If and When

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I always look forward to opening my mailbox and finding the latest copy of The New Yorker magazine there. The articles and reviews are fun to read, and an additional bonus is the meticulous care that the writers and editors bring to their work.

For example, I always look for the dieresis in coöperate. Hardly anyone else still uses it (I confess that I dropped the dieresis decades ago), but I always get this warm feeling: Someone cares! (For the record, I’m one of very few people who still use an apostrophe in Hallowe’en.)

So it was a shock to come across this sentence in the September 20 issue (“The Face of Facebook”):

If and when Facebook decides to go public, Zuckerberg will become one of the richest men on the planet, and one of the youngest billionaires.

“If” includes “when.” The sentence should read, “If Facebook decides to go public….”

Maybe we should all take heart: Even the meticulous New Yorker is capable of a lapse now and then. It’s ok to be human (especially if you’re still using those beautiful umlauts!).

[P.S. I chose a risky construction for this sentence: I‘m one of very few people who still use an apostrophe in Hallowe’en.

Many people would make it “still uses.” My reasoning is that I’ve put together two sentences that read like this:

I’m one of very few people. Those people still use an apostrophe in Hallowe’en.

You can read more about this debate by clicking here and reading Rule 6.]

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Can You Spot These Writing Mistakes?

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The Galloping Grammarian is at it again!

Here are two sentences with writing mistakes I came across recently.  The errors should have been corrected before they were published. Can you identify the problems?

The first is from a news story about Ines Sainz, the sports reporter who claims she was treated badly during a locker room interview:

Yes, she wears low-cut shirts, tight jeans and has photos on her employer’s website showing her in a bikini.

The second is from a literature blog:

A central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928) was the first novel by a black author to make the best-seller lists.

Here are the answers:

The first sentence isn’t parallel. You can easily see the problem when the sentence is written like a three-part poem:

Yes, she wears

low-cut shirts

tight jeans and

has photos on her employer’s website showing her in a bikini.

Remember that parallelism errors are about lists, and the mistake almost always shows up in the third item. Here’s one way to correct the sentence:

Yes, she wears low-cut shirts and tight jeans, and she has photos on her employer’s website showing her in a bikini.  CORRECT

The second sentence is a dangling modifier. McKay’s Home to Harlem is a book, not a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. That “central figure” was McKay himself.

Here’s one way to correct it:

McKay, a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, wrote Home to Harlem in 1928. It was the first novel by a black author to make the best-seller lists. CORRECT

It’s often a good idea to write two shorter sentences, as I did here, rather than a long one. Cramming a lot of information into one long sentence often leads to errors.

Are you still confused about the dangling modifier? Let’s look at another one:

After filling the tank and changing the oil, Jill’s car was ready for the trip.  DANGLING MODIFIER

Jill’s car didn’t fill its gas tank and change the oil! Jill had to take care of those tasks herself. (Wouldn’t it be nice if cars did their own maintenance? Sorry – it doesn’t work what way.)

Here’s the corrected sentence:

After Jill filled the tank and changed the oil, her car was ready for the trip. CORRECT


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Modes of Development: Classification

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Classification (sorting items into categories) is an exceptionally useful way to develop an idea. Classification is a great tool for challenging the oversimplifications of either/or thinking – the habit of reducing a problem to two choices. You can use classification to show that there’s a third (and sometimes a fourth, a fifth, and so on) possibility.

My favorite example of classification is educator John Holt’s essay “Three Types of Discipline.” It’s a perfect example of how classification can challenge reductive either-or thinking.

What Holt does is to challenge the widespread assumption that there are only two ways to discipline children: Force or permissiveness. Holt’s essay instead discusses three methods: “the Discipline of Nature,” “the Discipline of Society,” and “the Discipline of Superior Force.” It’s a non-preachy and very effective answer to the old argument that you can either hit misbehaving children or sit back and do nothing.

Everyday life is full of experiences that teach us to look beyond obvious either/or thinking to a third possibility. How many of us, for example, had friends in high school who decided to get married right after graduation because they hated living with their parents? It never occurred to our unhappy friends that there might be other escape routes – finding a roommate, joining the military, or becoming a live-in nanny or au pair.

Spend a few minutes thinking about classification, and you’ll probably come up with many examples of simplistic thinking that can be critiqued through classification. This ability to break through our narrow thinking patterns is one of the great gifts of language. Maybe we should also make a resolution to appreciate that gift more often.

(For an introduction to modes of development, click here. For suggested topics, click here. To read about narratives, click here. You can also click links for other modes:  cause/effect and process.)

Student Thinking 2

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More about Narrative

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I just came across a story that helps explain a point I was making two days ago – using a narrative, rather than a lecture, to make a point.

This example comes from a collection of stories by Kathryn Forbes called Mama’s Bank Account. If you’re old enough, you may have seen the movie based on the book (I Remember Mama, with Irene Dunne) or watched the TV show (with Peggy Wood) back in the 50s.

One of the stories is about teenaged Katrin, who gets a part-time job in a drugstore while Mr. Schiller, the owner, goes home for lunch. Katrin’s friend Carmelita often drops by. They’re constantly tempted by a counter display for a wonderful chocolate candy. At first they eat the candy only when they have money to pay for it, but as time goes by they start taking some for themselves.

When Mr. Schiller finds out, he fires Katrin, and his wife calls her a thief. Mama, though, reassures Katrin that there’s a difference between doing something wrong (fixable) and permanently identifying yourself as a thief (a big mistake). To show Katrin that mistakes can be overcome, Mama tells Katrin a story about herself:

Before her marriage, Mama lived with her Aunt Lena, a woman who baked superb cakes. One time, after Aunt Lena had made one of her famous cakes, Mama sneaked into the kitchen and ate all the frosting. Aunt Lena went ahead and served the bald cake to her guests, who included the man Mama was dating, and she explained why there was no frosting. “What happened when he found out what you’d done?” asked Katrin. “He married me anyway,” said Mama.

It’s a great story about getting unstuck after you’ve made a mistake – and it’s also a great example of using a narrative to make a point.Forbes

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Which Is Correct: Like or As?

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Which is correct: like or as?

Last week, for a change, it was grammarians rather than Republicans who were attacking President Obama. In a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, Obama complained that his critics “talk about me like a dog.”

What Obama should have said, claimed grammarians, was “They talk about me as if I were a dog.” Or, more precisely, some grammarians made that claim. Others were just fine with the President’s off-the-cuff remarks.

Who’s right?

Sorting out this little tempest-in-a-Tea-Party (sorry – I couldn’t resist!) will take some doing.

Let’s start with the word like. Some grammarians permit only very restricted use of like, preferring as most of the time. This is the group that led the charge.

Others, more liberal, note that like has long been used in place of as by some very good writers. The Associated Press Stylebook, which sets the standard for many prestigious newspapers, belongs to this group. They accept like in place of as if one condition is met: The like construction contains only a noun and its modifiers. Here’s what I mean:

John looks like a man I used to know. ACCEPTABLE

John looks like a winner. ACCEPTABLE

John looks like he could use a day off.  WRONG

(It should be “John looks as if he could use a day off.”)

It looks like – sorry, as if – “Talk about me like a dog” would be ok by Associated Press standards.

But there’s another problem: The meaning is ambiguous. What does “talk about me like a dog” mean? I’m seeing two possibilities. “They talk about me as a dog would.” Nope – that’s nonsensical. Or (more likely) “They talk about about me as if I were a dog” (the alternative I suggested earlier).

The real question here is whether you fall into the “Language is just communication” camp or the “Language should be logical” camp.

More and more, as I get older, I find myself pitching my tent in the first camp. If you insist that language should always be logical, you’re forced to twist sentences into all kinds of ghastly contortions that don’t help the meaning one bit.

Take a look at this sentence, for example:

Linda explained how her proposal differed from her competitor.

Strictly speaking, it’s an illogical sentence. You can’t compare a proposal to a group of competitors. You would compare Linda’s proposal to her competitor’s proposal.

So you would end up with alternatives that are logical but awkward, like this:

Linda explained how her proposal differed from her competitor’s proposal. (repetitious)

Linda explained how her proposal differed from that of her competitor. (I hate “that of”)

What to do? I dunno. I’d probably cross out the sentence and start over:

Linda explained what made her proposal different.

Clear enough, isn’t it? Do you really have to use “that of” to explain what Linda was talking about?

Or I might just ignore the grammarians, throw caution to the winds, and use the original sentence: Linda explained how her proposal differed from her competitor. Heck, most people wouldn’t notice the alleged grammar problem anyway.

Back to President Obama. If he was indeed speaking off-the-cuff, a fancy grammatical structure would be out of place in his remarks. I’m perfectly okay with “like a dog.”

One final note: Some researchers looked up the “like a dog” construction and found out it had been used earlier by both Jimi Hendrix and Muhammad Ali. That puts the President in pretty good company, in my book.

Today’s Quiz  ANSWER

The sentence is incorrect. “Past” refers to completed time. The word needed in this sentence is passed. The -ed ending means that the action is over.

Here’s the corrected sentence:

I waited impatiently as the basket of hot rolls was passed around the table. CORRECT

Please note: Passed (what a quarterback did or what you did when you took your algebra test) is different from pasted (similar to glued). My students confuse these two words all the time – make sure you don’t.

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Modes of Development: Cause and Effect

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This week we’re focusing on modes of development (also called patterns of development). Both student writers and professionals often use these modes to organize ideas and emphasize a point.

Today we’re going to consider two of these: cause and effect. It’s appropriate to think about them together, since they’re two ends of the same writing seesaw. Causes make effects happen; effects are the result of causes.

For example: A woman moves into a new town and feels lonely, so she adopts a dog from an animal shelter. As she walks the dog every day, people come over to admire him, and she makes new friends.

Causes (reasons for adopting the dog): moving to a new town, loneliness.

Effects (results of adopting the dog):  new friends.

Personal issues also have causes and effects. Think about the break-up of a romance: What caused it (jealousy, incompatibility, infidelity)? What are the effects (a broken heart, grief, or relief and freedom)?

Here are some pointers for writing about cause and effect:

  • Focus on either causes or effects, not both. Mixing them together creates confusion.
  • Follow your instructor’s directions carefully. If you’re confused, email your instructor and ask for clarification.
  • To write an exceptional cause or effect paper, dig deep into a subject and find an unexpected cause or a surprising effect. For example, consider unusual ways that recent technology advances have changed our lives (effects) – or think about reasons why few people are reading newspapers (causes).

Politicians and community leaders often focus on causes and effects when they’re advocating change. Look around your community and your region: What issues interest you, and what are the causes and effects? Often you can find effective topics that way.

Both cause and effect are tremendously useful ways to organize and present ideas. Adopt the habit of thinking about both!

(To read about narratives, click two links – Part I and Part II. For suggested topics using modes of development, click here. You can also click links for other modes: process, and classification.)

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Modes of Development: Narrative

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A narrative is simply a story. In writing classes, it’s usually a true story (unless you’re enrolled in a creative writing course).

Narratives are solid gold. The more stories you can tell, the better your writing will be.

The love for stories is universal, and stories have the additional advantage that they’re one of the best ways to make a point. The next time you need to talk to a child about a misdeed, skip the lecture and tell an appropriate story instead. You’ll make your point much more effectively, and the lesson will stick.

Narratives are tremendously useful to writers. For example, you can kick off an essay or research paper with a quick story about your subject. Another effective strategy is to tell an illustrative story in every paragraph.

What about narrative assignments? Beware! (Remember, I’ve spent 30+ years as a writing teacher.) Here’s what often happens: Students have a great story that they’re just bursting to tell, but it doesn’t make a point.

When you’re assigned to write a narrative paper, think of the point you want to make and choose a story to match. (Most students do exactly the opposite: They think of a terrific story first and try to make it fit the assignment. Usually that doesn’t work.)

Here’s an incident that’s fresh in my mind because it happened last semester. I asked students to choose a person they knew, identify a quality that person had, and tell a story to illustrate that quality.

To help them understand, I told them my own story about a time when I was dating my husband. He left me alone for a moment to help an inebriated man cross the street safely, and I was touched by his compassion.

At the next class, in came the papers. One was about a camping trip a student had taken with her family. The person she chose to write about was her father, but he came across very fuzzily. I couldn’t identify the special quality she had chosen, so I asked her to rewrite it.

Back it came with more details. The sunsets! The campfires! The lake! But Dad continued to be a fuzzy figure.

I suggested a conference to talk about the paper. As we talked, I realized what was wrong. She barely knew her father, who had abandoned the family when she was a small child. The camping trip was almost her sole memory of him. It would make a great memoir for her children and grandchildren to read someday, but it didn’t fit the assignment.

Bottom line: If you’re assigned to write a narrative, pay close attention to the directions you’re given, and choose a story that fits what your teacher is looking for. Don’t just pull out a great story that you’re eager to tell.

Did you notice that I told a story to make my point? In fact I include narratives (little stories) in many of my posts. Start developing the habit of thinking about stories. It’s a great way to enhance your writing.

(For an introduction to modes of development, click here. To read more about narratives, click here. For suggested topics, click here. You can also click links for other modes: classification, cause/effect, and process.)

 

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Modes of Development: Process

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This week I’m doing a series about modes of development (also called “patterns of development”). Today’s topic is process writing – showing step-by-step how to do something or how something happens. Process writing focuses on a series of steps that people do over and over: Taking an inventory at work. Making potato salad. Changing the oil in a car.

Note that process writing is always about a repeated act, such as a routine or a ritual. It’s never a story about something that happened once: That’s a narrative, which we’ll be discussing tomorrow.

The other requirement for process writing is that you go beyond mere directions to show why the process you’re describing is better than the usual way, or risky, or unusually interesting, or has some other special quality.

Here’s an example. Suppose you were the director of a prenatal clinic, and you wanted to convince expectant mothers not to drink alcohol during the pregnancy.

Describing the process of consuming alcohol might be much more persuasive than a conventional “three reasons why you shouldn’t drink” approach.

You could show exactly what happens when a pregnant woman drinks a beer: The alcohol is absorbed through her stomach wall, enters her bloodstream before it has time to break down, goes through the placenta and umbilical cord into the unborn baby’s bloodstream, and soon hits the baby’s unformed brain, which is unequipped to handle it. Result: The permanent brain damage we call fetal alcohol syndrome.

That’s a good example of process writing. The hallmark is that the director chose the best way to fulfill her purpose. A different mode – such as comparison, classification, or narrative – probably wouldn’t have worked as well.

Too few students think about purpose when they write a process paper. They just write a set of directions for doing something – baking a cake, peeling a banana, washing a car. That’s appropriate in a technical writing class. But in a composition class you need to showcase the process you’ve chosen.

If you’d like to see an example of what I mean, writer David Updike wrote an excellent process-with-a-purpose essay for the New York Times Magazine about drinking and driving. (Click here to read it.)

Here are some other ways that a process essay can showcase an idea:

  • Explain how to do a common process in a better way. For example, show gym patrons how to avoid exposure to other exercisers’ germs during a gym workout.
  • Explain why a process is important. For example, discuss the barre exercises that ballet dancers do at the beginning of each class, showing the purpose of each exercise: Warming up the legs, preparing for jumps, stretching the feet, strengthening arm muscles, and so on.
  • Explain how a process can be enhanced. For example, show how a bedtime routine can be changed to soothe children and get them ready to sleep.
  • Take your readers step-by-step through an unusual process, showing why it’s different and interesting. For example, describe how astronauts eat a meal in outer space.
  • Convince readers not to do a harmful process, such as overpruning palms.

There are endless possibilities. Think of processes you do regularly at work, at home, in your social life, at school. What’s better about the way you do it? Or have you come across a process that’s risky, a waste of time, or not worth the money?

What’s most important is to remember that process writing only begins with a set of directions. You have to dig in to show why the process you’ve chosen is interesting, better, important, risky, or special in some other way. If your finished paper looks like a recipe or the directions in an owner manual, start over (unless you’re taking a technical writing course).

(For an introduction to modes of development, click here. To read about narratives, click  here. For suggested topics, click here. You can also click links for other modes: cause/effect and classification.)

Colorful Flow Chart

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Introducing Modes of Development

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Modes of development are thought patterns that writers use to organize and develop their ideas. Depending on your viewpoint, these modes (or patterns) are either wondrously useful or a pain in the neck. If you’re a student assigned to write, say, a process or classification or comparison paper, you may not be too happy about it.

But if you’re a serious writer, you’re probably grateful to have a smorgasbord of these patterns available so that you can choose the one that’s best for the task at hand.

It’s sort of like standing before a buffet table with six types of potato dishes to choose from. There – the scalloped potatoes with just a smidgen of paprika! That’s what I want!

But students often miss the point when they write modes papers. I’m recalling what used to happen with my own students when I assigned, say, a contrast paper. Male students their late teens or early twenties invariably wanted to write about the differences between sports cars and SUV’s because a) they were passionately interested in cars and b) they could easily come up with a detailed list of contrasts.

But there’s a problem: Whoever walked into a dealership wondering whether to buy a Jaguar or a Ford Explorer?

So here’s our first principle: Choose a meaningful topic.

Another problem is that modes papers often lack a point. When I used to assign process essays, students would hand in either cake recipes or step-by-step instructions for washing a car or peeling a banana.

Now I will grant you that creating recipes and writing directions are useful skills. But they’re more appropriate for a technical writing course than first-year composition. I was looking for a paper that showcased the process that the student had selected – why a particular way of doing something is better, or why more people should adopt that process, or why it was important, or dangerous, or interesting.

Second principle: Use the mode to make a point.

Textbooks were often the unwitting source of the third problem – failing to appreciate the special advantages of each mode. When a sales rep from a textbook company dropped by to show off a new textbook, I always looked at the comparison and contrast chapter to see if the authors got it right. Usually, alas, they didn’t.

Here’s what I was looking for: Comparisons are useful when you’re trying to emphasize the similarities between two things that seem very different. For example, suppose you knew a high school senior who was afraid to enroll in college. You could show her that college is a lot like high school, so there’s nothing to be afraid of.

On the other hand, you could use contrasts (emphasizing differences) to persuade a student who hated high school to enroll in college.

But the sample essays in the textbooks usually discussed…similarities and differences between sports cars and SUV’s.

Third principle: Match the mode to your purpose, using its special features to your advantage.

(To read about narratives, click two links – Part I and Part II. For suggested topics using modes of development, click here. You can also click links for other modes: process, cause/effect, and classification.)


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Have Fun with Apostrophes

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Mondays ain’t so bad.

Every Monday our local newspaper prints a syndicated column, “Below the Beltway,” by Gene Weingarten. He is provocative and funny – a delight to read.

Today’s column lists once highly valued things that have depreciated so much that they’re almost worthless. Examples include Mel Gibson’s film career, BP stock, and…(#8 on the list) apostrophes.

More precisely, he says, “the skill of using apostrophe’s.” He goes on to note, “Nobody get’s it right anymore, and nobody gives a darn, and thats just the way it is.”

Okay, gang: He made three deliberate apostrophe errors. Can you find them? Answers below.

I salute you, Gene. There are two of us left who still care about apostrophes!

[ANSWERS: Delete the apostrophe from apostrophes and gets. Insert an apostrophe into that’s.]

This website offers many resources to help you learn apostrophes: A PowerPoint about placing apostrophes, a handout, and a practice exercise with answers and explanations.

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