In a moment we’re going to talk about a sentence from a  recent New York Times article about rotator cuff injuries. First, though, I hope you’ll indulge me while I tell my own rotator cuff story.

A rotator cuff is an anatomical structure that’s part of your shoulder. Injuries are common – baseball players frequently suffer them, for example.

A while back I had my own rotator cuff injury. Luckily it healed quickly, and I’ve had no more problems with it.

Here’s how it happened. One Saturday morning some neighbors were having a garage sale. I plunked down 50¢ for an ancient carpet sweeper. “Tank” describes it very well: big, heavy, and formidable. Charlie said it looked like something Abbott and Costello would have been selling door-to-door.

It didn’t use electricity, of course. You pushed it around the room, and that’s how I hurt my shoulder. I’ve never seen anything pick up dust and dirt the way that carpet sweeper did.

Alas, it did a number on my right shoulder. When the soreness started to interfere with my ballroom dancing, I made an appointment with a sports doctor. “So,” he said, after looking at my X-ray, “have you been playing baseball?”

“No,” I said – and I told him about the carpet sweeper. “Mm-hmm,” he said, as if he’d had many patients come in with carpet-sweeper injuries.

Now we can talk about writing. Here’s a sentence from a health expert I’ve liked for many years: Jane E. Brody. Her writing is warm and down-to-earth, and she chooses the kinds of health issues many of us have to deal with. Here’s a sentence from a recent article about aging (she’s 80):

With the Covid-19 lockdown preventing my daily swim, I’d already done months of enforced rest and learned to avoid painful movements and am now doing exercises to strengthen the torn muscles in my rotator cuff.

If I’d been her editor, I would  have asked her to revise it. There’s a simple but essential rule that points to a solution: one idea per sentence. When you stuff everything into one sentence, it moves too quickly. The ideas don’t get the attention and emphasis that each one deserves.

Here’s my revision:

With the Covid-19 lockdown preventing my daily swim, I’d already done months of enforced rest. At my doctor’s urging, I learned to avoid painful movements. Recently I’ve been doing exercises to strengthen the torn muscles in my rotator cuff.

It reads better when you break it into three sentences, doesn’t it?

Abbott and Costello

If you love semicolons as much as I do, you’ll enjoy reading “Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon?”

You might enjoy the article even if you hate semicolons! It’s not really about killing them. The article is a survey about the way attitudes have changed about the semicolon over the years. (For example, Kurt Vonnegut thought semicolons were useless. All they did was prove you’d been to college!)

I’m going to jump in with some thoughts of my own about this quirky punctuation mark.

1.  Semicolons are easy to use. Just change a period to a semicolon and lower-case the next word – unless it needs a capital letter.

We just got back from a trip to Lowe’s. My husband and I are going to paint the guest room this weekend.
We just got back from a trip to Lowe’s; my husband and I are going to paint the guest room this weekend.

I just had an excited phone call from Linda. Harvard accepted her college application.
I just had an excited phone call from Linda; Harvard accepted her college application.

2. Kurt Vonnegut is right about semicolons – they do show that you’ve been to college. That’s a  good reason for using them! What’s wrong with showing off a little?

3.  Michael Kinsley argues that semicolons are often abused. He says they can “imply a relationship between two statements without having to make clear what that relationship is.” I don’t see that as a problem. Our brains can supply the missing connection.

4. You should use semicolons sparingly. If you’re writing something short, one or two semicolons should be the limit. On a longer piece, one or two per page are enough.

5. You never have to use a semicolon. (Well, semicolons are necessary if you’re writing a particularly fancy kind of list. That hardly ever comes up. I use that list rule only two or three times a year – and I’m a professional writer.)

6. English teachers love to make semicolons difficult. Here’s a typical explanation:

Use a semicolon to join two related independent clauses in place of a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet). Make sure when you use the semicolon that the connection between the two independent clauses is clear without the coordinating conjunction.

Gak. Ignore that nonsense! Try my way. It always works – and it saves brainpower for other, more important writing tasks.

For several years I’ve been studying Welsh on Duolingo, hoping I’ll be able to speak Welsh when I travel to Wales on a future trip.

So I enjoyed reading a New York Times article suggesting that Stonehenge (a prehistoric site I’ve visited) may have been erected in Wales and then moved to England.

Most of the article was engaging and well written. But one sentence was awkward and confusing: “The entrance to both circles were aligned toward the midsummer solstice sunrise.”

The person who wrote that sentence seems to have been confused about an important subject-verb agreement rule. I’m going to review the rule for you, and then I’ll point out a recent wrinkle.

Let’s take a simple sentence:

Misuse of prescription drugs often is/are dangerous.

What’s dangerous – the prescription drugs, or the misuse of them? Obviously the problem is misuse. (Antibiotics save lives!) So: misuse is.

Misuse of prescription drugs often is dangerous.  CORRECT

English teachers sometimes say that you need to be aware of the loud and soft parts of sentences. I think that’s a great way to explain why you need to think about misuse is in our example.

But – as I said – there’s a wrinkle: the rule is disappearing. Even the meticulously edited New Yorker magazine sometimes publishes sentences like this one:

A group of German tourists are camping here for three nights.

It should be a group is. But nowadays you don’t have to make a fuss about it.

On the other hand, let’s not abandon common sense! The journalist who wrote our Stonehenge sentence ended up writing grammatical nonsense (the circle are). Here’s my version:

The entrances to both circles were aligned toward the midsummer solstice sunrise.  CORRECT

Not difficult!

In 1920 British composer Albert Ketèlbey (1875-1959) composed a wonderful piece of music that’s probably familiar to you: “In a Persian Market.” (You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/pY9rHa75UHs.)

Charlie and I always enjoy the classical music channel provided by our cable TV company. We also get a kick out of seeing pictures of the composers and reading tidbits about their lives.

But sometimes the writing isn’t very good. Here’s what we read on our TV screen while we were listening to “In a Persian Market” today:

Ketèlbey received a scholarship to Trinity College, where he attended.

That is a weak sentence. It sputters to the end – exactly what you don’t want a sentence to do.

How do you fix it? I have two pieces of advice for you:

1. Don’t try tweaking a bad sentence. That never helps.
2. Start over with a new sentence.

Here’s my revision:

Ketèlbey attended Trinity College as a scholarship student.  BETTER

Problem solved!

Recently a frustrated English teacher posted this question online: What’s the difference between a direct and an indirect object?

I know the answer, of course – and I was tempted to explain the difference. But then I decided it would be better to ask a question of my own: Who cares?

Grammar gobbledygook (like “direct” and “indirect object”) is a leftover from a long-ago time when Latin was considered the perfect language. English teachers back then figured that if you learned the fine points of Latin grammar, you would be able to write as brilliantly as Cicero, Herodotus, and Virgil did.

What happened instead was that confused students memorized heaps of language concepts that had nothing whatsoever to do with English.

Take a look at these sentence pairs:

I gave him a dog.

I gave a dog a bone.

Now look at these sentence pairs (in Latin):

Canem ei dedi. (I gave him a dog.)

Cani os dedi. (I gave a dog a bone.)

The word dog is different in both Latin sentences: canem (direct object) and cani (indirect object). But in English, a dog is always…a dog.

If you’re not learning Latin, why do you need Latin grammar? I say you don’t.

But I have English teacher friends who sincerely believe that students should know these terms. I’ve gently asked them to explain why they matter. The response from them is always bewildered silence. They had teachers who thought grammar was really important, and they’re determined to keep that tradition alive.

That’s not a good enough answer.

Please, please – spend your time learning the skills that will help you write better. If you’re not sure where to start, go to your library and find a good book about writing – something with advice you can use right away.

Or (another suggestion) read up on something that interests you. That’s a great way to improve your vocabulary and sharpen your sentence skills. (Just make sure it’s not a book about grammar!)

I spend a lot of time reading and answering questions about writing online. A while ago someone asked whether this sentence was correct: “I am writing to notify you that we decided not to renew our lease.”

Charlie and I are vaccinated, and we rarely wear masks any more (though we still carry them with us). I’m hoping that the frequent-hand-washing habit we developed this year will stay with us.

We know a number of people who had COVID, and I’m happy to report that all of them pulled through.

When the sheltering-in-place orders were first announced in 2020, I made two important decisions. The first was to do everything I could to avoid getting infected with COVID.

The second was to make some serious progress on the Shaw book I was writing. I set a goal of two completed chapters.

It’s now more than a year since everything shut down. (Who knew it would be that long?) The Shaw book is…finished! (Ta-da!) A publisher is looking at it right now.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about some of the lessons I learned while writing the book. Or – in some cases – relearned.

Here’s the most important one: I need to acknowledge my limitations.

I consider myself an excellent time manager. (In fact I’ve written a book about my quirky time-management system: Five Minutes a Day.) The first chapter is about the Hercules myth (also called the “All-or-Nothing-Myth”). It’s the fallacy that we can – and should – be able to get everything done.

Before the pandemic, I’d spent months and months writing a book about Bernard Shaw in my spare time. All I had to show for all that time and effort was one completed chapter and lots of abandoned attempts at other chapters.

It looked as if I’d never finish it. In fact it looked as if I’d never finish Chapter Two.

Hunkering down for the pandemic (no socializing, no dancing, no traveling, minimal housework) gave me the time and space to think deeply about the book I was writing

A year has gone by, and I’ve written a book I’m proud of. Ironically, however, I’m also somewhat more humble than I was a year ago. I discovered (for the umpteenth time!) that I’m not Superwoman.

I’m not the kind of person who can wrestle difficult content into a book while keeping a spotless house, dancing at every opportunity, and whizzing around with my friends.

One Thing at a Time. If you’re facing a difficult challenge, it’s a good rule to follow!

My friend Mike Goronsky sent me an intriguing Boston Globe article about appositives – The Pause That Annoys: When a Comma Makes Life Needlessly Hard by Jan Freeman.