I just finished reading Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, a new book about writing by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. You need to read this book! Although the topic is nonfiction, fiction writers will find many useful ideas here too.

But today I’m not going to talk about all the great stuff in this book. What I’m going to recount instead is an “aha!” moment I had while I was reading it.

I dislike formal grammar. I think it’s a waste of time and – worse – it discourages people who, with a little effort, could easily sharpen their writing skills.

Something I came across in Good Prose reinforced that long-standing belief. Reminiscing about an editor who impressed him, Richard Todd wrote:

His comments often concerned subtle grammatical violations, and after noting one, such as “a possessive can’t be an antecedent,” he might add, “See Fowler.”

(I should explain that “Fowler” is shorthand for H. W. Fowler’s classic book Modern English Usage. I am a longtime fan. Big time.)

So what was the “aha!” moment? Here it is: I didn’t have the faintest idea what Todd was talking about. And I was aghast. A grammar rule I didn’t know? How did it get past me?

It took a couple of minutes for me to calm down and figure out what “a possessive can’t be an antecedent” might mean. And then I realized that it’s a rule I DO know. In fact I had a clash with my husband over this very construction just a week ago. (You’ll be happy to know that I won the argument. Well, I’m happy that I won it.)

Take a look at this sentence. There’s a mistake in it. Can you figure out what it is?

After buying a pair of tickets for a hit Broadway show, Jane’s preparations for the New York trip were complete.

It’s a dangling modifier! “Jane’s preparations” didn’t buy the tickets – Jane did.

Still confused? (My husband was. It’s a hard concept to explain.) When you read the corrected version of the sentence, the problem becomes clear:

After she bought a pair of tickets for a hit Broadway show, Jane’s preparations for the New York trip were complete.  CORRECT

I’m sure there are great minds who immediately translate “possessives” and “antecedents” into simple concepts. Unfortunately my mind doesn’t work that way. And my bet is that many people are saddled with my kind of brain. (My sympathies go out to all of you!)

So let’s ditch the fancy grammar terminology, ok?

The New Yorker is a magazine that takes pride in its copyediting. They do an excellent job – but mistakes still creep in now and then.

And that’s what happened in a recent article about a veteran who suffers from PTSD: “In the Crossfire.” Read the sentence below to see if you can figure out what’s wrong and – more important – how to fix it:

There was the time in Ramadi that he shot two insurgents who were riding tandem on a moped with a single bullet.

Here’s the problem: The sentence sounds as if the two insurgents were riding with a bullet. The phrase “with a single bullet” needs to be placed next to “he shot.”

This mistake is called a dangling modifier. (It’s called “dangling” because a phrase is hanging in the wrong place; “modifier” because we’re talking about a description – with a single bullet.)

Let’s fix it:

 There was the time in Ramadi that he used a single bullet to shoot two insurgents who were riding tandem on a moped.  CORRECT

 Problem solved!

During lunch with friends the other day, a retired English teacher sitting next to me bemoaned the disappearance of traditional classroom practices like diagramming sentences and labeling parts of speech.

I hope my grimace wasn’t too obvious. Folks: Those practices won’t help you become a better writer.

You need to learn usage (not grammar) – for example, how to use everyday words like I and me correctly (something many people don’t know how to do.)

And you need to know how to communicate your ideas to readers and listeners.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. I subscribe to an online church newsletter that I really enjoy reading – often I learn something new about theology, church history, or another topic that intrigues me.

The latest newsletter featured this sentence. It’s perfectly grammatical, but it took me several readings to figure out what it meant. The topic was the features of a new sound system installed in the church.

Another change: unless the celebrant is not the preacher, no pulpit mic will be needed. CONFUSING

Too many negatives. I would have made this two sentences (the cure for almost any writing problem, by the way!).

Another change: no pulpit mic will be needed. The only exception is when the celebrant isn’t preaching the sermon.  BETTER

Or you could make both sentences positive. You might find the version below a little too folksy, but I like it:

Another change: no pulpit mic will be needed. The only exception is when someone else is preaching the sermon.  BETTER

The advocates of old-time-grammar frustrate me because they’re putting huge obstacles in the way of anyone who wants to write better. Common sense and a good ear will take you a long way!

More accurately, you can watch two writers think: My husband and me.

I always type the gardening columns he writes for our newspaper. Yesterday he dictated this sentence:

Eggfruit trees flower spring and summer and bear fruit in autumn and winter.

Yes, there really is a plant called eggfruit! But our concern is with the wording of that sentence. It’s grammatically correct – but readers are likely to be confused by the “spring and summer and bear fruit” wording.

I suggested this revision:

Eggfruit trees flower spring and summer, bearing fruit in autumn and winter.

That version is also grammatically correct, but it sounds awkward – at least it did when we reread it.

What to do? Think, writers, think!

And we did. We zeroed in on the original problem – that repeated and. If we could just get a comma in there – that would help.

Wait a minute! There’s a rule that you should use a comma when you join two sentences with and. Yes! Fist pump!

Here are our two sentences, elegantly joined with a comma + and:

Eggfruit trees flower spring and summer, and they bear fruit in autumn and winter.

Problem solved: An easy-to-read sentence that says exactly what he wanted to say. To learn more about this comma rule, click here and read about Comma Rule 2.

My husband just rushed into our home office with today’s newspaper in his hand. “Did you see this?” he demanded, pointing angrily at a picture on page 2 of the main section.

I leaned over to see what he was so excited about. A brood of cicadas is about to overrun areas on the East Coast of the US. Not an earth-shaking news story, in my opinion. I asked him to explain what had upset him so much about the cicadas.

“Not the cicadas, silly,” he said. “The caption!”

Oh. I understood right away. The article features a photo of a researcher holding a cicada and this impossibly complicated caption:

Gary Hevel, a research collaborator with the Dept. of Entomology at the National Museum of Natural History, holds up a preserved cicada, a brood of which are expected to emerge this spring in the Washington area, at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Camp Springs, Md. on Tuesday, April 23, 2013.

Fifty-two words, a host of facts (who Hevel is and where he works, what he’s doing, the significance of the cicada, where the picture was taken and when), all in one complicated sentence.

Instantly the voice of one of my graduate-school professors began to boom in my head: “One idea per sentence,” he would plead. “One idea.”

Yes. The caption that offended my husband (and me!) would be much better if it were broken into three shorter sentences:

Gary Hevel, a research collaborator with the Dept. of Entomology at the National Museum of Natural History, holds up a preserved cicada. A brood of cicadas is expected to emerge this spring in the Washington area. The picture was taken at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Camp Springs, Md. on Tuesday, April 23, 2013.

You should know, incidentally, that the original sentence is NOT a run-on. A grammarian would call it a…long sentence. A run-on is a pair of sentences run together that need to be separated with a period, like this one:

Gary Hevel is holding up a preserved cicada, this picture was taken in Camp Springs, Md.   RUNON

Here’s one way to correct the run-on:

Gary Hevel is holding up a preserved cicada. This picture was taken in Camp Springs, Md.  CORRECT

(BTW,  I corrected the subject-verb agreement error when I did my revision: A brood of cicadas IS expected to emerge this spring….)