotten or got: In the past he has gotten a lot of attention. In the past he has got a lot of attention.

 RING. Past tense: rang or (now chiefly dialectical) rung. Yesterday he rang the bell. Yesterday he rung. Past participle: rung. In the past he has rung the bell.

 LIE (meaning to recline). Past tense: lay. Yesterday he lay down on the lawn. Past participle: lain. In the past he has lain down on the lawn.

 LAY. Past tense: laid. Yesterday he laid the book on the table. Past participle: laid. In the past he has laid the book on the table.

 LEND. Past tense: lent. Yesterday he lent me money. Past participle: lent. In the past, he has lent me money.

SHINE. Past tense: shone. Yesterday the sun shone brightly. Past participle: shone. In the past, the sun has shone brightly.

But: In one instance, Webster’s New World recommends shined. When you use “shine” as a transitive verb meaning to make something shiny or bright, the past tense and past participle are both shined.” Yesterday he shined his shoes. In the past, he has shined his shoes.

 TREAD. Past tense: trod or treaded. Yesterday he trod lightly. Yesterday he treaded lightly. Past participle: trodden or trod. In the past he has trodden lightly. In the past he has trod lightly.

 WAKE. Past tense: woke or waked. Yesterday he woke early. Yesterday he waked early. Past participle: waked or woken. In the past he has waked early. In the past he has woken early.

 HANG (meaning to suspend, as a door from its hinges). Past tense: hung. Yesterday he hung the picture on the wall. Past participle: hung. In the past he has hung pictures on the wall.

 HANG (meaning to kill by suspending someone from a rope around the neck). Past tense: hanged. Yesterday he hanged the bandit. Past participle: hanged. In the past he has hanged bandits.

 BRING. Past tense: brought. Yesterday he brought flowers. Past participle: brought. In the past he has brought flowers.

 DREAM. Past tense: dreamed or dreamt. Last night I dreamed. Last night I dreamt. Past participle: dreamed or dreamt. In the past I have dreamed. In the past I have dreamt.

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November 22, 2021

How to write better sentences

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GOOD SENTENCES, PASSIVE VOICE, WRITING TIPS

There’s no formula for writing a good sentence. But over the years I've spent a lot of time fixing truly awful sentences and, in the process, I've learned some ways to make sentences better. These tips won’t apply in every situation. But they’re worth considering when you find your sentence is in trouble.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING SENTENCES

1. Identify all the clauses in the sentence.
The mayor went to Washington because he had a meeting with the senator.

2. For each clause ask: Could the subject or verb be more vivid or substantive?
Bob’s desire was that he would come to occupy the Lou Larson’s job.  --->
Bob wanted Lou Larson’s job.
Ask: Does the main clause convey the most important information?
Paris is a place that gets a lot of tourists.  --->
Paris gets a lot of tourists.

3. Look for “upside-down subordination,” where the most notable information is trapped in a subordinate clause by until, after, before, if, when, because, etc.
When suddenly Officer Miller shot the robber, he knew it was a good decision.  --->
Suddenly, Officer Miller shot the robber. He knew it was a good decision.

more

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November 15, 2021

'A historic' vs. 'an historic'

TOPICS: GRAMMAR

Why do some people say “an historic” but others say “a historic”? For a long time I thought it was because the “an” advocates were conspiring to annoy me. But it turns out there is, in fact, some logic to their choice.

But before we get to that, let’s get the big question out of the way first: Which one is right? Is “an historic” more proper than “a historic”? Is it the other way around?

Good news: The choice is up to you. The bad news: If you want to look professional or even reasonable, your choices narrow greatly.

People who prefer “an” before historic do so despite the rule that requires “a” before a consonant sound. They say that “an historic” is an exception to that rule because the emphasis in “historic” is on the second syllable. This, they say, causes a speaker to bulldoze right over the first syllable, so the N in “an” helps the first syllable of “historic” stand out.

That’s why these folks also put “an” before “heroic.” If you think the “an” sounds better or if you think it makes the following word easier on the ear, by all means go ahead and use “an.” But before you do, you should note who’s not on your side.

Authorities that prefer “a” include the Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press Stylebook, Bryan Garner, R.W. Burchfield, Bill Walsh, Theodore Bernstein, Eric Partridge and, perhaps best of all, Mark Twain.

That’s the company I want to keep.

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November 8, 2021

Can you start a sentence with 'it'? Of course. Do you want to? Maybe not.

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, PRONOUNS

Here’s a question a professional editor asked me a while back: “Is it true you can’t start a sentence with “it”?

We were at a conference, standing in a busy hallway among other people waiting to ask questions. So I didn’t have the time to ask: Where’d you hear that? What’s the thinking behind it? Have you actually followed that advice in your editing work?

There are a lot of people who’ve heard you can’t start a sentence with “and,” and many who’ve heard the same about “but” and “so.” Those prohibitions are fictional (In fact, “Garner’s Modern American Usage” calls the idea that you can’t start a sentence with “and,” “but,” or “so” a superstition). But the alleged “it” rule was a new one on me.

My answer was short: “It’s fine,” I said, not realizing until afterward that my answer was an example.

“It” is a pronoun, like “he,” “him,” “we,” “us,” “they,” “them,” etc. Pronouns head up sentences all the time. She is in the yard. I am in the yard. They are in the yard. It is in the yard.

So the answer was easy. But a few hours later I was thinking about the question and had a realization: The supposed rule, though wrong, might actually be rooted in a useful idea.

Look at the sentence, “It is John who ate the last piece of cake.” This is perfectly grammatical. The main subject is “it,” the main verb is “is.” The “Oxford English Grammar” calls this “the cleft it,” in which “the sentence is split to put the focus on some part of it.”

Compare that sentence with the simpler “John ate the last piece of cake” and you can see how “it is John” adds a different emphasis. But that emphasis comes at a price: extra words and the loss of vividness you get every time you replace a tangible subject and action-oriented verb like “John ate” with more the abstract “it is.”

In news writing especially, “John ate the last piece of cake” is considered better form than “It is John who ate the last piece of cake.”

I bet that’s the origin of the myth that plagued our editor friend.

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November 1, 2021

Please Don't Do This to Your Reader (PDDTTYR )

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR

Pretty much every writer I’ve ever edited has one habit in common: Every time they mention an organization, be it a company, a nonprofit, or a government department, they immediately insert its initials in parentheses.

 The Student Resource Research Center (SRRC) works with the National Association of Educational Consultants (NAEC) to help freshmen locate tuition resources such as for California State Department of Educational Assistance (CSDEA), the nonprofit League of Catholic College Charities (LCCCP), and United Minority and Financially Disadvantaged College Fund (UMFDCF).

 After that, the initials may reappear later in the article — on the assumption that the reader should have memorized all these nicknames on command. Or, weirder yet, the organizations are never mentioned again, meaning there was no reason whatsoever to “teach” this abbreviation to the reader (other than to simply point out that the organization has initials).

 I understand why writers do this: We’ve all seen it done a thousand times. It seems standard. Yet it never fails to blow my mind. It makes me want to call the writer and say, “Hey, real quick, if I told you the SRRC and the NEAC work with the CSDEA, LCCCP and UMFDCF, could you off the top of your head give the full name of even one of those organizations? No? Then why do you expect the reader to know them?”

 True, for a lot of publications this is simply how it’s done. But Los Angeles Times style sees it differently, and their way seems to make much more sense than this force-feeding of alphabet soup.

In this editing style, if an initialism is already known to the reader, you can use it freely on second reference without cramming it in after the first reference. “Investigators from the Defense Intelligence Agency said that DIA operatives are already in place.”

Of course, if it's very well known, like FBI or CIA, there may not be any need to spell out the name at all. On the other hand, if it’s a new one on the reader, here are some of the solutions Times style advocates:

1. After a first reference to an organization, refer to it with descriptive words the reader already knows. This can be a generic descriptor like “the association” or “the state assistance program,” or even a shortened version of its full name “the Catholic Charities.”  If there are multiple subsequent references, consider mixing one of these impromptu nicknames with occasional uses of the full name to remind readers of that name.

2. If no generic nouns will do the trick, on subsequent references, go ahead and refer to the organization by its initials — even though you never did that whole parenthetical cram thing at the first reference. The idea here is that when a reader sees UMFDCF and wants to know what it means, he’s going to have to go back to the first reference regardless of whether you cluttered it up with parentheses and unfamiliar letters. This requires no more work of the reader but cleans up a lot of the visual blight.

 3. When references to the organization are scattered far apart within the document, scattered initials or references may fail to remind the reader of what organization you’re talking about. In those rare cases, when there’s no other way around it, mention the initials — not in parentheses but in the sentence. "The Centers for Initialism Restraint, called the CIR, approve of this."

4. When none of those methods fits the bill, go ahead and insert the initialism in parentheses after the first reference then refer to the organization by its initials thereafter. In other words, this is a case in which the reader’s best course really is to learn the nickname. And those are the only times you should teach it to him.

 No matter what, there’s never an excuse to cram in the initials of an organization you refer to only once. This does nothing but break up the flow of the writing and drive certain copy editors nuts.

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October 25, 2021

Deleting 'and' at the beginning of sentences

TOPICS: COPY EDITING

Any discussion about starting sentences with “and” should begin by emphasizing that there’s no rule against doing so. A lot of people will tell you there is, but they’re misinformed. You can start a sentence with any conjunction including "and," “but,” and “so,” provided it makes sense.

I start lots of sentences with the word “and.” It’s how I think. One idea follows from the last, and the “ands” just pour out. But that’s when I’m writing. As an editor, I hack off at least nine out of 10 sentence-starting “ands” that cross my desk. And here’s why.

Especially in traditional news media, the more efficiently you can express an idea, the more professional the writing appears. Compare any school paper written by your college-age nephew to any article from a top news source and you’ll see what I mean.

“Economy of words” is favored because it’s clearer. But it’s also favored because it’s favored. A highly efficient style is a hallmark of certain big boys of the publishing world. So anything else comes off as not as good.

That's why, when you delete an “and” at the beginning of a sentence, the effect is often dramatic and immediate: The writing just seems more professional.

I do leave some sentence-starting "ands," though – the ones that, when I take them out, leave the passage somehow worse off than it was before. But those are the exception. As a rule, when I see an “and” at the beginning of a sentence, I take it out.

And so it goes.

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October 18, 2021

Singular 'they' has been around for centuries

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, PRONOUNS

When people resist changes to the language, I get it. Who wants to be told that the rules they learned in school — stuff they believed, like “healthy” can’t mean “healthful” — are obsolete, or worse, fictional? That the sweat equity they once invested in being right now renders them wrong? They wasted their time, bet on the wrong horse. Who wouldn’t push back?

This, in a nutshell, is why I haven’t written much about the Associated Press Stylebook’s 2017 announcement that it would begin allowing singular “they,” as in “They should move their car” instead of “He or she should move his or her car.”

People who don’t like this change argue that “they” is plural and, because just one singular person can move that car, you need the singular “he” or “she” instead. Anyone who has bothered to learn about pronouns could rightly be annoyed by AP’s new guidance — so annoyed that they might want to shoot the messenger who comes bearing that news: me. Hence my sub-courageous silence.

But there’s something people hate even more than changes to the language: changes to the language they believe are imposed on them by people with an agenda. I was reminded of this recently by a New York Times column on singular “they” by linguist John McWhorter.

So now, after several years of cowering and staying mum on advancements of singular “they,” I can finally be the bearer of good news: Singular “they” is not an artificial language change pushed by people who want to tell you how to talk. Instead, singular “they” has been evolving naturally for centuries.

Here’s my recent column explaining how this word has been evolving for centuries.

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