John McWhorter is giving me fits.

I should explain that McWhorter teaches linguistics and English at Columbia University, and he writes bestselling books that I absolutely love.

But – and this is a serious problem in my eyes – he is fond of a despicable sentence construction that involves an although fragment pretending to be a sentence. For example, on page 104 of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, McWhorter is discussing a “quirk of word order” that appears in all Germanic languages except one (English!). Here’s McWhorter’s comment:

Its absence in that one (guess which one!!) is odd. Although, given the one it is absent from also shucked off so much else, maybe it’s not odd.

No, John. Please don’t use although that way.

But don’t people use although that way all the time? Yes, they do. Here are two examples:

I’m planning to major in accounting. Although, I may decide that the hospitality field is a better choice for me.

That sofa is a perfect size for our living room. Although, it may be too expensive.

So what’s the problem?

Professional writers don’t use although this way. Today’s examples are constructed in a colloquial style. People really do use although this way – but only in casual conversation.

In the professional world, there are two things you need to know about although:

• You can’t put a comma after although
• Any group of words that begins with although is an extra idea that has to be attached to a real sentence.

So (again, I’m talking about professional writing:)

That sofa is a perfect size for our living room although it may be too expensive.  CORRECT

Although it may be too expensive, that sofa is a perfect size for our living room. CORRECT

(You can learn more about how professionals use although at this link. The article you’ll be reading is the most popular post on my blog!)

_______________________________

Now I want to shift to the real topic for today: the difference between speech and writing. If you’re texting, or sending an email to a friend, the points I’m going to make don’t matter. But if you want to be a professional writer, they matter a lot. Although, writers like John McWhorter don’t seem to worry about that distinction.

(Did you catch it? Gack.)

Writers I work with often ask how to reproduce the sounds and patterns of speech in a piece of writing: a dramatic pause – an emphatic word – a strong feeling.

The yearning to transfer voice to paper (or computer screen) explains why so many writers want to insert a comma after but (it doesn’t belong there) and use quotation marks for emphasis (which doesn’t work). Another no-no (and this one always surprises writing students) is the use of exclamation marks. They’re ok in comic books and emails, but they’re forbidden in formal writing.

Here’s the hard truth. Speech and writing are different. If you write like you talk, you’re going to get a lot of negative feedback from teachers and editors. And if you talk like you write, your friends are going to find you pompous and affected.

So how do you do dramatic pauses? You can use an ellipsis…if you’re careful. If you overuse the ellipsis…readers will be annoyed. Most writers soon discover that dramatic pauses don’t transfer well to writing, and they give up the attempt.

What about emphasis? Italics are useful, but the same principle applies. Overdo it, and readers will stop reading your article or book. Strong feelings? You have to rewrite the sentence to convey the strong feeling without the exclamation mark at the end.

Or you can do what John McWhorter has done: Become a bestselling author and break the rules whenever you feel like it. Did you notice that there are not one but two exclamation marks in that sample you read earlier?

Its absence in that one (guess which one!!) is odd. Although, given the one it is absent from also shucked off so much else, maybe it’s not odd.

My own approach to writing is more conservative than McWhorter’s. Few things are certain in this life, but I can confidently predict that I will go to the grave without ever, ever having put a comma after although.

Although, I’ve done it again and again in this post.

Sigh. The things we writers do to make a point! I hope I’ve convinced you that it’s not a good practice – unless, of course, you don’t care about writing like a professional. But then you wouldn’t be reading this blog, would you?

       John McWhorter

About 16 years ago, a friend and I decided to write a book called Police Talk to help police officers communicate better. She was a major in a police department, and I had already written a book about police reports. The collaboration went well, and eventually we published the book ourselves.

Before long, a commercial publisher approached us with a proposal to take over the book. We liked the terms they offered and signed the contract. Our book is still in the publisher’s catalog, and it’s still selling, years later.

I’m telling you this true story to help you learn the difference between what happened to Mary (my co-author) and me – and something unfortunate that’s happening to many hopeful writers. Lately I’ve talked to several people who had been sucked in (or almost sucked in) by publishing promotions that were high in price but low in quality and services.

Here’s a story I heard last week. A friend received an email from a company that wanted to know if he was interested in publishing with them. What a stroke of luck! He had a book ready to go – all he needed was a publisher. The offer sounded like a bargain: he’d be getting an ISBN, artwork for the cover, a free listing on Amazon.com (including their “Look Inside” feature), an ebook, and worldwide distribution. He could already see dollar bills dancing in his head.

But first he called me to see what I thought – and was chagrined when I told him that all those services (and more) were available at absolutely no cost from CreateSpace. (In case you’re wondering: I have no affiliation with CreateSpace and do not make a penny for praising their services.)

Same story, different company, happened to another friend in academic publishing.

Same story, different company, happened to another friend who was writing a self-help book.

Notice what was different from my experience: those three publishers were fishing. They weren’t after a specific book that had already impressed them. And here’s a bigger difference: they wanted the authors to bear all the costs.

And there are other potential problems. With some companies you lose control over pricing, and in some cases you might lose the rights to your book. In the unlikely event that a big publisher wants your book later (my Police Talk story), you might have no say in the matter – and you wouldn’t get paid when the rights to your book were transferred.

So why do writers sign on with these less-than-scrupulous companies? Three big reasons:

1. They don’t know about CreateSpace.
2. They’re dazzled by the glitzy presentation, especially the promise that their book will be included in the publisher’s catalog.
3. These companies provide one important service that CreateSpace doesn’t offer free: formatting your book.

So let’s examine these three points more closely. CreateSpace is a publishing service offered by Amazon.com. It’s legit, and it’s free. (I’ve published five books with them and helped three other authors do the same thing.) ‘Nuff said about that.

The catalog offer is pretty worthless, in my opinion. How many readers are going to see it? Not many. Yes, it’s nice to be in a catalog – but is that worth a thousand dollars (or more) to you?

On to the biggie – formatting. Turning a messy manuscript into a professional published book is not a task for the faint of heart. I had a tough time with it when I self-published my first book.

But here’s the thing: You can hire someone to do the formatting for a lot less than you’d pay one of these companies. CreateSpace offers paid formatting services, or you can find someone yourself (probably for less than you’d pay CreateSpace).

Or you can take your time and learn how to do it yourself. That’s what I did. You need patience and some resources. CreateSpace has templates and articles to take you through the process. You can buy a book about Word or borrow one from the library. You can use Google if you get stuck. You can take a class (many libraries offer them free or at low cost).

Yes, I’ve known writers who throw up their hands when I urge them to learn a few word-processing skills. It’s all beyond them. They won’t even try to learn.

And here’s my reaction (usually unspoken): How the hell do you expect to market your book successfully if you won’t spend a few minutes each day learning how to use a computer?

The fact is that no publisher is going to spend bucks promoting a book by a new author. It’s up to you. And for that you’re going to need time, energy, creativity, and – guess what! – computer skills.

The inexperienced authors I know usually think their friends will buy the book, and then it will catch on, and soon they’ll be rolling in money. Folks, it doesn’t work that way.

I have a friend who’s a master at self-promotion. He self-published his book and then talked various businesses into throwing parties to promote it. He even wangled donations of wine and hors d’oeuvres. For a while he basked in the satisfaction of finding himself at the center of a whirlwind of publicity. And then – guess what. He’d sold copies to everyone in our small town who was interested in his book. And then the whole project fizzled.

My own policy is not to sell copies of my books to friends. If someone is really interested, I’ll sell them a copy at my cost. Nobody in the world (except maybe Pope Francis and Lin-Manuel Miranda) has enough friends to turn a book into a bestseller.

If you’re thinking about publishing a book (and I hope you are!), you can find advice and resources at this link. Please try CreateSpace! You’ll have fun, and there’s nothing like the satisfaction of seeing your own book in print.

I’m celebrating! PBS just announced that it’s planning a three-hour miniseries based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women.

Alcott (1832-1888) is famous for her books for girls, most of which I read again and again when I was growing up – and returned to many times after that. Alcott herself was dismissive of those books, calling them “moral pap for the young.” But I think she was probably mistaken about their quality, and last year I undertook an experiment to see whether I was right.

What many Alcott fans don’t know is that she also wrote fiction for adult readers – mature, true-to-life novels about the relationships between men and women,  and sensational stories about passion, betrayal, and murder. (Alcott fans also may not know that she lived on a commune as a child, had a crush on Ralph Waldo Emerson, ran a school with Henry David Thoreau, and served as a nurse in the Civil War. Have you figured out why she fascinates me?)

Back to Alcott’s writing. I started thinking about that “moral pap for the young” remark and decided I wanted to take a look at her mature writing. So last year I read the novel she considered her finest work – Moods. (You can use the link to download it free to any e-reader.)

And what I discovered was that Moods is almost unreadable…until the story changes from an adult romance to a tale about a lively tomboy and her journey to womanhood. (Gee, it almost sounds like Little Women, doesn’t it?)

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter I of Moods. The speaker is Ottila, a worldly-wise woman who has just learned that her fiancé no longer loves her:

“I, too, desire to be just. I will not reproach, defy, or lament, but leave my fate to you. I am all you say, yet in your judgment remember mercy, and believe that at twenty-five there is still hope for the noble but neglected nature, still time to repair the faults of birth, education, and orphanhood. You say, I have a daring will, a love of conquest. Can I not will to overcome myself and do it? Can I not learn to be the woman I have seemed? Love has worked greater miracles, may it not work this?”

Gack. I had to force myself to keep reading.

And here (relief is on the way!) is the opening dialogue to Chapter II, which introduces a tomboy named Sylvia who will grow up in the course of the novel:

“Come, Sylvia, it is nine o’clock! Little slug-a-bed, don’t you mean to get up to-day?” said Miss Yule, bustling into her sister’s room with the wide-awake appearance of one to whom sleep was a necessary evil, to be endured and gotten over as soon as possible.

“No, why should I?” And Sylvia turned her face away from the flood of light that poured into the room as Prue put aside the curtains and flung up the window.

Notice any difference?

Alcott fancied herself a sophisticated writer of mature novels – but her grown-up characters are stiff and unnatural. Hardly anyone reads Moods any more (I would never have stuck with it if I hadn’t been curious about Alcott). But her stories and books for girls are still alive and real – and the writing is often superb.

Bottom line: If you yearn to be a writer, focus on who you are rather than who you wish you were – and use that knowledge to guide your writing.

Charlie and I are at a mountain resort in New York for several days of fishing (we throw the fish back), hiking, and eating. The food here is superb, and as an extra delight, there’s a soda fountain where we share an egg cream every afternoon.

If you’re not a New Yorker, you’ve probably never had an egg cream. This resort is two hours north of the city, so it was a surprise to find egg creams offered here. (Perhaps a homesick Brooklynite decided to add them to the soda fountain offerings.)

The name is a misnomer because the ingredients include neither eggs nor cream. Egg creams are made from milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup. Nobody knows for sure how this wonderful drink acquired its name.

The term “egg cream” is a perfect illustration for an issue I want to talk about today: the changing meanings of words. Opinions are divided about how you properly determine the meaning of a word. Some experts say that you need to stick as closely as possible to the original meaning. Other experts say you need to go with the flow. Who is right?

The second group. (I can hear yelps!)

I will concede that the first group has some strong arguments in its favor. There is something intellectually satisfying about insisting on the original meaning of a word. My horticulturist husband positively froths when someone talks about a “ponytail palm,” for example. It’s a ponytail plant or a ponytail tree – not a palm at all. (Actually it’s a member of the lily family.)

Often when the meaning of a word changes, we get the feeling that the language is deteriorating – and sometimes that’s true. For example, disinterested (“impartial”) is gradually merging with uninterested (“not caring”). That means we’re losing a useful word from the language.

The same thing is happening to  notoriety (“having a bad reputation”), which is gradually merging with fame (“renown”). Soon we’ll have no word to signify that someone is famous for the wrong reasons.

So why are the meanings of words allowed to change? Because sometimes people really like the new meanings. One useful is example is dingbat, which used to be slang for “money” or “tramp.” Printers also use dingbat to refer to a printing ornament.

But in 1971 the meaning changed forever because Archie Bunker started calling his wife a dingbat. Does anyone seriously want to argue that we’re all going to go back to the old meanings of dingbat? Ain’t gonna happen, folks.

While I was drinking yesterday’s egg cream, I started to think about some changing words that showed up in Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie article Most Common Formal Grammatical Errors Committed by Authors. (A few days ago I posted some comments about what he’d written.) Onwuegbuzie is worried that academic writers are straying from the traditional meaning of words like since, while, may, and might.

Since and while – to his way of thinking – are time-related words. So these usages are prohibited:

Since we’re going to be away next week, let’s ask Joan to pick up our mail. (Since means “because” here)

While Seventh-Day Adventists observe Saturday as the Sabbath, most Christians go to church on Sunday.  (While means “although” here)

And Ongwuegbuzie wants to use may only in the sense of permission. So this usage is prohibited:

We may go for a nature walk right after breakfast tomorrow.  (May is similar to “might” here)

If you check a recent dictionary, however, you will find that all these usages are perfectly acceptable today. A purist might not be happy about this state of affairs – but there’s no stopping it. Language belongs to all of us, and we are the ones who make the changes. Feel the power!

         Egg Cream

Today we’re going to talk about sentence fragments (incomplete sentences). They’re a common problem with students and inexperienced writers. We English teachers hate them (with good reason!), and often we spend huge amounts of time trying to teach students how to avoid them. Which only creates confusion and anxiety.

And there, my friend, you have a sentence fragment: Which only creates confusion and anxiety.

You can’t start a sentence with which. (Questions starting with which are ok, of course, but not sentences.) I suppose it’s possible that someone could come up with a legitimate sentence that starts with which, but I don’t recommend making a habit of it.

As an English teacher with decades of experience, I could give you a long spiel about avoiding fragments. But why not make it simple? Here are three tricks that will help you avoid most fragments:

1.  Start every sentence with a person, place, or thing.

I tell police officers and other public safety workers to use this strategy for their reports. You won’t end up with fancy sentences, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Many everyday tasks don’t require fancy writing. What you will end up with are complete sentences – no fragments.

2. Memorize this list (it’s short!) of no-no ways to start a sentence: which (you know that already!), like, who, and such as.

Honesty compels me to add that yes, you can write a perfectly good sentence that starts with like. I often do it myself. But please don’t unless you’re sure you’re doing it correctly. Fragments starting with like are very common.

Like my cousin Jane who works in a big hospital.  FRAGMENT

Like many children, Blake loves to play with his Legos.  CORRECT

3.   Avoid starting a sentence with an -ing word unless (again) you’re sure what you’re doing.

Jumping up and down with joy when her father walked in the door.  FRAGMENT

Molly jumped up and down with joy when her father walked in the door.  CORRECT

Are you thinking I should include a correct sentence starting with an -ing word? OK, here’s one:

Dancing never fails to bring me joy.  CORRECT

There’s not a lot here to remember – and these tips can be a great confidence builder. Here they are again! When in doubt:

• start every sentence with a person, place, or thing
• avoid starting sentences with which, who, like, and such as
• avoid starting sentences with an -ing word

In 1996, 110 people were killed when a ValuJet flight crashed into the Everglades. For days afterward, news reports on TV and radio vividly described how the plane was lost in the alligator-infested waters of the Everglades.

Finally – FINALLY! – an NPR listener called in with a correction. Alligators, he noted, do not “infest” the Everglades: it’s their home.

A  news story in our local newspaper this week had a similar pro-human/anti-wildlife slant. A nearby town is rejoicing because it will soon be getting a new park: “Lake Emerges from Undergrowth as Property Reclaimed” is the headline. According to the newspaper story, the undergrowth that was “choking” the banks of a lake has been cleared. The natural resources manager (!) is thrilled with the “restoration” of the lake.

I wonder if the rabbits, birds, and other creatures who used to live there are celebrating. I suspect not.

Of course I like parks, including lakefront parks, and I’m glad the town is getting a new recreational area. Sometimes it’s useful to clear away plants. What’s bothering me is the bias in the language. Anyone reading the paper would get the idea that natural growth on a lakefront is always bad, unsightly, and useless. I wish the “natural resources manager” had made a statement stressing the importance of a balance between the needs of humans and the needs of wildlife.

“Manage” is a useful word that has – alas – acquired a scary connotation. Any time I hear a news report about “managing” resources – human or otherwise – I see dollar bills flying through the air.

The lakefront “restoration” reminded me of another recent news story that featured manipulative language: the removal of Dr. Dao from United Flight 3411. The CEO’s letter to UA’s employees was full of polite language about what quickly turned into a public relations nightmare for the airline:

• Dr. Dao was “politely asked to deplane.”
• The airline followed “established procedures” in dealing with “this incident” that involved a problem with “involuntary denial of boarding process.”
• Dr. Dao was “approached…in order to gain his compliance.”
• “Our agents…were left with no choice” but to call security “to assist.”
• They “were unable to gain his cooperation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist” in “defiance of both our crew and security officials.”

Unfortunately for United Airlines, other passengers used their cell phones to video the “incident” – which involved a screaming passenger who needed medical treatment afterwards.

Many people (including me!) try to soften an unpleasant incident with manipulative language. I’m remembering a consulting job I did once with a public safety agency. I was brought in to help officers with their paperwork, and the reports I read were puzzling. Clearly everyone knew how to write well. But sometimes I’d come across a sentence or paragraph that was so garbled that I couldn’t figure out what the writer was trying to say.

The chief grinned when I showed him a few of those mystifying reports. “I know exactly what’s going on here,” he said. “The officer lost or damaged a piece of equipment and is trying to make it sound like it’s not their fault.”

I used to do the same thing with my parents. (It never worked. Not once. Sigh.)

Language is one of the most basic – and most important – tools we use in our everyday lives. Think of how smoothly the world would function if we all strove to use words unflinchingly and honestly. Sounds like a good resolution for us to make!

I just read a terrific article about Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit Broadway show Hamilton. The article focused – surprisingly – on his writing practices.

I find Miranda to be an enigma precisely because he doesn’t seem to be an enigma. I watched (several times – it’s wonderful) the PBS special about the making of Hamilton. I was surprised to discover that Miranda is so laid back and – well – young. There’s something puppy-like about him, as if he were just discovering that the world is a really neat place.

And yet he started filming segments for the PBS documentary years before the opening night of Hamilton. That required a lot of business savvy, along with immense confidence in a show that wasn’t close to ready for a Broadway audience.

I haven’t seen the show yet, but I spent about a month listening to disc 1 from the cast album. (I didn’t like disc 2 as much, since it’s about problems that Alexander Hamilton created for himself.)

There’s a lot to learn from the show. Who knew that so much interesting stuff was happening during the Revolutionary War? And that rap could be so much fun to listen to? (It helps that the musicians who back up the songs in the show are world class.)

Several ideas jumped out at me when I read the article about Miranda’s writing practices. I loved his description of the phases of writing (such as “I’m a Fraud” and “I’ll Never Finish”). Maybe more people would do more writing if they realized everyone has doubts during the writing process.

The second powerful idea concerned a friend’s birthday party. On the way there, Miranda had a breakthrough moment with a song he’d been struggling with. He went to the party, wished his friend a happy birthday, and then went home to finish the song. Miranda’s point: when you have a breakthrough moment, it has to take priority in your life.

I have a similar philosophy. Nothing – and I mean nothing – is more sacred to me than sleep. I’m a hopeless mess if I don’t go to bed at a decent hour. But I’ll get up in the middle of the night and write for a couple of hours if a writing project wakes me up and insists that it wants my attention now.

Miranda’s third point – ironically – conflicts with his story about the birthday party. He’s a strong believer in writing on a schedule rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. When he was writing Hamilton, he had be onstage every night at eight o’clock for another show. So Miranda had to make a writing schedule and stick to it.

Miranda’s experiences with writing sparked two thoughts of my own:

1.  Successful writers constantly bounce back and forth between inspiration and toil. Writing requires discipline – but if that’s all you have, you’re going to produce some pretty dull stuff. You need a system for recording inspirations that strike when you’re away from your desk.

Miranda had his notebook with him when he was riding the train to his friend’s party, but he also needed a piano to work out the music, and that required a trip back home. I do a lot of the preparation for writing while I’m driving back and forth to ballroom lessons. Of course I can’t write anything down. My system is to find a place to stop the car and then call my husband (who always says “Think about your driving, not writing!”) and ask him to write a few key words for me to read when I get home.

2.  (This is about Hamilton, not just Lin-Manuel Miranda): Don’t be afraid of formulas and standard plots. After I’d listened to disc 1 from the Hamilton album, I tried to figure out why I didn’t like disc 2 nearly as much. Here’s what I came up with: disc 1 is a traditional rags-to-riches story – actually two of those stories blended together: How an impoverished orphan became an important political figure, and how a ragtag army from a small colony defeated a wealthy empire. No wonder Hamilton is such a huge hit!

I find it comforting to know that famous writers share so many of the same doubts and have to work through so many of the same problems. That’s something I need to remember the next time one of my drafts is so awful that I’m ashamed to admit that I’m the one who wrote it. Persistence, inspiration, toil, discipline – they all have a role to play in our quest for writing success.

                      Lin-Manuel Miranda

I’ve been doing some reading in connection with a book I’m writing about Shaw. Last night I read an essay about Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion by Steven Cavell. (It’s included in a book called Cities of Words.) I didn’t like the essay and didn’t find much that would be useful for my book. But the essay did get me thinking about sentences – poorly written sentences and sentences that lack strength and vigor.

Today I’d like to pull a few sentences out of Cavell’s article and talk about what bothered me about them. (If you’re a Shaw enthusiast, be assured that I disagreed – sometimes vehemently – with the points Cavell is making. But my topic today is sentences, not Shaw.)

1. “But Professor Higgins will give Eliza Doolittle a little discourse defending the coldness of a way of life identifiable as one Shaw ratifies.”

“Identifiable as one Shaw ratifies” is…gobbledygook. Here’s what Cavell is apparently trying to say: For both Professor Higgins and Shaw, coldness is a way of life. (Not true of Shaw, by the way!)

2. “This writer, whose individual prefaces to his plays are as notable and interesting as the plays themselves that they preface, declares, in the opening sentence of his preface to Pygmalion, ‘As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place.'”

This sentence combines two unrelated pieces of information: 1) Shaw wrote good prefaces and 2) he wrote a sequel to Pygmalion. Weak writing! When you read good writing, you feel that you’re on a horse that knows where it’s going and wants to take you there. Here I feel that I’m just wandering around the scenery. 

(And why did Cavell call Shaw “this writer” instead of using his name? And what’s the difference between a “preface” and an “individual preface”? Nothing. That unnecessary “individual” is another sign that Cavell is a weak writer.)

3. My final example is such a mouthful that I’m not going to quote the whole thing. I want to point out something about the words in green:

“Shaw’s reading of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, as told in Ovid – where Pygmalion falls in love with his statue Galatea and asks the gods to bring her to life – in terms of a man’s training a woman in the further possession of language, brings the myth within range of the guiding demand for education….”

Here’s what jumped out at me: There are two clauses in a row. The first one is set off in dashes, and the second one is marked by a comma. That’s weak writing. There’s no connection between the clauses – no transitional word like because, so, but, therefore – to help readers figure out what’s going on. This long sentence (and I’ve left out a lot of it!) just drifts from place to place without a definite destination.

I have one more comment about Steven Cavell’s essay (and this will surprise you!). He writes like I do. Many of my sentences are just like his – wordy, weak, and purposeless. But here’s what’s different about my writing: I revise it.

Let me wrap this up with a few pointers I’ve picked up in my own writing career:

• If  a sentence has more than three commas, I check to see if it’s too complicated. Often it is, and I revise it.
• Breaking a sentence in two solves a surprising number of problems.
• You’ll never impress anyone by writing “the fluid supply in my writing implement is exhausted” when what you mean is “my pen is out of ink.”
• When writing is plain and simple, grateful readers think you’re a brilliant writer.
• If something I’m writing doesn’t move forcefully across the page, I either revise it or throw it away.

Photo courtesy of Ben Deibert – Flickr

My friend Jane McGinnis just requested a post about the difference between “Jean and I” and “Jean and me.” Consider it done, Jane!

Here’s how you figure it out: Shorten the problem sentence, and you’ll instantly hear the right word.

First, write any sentence – any sentence at all – with “Jean and I” or “Jean and me.” It’s ok to guess! (I know, I know. An English teacher just fell to the floor. Don’t worry – we’ll revive her in a minute.)

Jean and I went to the store.

Me and Jean went to the store.

Let Jean and I know when you need a ride.

Let Jean and me know when you need a ride.

Obviously some of those sentences are wrong – but which ones? Here’s how you figure it out: just delete Jean and. (This “make the sentence shorter” trick can solve many grammar and usage problems.)

 I went to the store.

Me went to the store.

Let I know when you need a ride.

Let me know when you need a ride.

Once you get your short sentence right, you’ll instantly know the answer. After that it doesn’t matter how many names you add (Jean, Carol, Lucy, and Dave). If I is the right word for your short sentence, use I in the long one. If me is the right for for your short sentence, use me in the long one.

You’ll be right 100% of the time. (How many things are you familiar with that work 100% of the time? Isn’t this trick wonderful? I used to call this the “thumb rule” – you use your thumb to make the sentence shorter – and it was fun to watch my students carefully covering the words with their thumbs)

I went to the store.

Jean and I went to the store.

Jean, Carol, Lucy, Dave and I went to the store.

Let me know when you need a ride

Let Jean and me know when you need a ride.

Let Jean, Carol, Lucy, Dave and me know when you need a ride.

Now we can pick up that English teacher off the floor, and I can add a few comments:

1. Many people mistakenly think that “I” is always right and “me” is always wrong. I’ve had people correct me when I was using “me” properly in a sentence! “I” sounds more elegant, so some people overuse it. Don’t get tricked that way.
2. English teachers love to do these pronouns the hard way. Ask them whether “I” or “me” is correct, and you’ll get a long lecture about pronoun case, transitive verbs, and subjective and objective pronouns. If I had to work through those concepts every time I started to speak or write, I’d never get anything done. Forget about formal grammar – you don’t need it.
3. I am waging a lonely but valiant battle about a new mistake that’s making its way into the language. Here’s an example:

I bought a housewarming present for he and Marilyn.  WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG

Let’s try our “shorten the sentence” trick:

I bought a housewarming present for him.  CORRECT

I bought a housewarming present for him and Marilyn.  CORRECT

When I hear this mistake, I sharply set the person straight, right on the spot. If it’s on TV or in print, I foam at the mouth for a while and then write a stern letter. (Colin Powell got one of my letters. I received a lovely apology from him.)

Any questions? You can download a free handout that explains every pronoun rule you’ll ever need (there are only three of them!) at this link: Pronouns Made Simple.

Here’s something that has happened to me over and over. I meet someone for the first time. We start talking about our careers. I mention that I’m an English instructor. Immediate response: “Writing is in such a terrible state nowadays” or “Nobody knows anything about grammar anymore” or a similar comment about how frustrating my job must be.

My take on my career is very different, of course. (If teaching English was so awful, I would have chosen to major in a different subject!)

Yes, many students have difficulty with writing tasks, and yes, they don’t know much about grammar. But those two facts not constitute a reason for despair. To clarify what I mean, I’m going to use an analogy from ballroom dancing.

I want you to stand up, step away from your computer and take two steps forward and two steps back. After you’ve done that, you can come back to your computer and read on.

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Now I’m going to evaluate your four steps from the standpoint of a judge in a ballroom competition. Everything you just did was wrong. Your posture was off, you didn’t shape your feet correctly, your top line wasn’t strong enough…I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

How can I make those judgments without even having seen you take those four steps? Because everyday walking has almost no connection to ballroom dancing.

That doesn’t mean that ballroom instructors sob and wring their hands when a beginner comes in for a lesson. There’s no reason to expect someone to walk in the door the first time knowing how to move like a dancer who’s had years of training.

Obviously it helps if you have a background in ballet, but even then there’s a lot to learn. Flying around the stage on pointe shoes is very different from trying to move gracefully when you’re plastered up against a partner whom you might have met only seconds before and who might not know the patterns you’ve been taught.

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The same principle applies to beginning writers: Academic writing is very different from ordinary speech, even though they both involve the same language.

Students who walk into a high school or college English course have been using language since they were toddlers. They’ve mastered a wide variety of sentence patterns and a large number of vocabulary words. They know English, right? Wrong. When they submit their first couple of papers, they make the horrifying discovery that their work is full of mistakes. Much hand-wringing follows, and blame is assigned all around.

It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that of course there’s going to be a transition period for these writers. If we could all just calm down and stop making students feel stupid and guilty, we could skip the recriminations and start helping them become better writers.

Students (and adults who yearn to write) need an attitude adjustment too. They’re stepping into a new venture with its own rules and customs. There’s going to be a transitional period when it’s going to seem that nothing is going right. Students need to resolve to a) hang in there and b) absorb everything they’re taught.

Here’s a memory from my doctoral program. One night I ran into a fellow student who was finishing up his dissertation. I was just getting ready to start writing mine, and I asked him what the process had been like for him. I’d heard a string of horror stories about pitched battles between students and their advisors.

To my astonishment, he said it had been a terrific experience. “Really?” I gasped. Nobody has a terrific experience writing that blasted dissertation.

“I did some thinking about it right at the beginning,” he told me. “I figured this was my only chance to work closely with a group of world-class scholars on an important project, and I was going to take advantage of everything they could teach me.”

Wise words, wise student! And it also helps if you’re lucky enough – as both he and I were – to be working with advisors who realize that nobody starts out knowing how to write a doctoral dissertation. Bottom line: patience, persistence, and encouragement will win the day.