Do You Hear What I Hear?

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English teachers often talk about “interrupters” and the difference between “restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.” Because I like simplicity, I prefer to call these Comma Rule 3 sentences…and a number of people have told me they like the simplicity of dealing with only three comma rules for most sentences. (Click here to watch a short video about Comma Rule 3.)

Let’s try a quiz! Can you tell which sentences require commas? (Hint: Read them aloud and listen for voice changes. Voice drops indicate that you need commas.) Scroll down for the answers.

1. Women who wear a red carnation on Mother’s Day are honoring a mother still living.

2.  I will send a message to Jack Hokkinen who’s in charge of the meeting about your suggestion.

3.  Fifteen hours which is what I usually spend on the financial report wasn’t enough this month.

4.  Central Florida home of Walt Disney World is a great place for a winter vacation.

5.  We need to remind everyone who works in Human Resources about the new procedure.

Here are the answers:

1. Women who wear a red carnation on Mother’s Day are honoring a mother still living. (No commas: You’re referring only to women who wear red carnations)

2.  I will send a message to Jack Hokkinen, who’s in charge of the meeting, about your suggestion. (Use commas: “who’s in charge of the meeting” is extra information)

3.  Fifteen hours, which is what I usually spend on the financial report, wasn’t enough this month. (Use commas: “which is what I usually spend on the financial report” is extra information)

4.  Central Florida, home of Walt Disney World, is a great place for a winter vacation. (Use commas: “home of Walt Disney World” is extra information)

5.  We need to remind everyone who works in Human Resources about the new procedure. (No commas: You’re referring only to people who work in Human Resources)

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Can You Fix This Sentence?

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I’ve found that even professional writers sometimes don’t know how to do parallelism. Here’s a problematic sentence from today’s local newspaper, The Ledger:

Patten said Publix accepts coupons from manufacturers, competitors, and some online coupons. NOT PARALLEL

The best way to learn parallelism is to make the sentence look like a little poem. (It’s also useful to remember that the third part of the sentence is usually the source of the problem–in this example, “some online coupons.”)

Let’s try it with this sentence:

Patten said Publix accepts coupons from

  • manufacturers
  • competitors and
  • some online coupons.

Saying “coupons from some online coupons” doesn’t make sense. So let’s rewrite the sentence:

Patten said Publix accepts coupons from

  • manufacturers
  • competitors and
  • some websites.

Now it’s correct! Here it is again, formatted as a regular sentence:

Patten said Publix accepts coupons from manufacturers, competitors, and some websites. CORRECT

To read more about parallelism, click here.

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Shorter is Better

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Here’s a caption that appeared under a photo in today’s local newspaper:

Naomi Poe, founder of Better Batter Gluten Free Flour in Altoona, Pa., learned that it is important to try to understand how your customers value your product, and to raise prices, she had to convince customers her products offered added value.

I just checked the New York Times, the original source of the story and photo. Their caption was shorter and more readable. Apparently the journalist who writes headlines for our paper forgot a useful writing rule: One idea per sentence.

Let’s take another look at that mouthful of a sentence – or, more precisely, at part of it:

Naomi Poe, founder of Better Batter Gluten Free Flour in Altoona, Pa., learned that it is important to try to understand how your customers value your product, and to raise prices,

That phrase “and to raise prices” doesn’t make sense until you read further – “she had to convince customers her products offered added value.” But by then most readers will be as lost as I was.

Solution? It’s simple. Break the sentence in two:

Naomi Poe, founder of Better Batter Gluten Free Flour in Altoona, Pa., learned that it is important to try to understand how your customers value your product. And to raise prices, she had to convince customers her products offered added value.  BETTER

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Although it drives me crazy

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Many writers have difficulty punctuating sentences with although in them. I just came across the following badly punctuated sentence in an online political article:

One counter-protester, Leslie Taylor of Madison admitted, “I’m dying of curiosity to see what kind of people support Sarah Palin. Although, I’m seeing more protesters than supporters.”

Sigh. Anything beginning with “although” is an extra idea and needs to be glued on to a real sentence.

And there’s another problem: although should never be followed by a comma. (Also – not that I’m trying to be picky – there should be a comma after Madison.)

Here’s the corrected sentence:

One counter-protester, Leslie Taylor of Madison, admitted, “I’m dying of curiosity to see what kind of people support Sarah Palin although I’m seeing more protesters than supporters.” CORRECT

(To learn more about these commas, click here. Comma Rule 1 deals with although and similar words; Comma Rule 3 explains why you need a comma after Madison.)

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Respective?

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I’m in Savannah on vacation, and I wasn’t planning to do any blogging this week – but I couldn’t resist commenting on a sentence from USA Today (April 13, 1B, “Email addresses can be weapons”).

The article is about the Epsilon data theft that compromised email addresses belonging to customers from Chase Bank, Verizon, Hilton, and Target. Here’s the sentence:

“Those companies, in turn, have been sending e-mail warnings to their respective customers.”

Why is that word “respective” there? Does anybody really think that Verizon, say, would be writing to Target’s customers? Doesn’t Verizon have problems enough of its own?

“Respective” is almost always unnecessary – and it’s a pompous, old-fashioned word. Avoid it like the plague.

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Blond or Blonde?

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No, this isn’t going to be about the Bob Dylan recording (fans out there know that Blonde on Blonde is widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time).

But let’s talk about the title for a moment. If you look it up on Wikipedia, it’s spelled Blond on Blonde (unless someone has corrected it by now). So what about that final e? Does it mean anything? Does it make a difference?

Blond or blonde?

Go to www.Dictionary.com, and you’ll discover that the adjective is correctly spelled without the e: Although my hair was blond when I was little, it’s light brown now.

But if you’re referring to a woman with blond hair, you’re supposed to add the e:

Q: Why are dumb blonde jokes so short? A: So brunettes can remember them.

(I couldn’t resist. Incidentally, I’m a blonde.)

The blonde/blond distinction is a subtle one, and Dictionary.com notes that even some good writers ignore it.

Here’s a thought, however: Once in a while you’re going to encounter a language fanatic (like me) who knows the difference and looks for that final e. Why not take the opportunity to impress me?

 

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Why We Need Commas

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I’m on a Lawrence Block reading kick – I love his mystery novels about Matthew Scudder, a New York detective who spends much of his free time at AA meetings.

The books are well written and fun to read, but once in a while Block and his copyeditor miss a comma or two. I want to spend a few minutes looking at problem sentence from the mystery I’m reading right now, The Devil Knows You’re Dead.

(Background:  Lisa Holtzmann, the widow of a man who was just murdered, is reminiscing about their relationship.)

Read along with me, and try to watch your brain at work. (I know that sounds crazy – but try it!)

When we met Glenn

You’re picturing a couple of people meeting Glenn, right? Wrong! Read on:

When we met Glenn had a studio apartment in Yorkville

Oops! She’s saying something different: When she and Glenn met, he had an apartment in Yorkville.

Let’s keep reading:

When we met Glenn had a studio apartment in Yorkville and

So Glenn had a studio apartment and something else, right?

Oops! Wrong again. Read on:

When we met Glenn had a studio apartment in Yorkville and of course I was still on Madison Street.

Two commas, correctly placed, would clear up all the confusion, and you’d know immediately what Lisa was trying to say.

Here’s the sentence one more time, correctly punctuated. Notice how much easier it is to read:

When we met, Glenn had a studio apartment in Yorkville, and of course I was still on Madison Street. CORRECT

To learn more about Comma Rule 1 (the first comma) and Comma Rule 2 (the second comma), click here. You can also watch a short video by clicking here.

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Why We Need Copyeditors

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I’m the copyeditor for an employee newsletter at a place where I used to work full-time. I’m an excellent choice for that job (if I may say so) because, in addition to my editorial skills, I know many of the people there. That means it’s easy for me to catch a misspelled name or an incorrect job title.

Other parts of the job are not so easy. For example, the last newsletter mentioned that someone on the staff had just won third place in a powerlifting competition. I happen to be married to someone who used to be a powerlifter, so I know that it’s a specialized form of weightlifting. Google to the rescue – I was able to track down the event and confirm that it was a weightlifting (not powerlifting) competition.

Another problem is that my eyes and brain often do an “I know that already” leap over something that I should check for accuracy. When I see the name Katherine, for example, I assume it’s spelled correctly. But wait a minute! Many women (Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Graham, Katharine Ross) spell it with an a, not an e, in the middle.

Good editing requires much more than a knowledge of English usage. Sometimes you need psychology: A sentence that’s grammatically correct may still hit someone the wrong way. Knowledge of history and politics is occasionally required. For example, people who lived in the British Isles used to be called subjects; nowadays they are citizens.

If you’re a serious writer, try to cultivate friends with a wide background in a variety of subjects, and ask them to read your stuff before you send it to a publisher. Copyeditors perform a great service for writers, but you don’t always have to pay a professional to get good advice. Sometimes that extra pair of eyes belonging to a friend or family member can make all the difference.

 

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Breaking the Rules of Writing

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Most of us grew up believing two things about language: 1.  It has rules and 2.  If you learn them, you’ll become a good writer.

At best that’s a half-truth.

Language is a social invention, not a scientific one. When you try to cram language into a systematic structure, you run into all kinds of difficulties. (Our wretched everyone = his or her rule is the result of one man’s attempt to do just that: Before Lindley Murray invented and marketed a rule about pronoun agreement, no one – not even good writers – bothered with it.)

Part of the problem is that some of the rules of writing we all learned simply don’t exist: No good writers obey them, and you won’t find them in any writing instruction books, no matter how hard you try. Want an example? Try finding the “Don’t start a sentence with but” rule in an English textbook. There’s no such thing.

I started thinking about this rules-that-don’t work phenomenon when a member of my writing group, Jane Brumbaugh, brought in an essay she’d written about helping to start a local library. When I read her opening sentence, my heart leaped with joy:

There was no library in Lake Alfred in 1961.

Simple enough. So why do I love that sentence, and…getting back to today’s topic…what rule does it break?

There’s a rule (Ha! I just broke it myself!) that you shouldn’t start a sentence with there is or there are because those are empty words. Instead you should start with something livelier.

But Jane’s wonderful sentence wouldn’t work if you wrote it differently. (I tried and gave up.)

Here’s what I love about what she wrote (besides the nice rhythm you feel when you read it): It sums up the rest of her essay. As soon as she tells you there was no library, you know that you’ll be getting the story of how the library was created. Not bad for a nine-word sentence.

Let’s try two more rules-that-don’t-always-work:

1.  The plural of fish is fish; the plural of deer is deer.

Not always. If you have several species of fish (or deer) (or some other animal), add an -s or -es for the plural.

For example, my husband and I have a fish tank that houses a zebra danio and three blind cave fish. They are fishes.

2.  Skip the “of” phrase when you’re choosing your verb.

Not always. Yes, that rule works fine with sentences like this one:

One of the women is writing a letter to President Obama. CORRECT

But the rule doesn’t work with a sentence like this one:

Margaret is one of the women who are writing a letter to President Obama. CORRECT

Here’s why: The sentence quickly stops being about Margaret and, instead, is about all the women writing the letters. (For an explanation, click here and read Rule 6.)

One more point: Usage rules won’t make you a great writer. You can always hire an editor to fix your pronouns and verbs. What makes a great writer is having something worth saying and the ability to get it across to your readers. What you say is far more important, at least in the beginning stages of writing, than how you say it.

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Subject-Verb Agreement Isn’t Always Easy

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The editor in my brain is always on duty. So I paid attention when a red light flashed in my head after I’d read this claim in a private school ad in the New York Times Magazine:

A boarding arts high school, where the best in academic and arts education go hand-in-hand.

Did you spot the mistake? I don’t mean the sentence fragment – that’s OK in an ad, especially if it’s acting as a headline or attention-getter.

The problem is subject-verb agreement. (Click here and read Rule 4). The subject is “best,” so the verb should be “goes”:

A boarding arts high school, where the best in academic and arts education goes hand-in-hand.  CORRECT

But that “hand-in-hand” creates a new problem. First, the sentence sounds wrong. You’re expecting go, not goes (unless you’re an English teacher.) More seriously, the new sentence doesn’t make sense. How can one thing (best) go hand-in-hand? It’s nonsensical.

Sentences like these are the reason my husband sometimes catches me staring blankly at the computer screen. I know what I want to say, but this @#$%&! English language won’t let me say it.

I have no idea how you could fix that sentence about the boarding arts high school. Does that mean that my Ph.D. in English is going to be revoked?

What you’d have to do is figure out how to make “best” plural: best experiences, best instructors, best resources…something like that.

Gee whiz, though…if you’re running an expensive private school, please get the grammar right. Or do what I always do: Throw out the sentence and start over.

 

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