Today I’m going to ask you to listen to two songs: “More than Words” by Extreme (below) and – in the next post – “Gentle on My Mind” by John Hartford. (Although Glen Campbell made this song famous, Hartford wrote the words and music, and I like to hear him sing it.)

The two songs are very different, but they have something in common. More precisely, there’s a line in “Gentle on My Mind” that has a connection to “More than Words.” I’ll be talking about that commonality in a post two days from now.

For now, please just listen to the two songs. I hope you’ll melt just as I always do when I hear them.

Ann Berthoff is the author of The Making of Meaning: Models, Metaphors, and Maxims for Writing Teachers. It’s a remarkable book that I recommend for anyone interested in writing.

I found myself thinking about Berthoff’s book on a trip to Savannah a few weeks ago. Although there’s no place I love more than New York City, Savannah holds a special place in my heart. My husband and I go back often to stroll through the squares, eat ice cream at Leopold’s, and soak up Savannah’s fascinating history.

On a recent trip we decided to make a return visit to historic Bonaventure Cemetery to  learn more about the famous and not-so-famous people interred there. Well, I thought my husband would learn more – I’d already done the tour twice (once without him on a trip with my sister).

Wrong. Yes, we went back to Johnny Mercer’s grave (and listened to a recording of Mercer’s “Accen-tu-ate the Positive” in the mini-bus on the return trip). Yes, we saw the Gracie statue and the grave of Conrad Aiken.

But our tour guide had a completely different way of thinking about the cemetery. (His name is Orlando, and he’s with Dash Tours, if you find yourself in Savannah sometime.) Instead of just listing historic facts, he spent the tour “making meaning” out of our experience.

Orlando helped us see that Bonaventure is actually two cemeteries – a colonial burial place and a Victorian one, with different ideas about death and different memorial practices. He drew connections to Transcendentalism and its influence on public spaces, including the creation of Central Park in New York City.

Then he asked us to look over a fence at an adjacent modern-day cemetery and note how it reflects today’s emphasis on matter-of-fact efficiency: Tidy rows of flat gravestones that can be mowed and maintained with minimum effort.

While I was humming “Accen-tu-ate the Positive” back in the mini-bus, my brain was fitting all kinds of puzzle pieces together. Although I minored in history in college, I’ve rarely heard a better discussion of the differences between past and present.

You’re reading this blog because you like to write. Here’s a project for you: Pull out one of your writing projects (past or present), read it over, and ask yourself this question: Did I “make meaning” about my topic – or did I just list a lot of facts and ideas?

I used to have a friend – “Mary” – who had difficulty with the pronoun that. Here’s an example:

Mary: An antiques store just opened on Central Avenue.
Me: That would be a fun place to visit.
Mary: Visit what?

“Mary” was having some anxiety and depression issues back then, and I think they were interfering with her concentration. (It probably happens to many of us from time to time.)  The connection between language and mental health would make an interesting topic. But I want to go down a different road today and take a look at what Mary’s brain was not doing.

Under normal circumstances, our minds hang on to a word or phrase even after the sounds have faded away. Some hidden part of our mental equipment is thinking, “The person I’m talking to may refer to the antiques store again [or whatever the topic is], so I’m going to hold on to that idea.” (A grammarian would say that we’re connecting a pronoun with its antecedent.)

It’s like a juggler who has three balls – two that he’s getting ready to toss, and one that’s up in the air.

That kind of thinking process is flying under our mental radar all the time. Amazing!

I’m going to give two more examples, and then I want to make a connection to writing.

Take a look at this incomplete sentence:

I was planning to wash the car today, but it…

No problem, right? But watch what happens when I finish the example:

I was planning to wash the car today, but it started raining.

For just an instant, your brain pictured the car [it] raining. Even though you may not have been conscious of that blip, your brain noticed it and paused for a milli-second to make a correction.

Now let’s try one more example. Here’s something my husband used to say all the time:

Driving home from work, the radio had an interesting report about the Supreme Court.

If you’re an English teacher, you spotted the dangling modifier right away (the radio didn’t drive home!). But most people wouldn’t experience a blip there. Somehow our brains smoothly translate “driving home” into “While I was driving home.” We don’t picture a radio operating a car (at least I never did, and I heard that sentence many times over the years).

Effective editing requires going back over everything we’ve written (ideally with feedback from someone else) to find all these blips. Not all of them will require corrections – but some will.

Someone whose brain has to keep backtracking may simply give up on your essay, report, or book. We don’t want that to happen, do we?

(Somewhere, far back in my brain, I can hear Mary’s voice asking, “Don’t want what to happen?”)

When I was in graduate school, I labored long and hard on the proposal for my dissertation about Bernard Shaw. When it was finished, I proudly sent it to my chairman, along with a note asking what he thought of my main point.

Here’s the response I got back: “Which one?”

Oops. I had to start over with a more narrow focus. That tendency to go in too many directions at once is a persistent problem with my writing, and over the years I’ve seen other writers struggle with it too. For example, I’m a member of the editorial board for a Shaw journal, and sometimes I read submissions that go on for a whole page without mentioning Shaw.

I spotted a similar problem this week in an intriguing article in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine: “The Woman Card – How feminism and antifeminism created Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.” Jill Lepore is an excellent writer, and the article is interesting and worthwhile – but it kept getting away from her.

Today I’m going to use Lepore’s article as the focus for a mini-lesson in writing. (I encourage you to take a look at her article, available free at the New Yorker website.) Like Lepore (and like me when I was writing my dissertation proposal), it’s likely that you sometimes have difficulty taming a writing task.

Here are some issues to watch for:

1.   Multiple focuses instead of a single thesis

Lepore’s thesis (main point) is easy to spot because it’s stated in her subtitle: “How feminism and antifeminism created Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.” You’re expecting to hear about the ideas and events that shaped these two Presidential candidates.

But Lepore’s article has several extra thesis statements (the same problem I ran into with my proposal). Here are two of them:

“Long before women could vote, they carried into the parties a political style they had perfected first as abolitionists and then as prohibitionists: the moral crusade. No election has been the same since.”

“Donald Trump is widely viewed as the savior the Republican Party has been looking for since 1948.”

2.  The article frequently gets sidetracked. For example, Lepore traces the history of the women’s suffrage movement, the role of African-American women, attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (which we learn was originally a Republican project), and Clinton and Trump’s political histories (she started out as a Republican, and he used to be a Democrat.) One long section of the article – 2,481 words – doesn’t mention Trump at all, and another one – 755 words – mentions Clinton only once and Trump not at all.

Solutions

At this point you’re probably expecting me to show you how to organize an effective essay, article, or report. But that kind of instruction is widely available in textbooks and online. (Go to www.PlanMyPaper.com to review these skills.)

Today I’d like to do something different. I’m going to discuss two warning signs that a writing task is getting away from you (along with some tips for getting it back on track).

1.   Make a list of keywords, and use the Find feature in your software to make sure they appear in every paragraph. In Lepore’s article, those words would be Clinton, Trump, feminism, and antifeminism. Synonyms like women’s suffrage, equality, liberation and reform are fine too – as long as they’re connected to Clinton and Trump every time you mention them. If you read for more than a minute without encountering one of your keywords, something is wrong. Start revising!

2.  After you finish a draft, use this process to review your piece: Read the first paragraph and the first sentence (only) in every other paragraph. They should all hang together. If there’s a big jump anywhere, start looking for ways to tighten and strengthen your draft.

I’m going to finish this post with a warning you’ve probably heard before. Postmodern language theorists keep telling us that language has a will of its own – a strong one – that can take you and your readers to parts unknown before you notice that you’ve lost your way. Stay alert, and keep a firm hand on the rudder!

Today I’m going to discuss four usage rules that seem to break the rules. I’ve heard many people say that the correct usage looks wrong to them, and the wrong usage looks right. Today we’re going to focus on the right way, of course.

1.   either/or and neither/nor
These constructions don’t follow the usual “look at the beginning!” rule. You’re supposed to go to or/nor to figure out your verb. (It’s easier than you think!)

Either Jane or the Smiths (know, knows) how to get to the airport.
Either the Smiths or Jane (know, knows) how to get to the airport.

Here are the answers, with clues in bold:

Either Jane or the Smiths know how to get to the airport.
Either the Smiths or Jane knows how to get to the airport.

Either Jane or the Smiths know how to get to the airport.  CORRECT
Either the Smiths or Jane knows how to get to the airport.  CORRECT

2.  I or me?

Many people overuse I because they mistakenly think it’s more elegant. Sometimes me is the correct word (even if your grandmother thinks I sounds better!). The trick is to shorten the sentence – you’ll instantly hear which word is correct:

The Smiths drove Kay and (I, me) to the airport.
The Smiths drove me to the airport.
The Smiths drove Kay and me to the airport.  CORRECT

The Smiths and (I, me) went to the airport.
I went to the airport.
The Smiths and I went to the airport.  CORRECT

3.   well or good?

Many people think well sounds more elegant than good – and that tricks them into overusing it. Often good is the correct word:

I feel good today.  CORRECT
That color looks good on you!  CORRECT
A grilled cheese sandwich sounds good to me.  CORRECT

4.  possessive pronouns (his, hers, ours, yours, theirs, its)

Many people tell me they’re tempted to use an apostrophe in possessive pronouns. Don’t give in to that temptation! Here’s a trick for getting them right: Remember that his is a possessive pronoun. His doesn’t need an apostrophe – and neither do the others.

That locker is hers, and this one is his.  CORRECT
My jacket lost one of its buttons.  CORRECT
Jackie’s car is older than ours, but it looks newer because she takes such good care of it.  CORRECT

A friend of mine is an ex-priest who is still a devout Catholic. I recently heard him give a talk about Gary Wills’ remarkable book Why Priests? A Failed Tradition.

Wills assembled a wealth of historical information to argue that Christianity was never intended to have a separate class of ordained clergy. But in postmodern fashion, the book sent a very different message to my friend (and many other religious-minded readers). What hit him – hard – was the discovery that some apparently timeless principles of the Catholic Church have a far less solid foundation than he used to think. I remember my friend shaking his head and saying, “They didn’t tell us any of this in the seminary.”

You probably already know that I’m not going to talk about religion today – so what’s my point? Here it is: Wills’ book is part of a colossal shift in thought that affects all of us – and it includes language. But before I get there, let me give you a non-religious example of this “shift in thought.”

Not long ago I watched a British TV documentary about the extraordinary range of wildlife that lives in the gardens behind Buckingham Palace. (Regular readers: Are you surprised that I’ve been to Buckingham Palace and seen those gardens? No, of course not.)

It was a charming TV show, but I detected an underlying message – a commercial, almost. The United Kingdom no longer believes in the inevitability of their royal family. They know that it’s the British public – not God or her blue-blooded lineage – who keep the Queen on her throne. For that reason, the royal family has undertaken a quiet public relations campaign to argue for its continued relevance.

Of course nobody is arguing that language is irrelevant, so what point am I trying to make? Here it is: Many of us grew up believing that the principles of correct language usage – like religion, like the divine right of kings – were absolute truths, their origins lost in the mists of time. A beloved English teacher imparted those truths to us, and we feel a solemn obligation to keep that tradition alive.

So it comes as a shock to learn that many of our most revered writing practices arrived late on the scene. Some were decided by amateurs who had no business making pronouncements about language. Many were offhandedly invented by people who operated printing presses. When we hear about these things, we experience the same shock my priest friend did. What is left to believe in? Or (a wail I hear all the time) “There are no more rules!”

In a sense they’re right. That beloved English teacher back in eleventh grade didn’t make the rules. Neither did Strunk and White, or Henry Fowler, or John E. Warriner (author of the grammar book we all used in high school). We, the people who speak English, are the ones who ultimately decide what to discard and what to keep.

If you think I’m overstating my case, let me give you an example. There’s an adverb in English that’s a synonym for stingy. It’s a perfectly respectable word that’s derived from the Middle English nigon. (The word “niggling” is a relative.) No grammar book that I know of has ever tried to make a case against this word, and yet almost nobody uses it anymore. Why? Because it sounds a lot like a racial epithet.

Logical? No. Cowardly? Perhaps. But – for better or worse – that’s how changes find their way into our language. And that’s how princes and princesses find themselves holding salaried jobs (as Prince Andrew is doing) and managing with a couple of domestic workers instead of a huge staff (as Princess Anne is doing).

That’s how religions find themselves reaching out to people who no longer want to be told how to manage, say, their sex lives or their finances. (Did you know that the Catholic Church used to prohibit investors from earning interest on their wealth? When was the last time you heard a sermon about the evils of money-lending and usury?)

Are you feeling the ground shake beneath your feet? I am too – but I’m also sensing the immense power that you and I hold every time we pick up a pen to write or open our mouths to speak. Let’s take a moment to honor our wonderful language – and our role as shapers and deciders of its future.

I’ve long been curious about the thinking habits of other people. What does a psychologist think about when she’s socializing with friends? Does she pick up little clues about their psyches that the rest of us miss? What does a professional dancer think about when he’s watching Swan Lake – or Dancing with the Stars? Does he notice technical and artistic points that I don’t understand?

Today I have a story about a person who was thinking about another person who was thinking – both in unusual ways.

The college where I was teaching invited noted educator Vincent Tinto to spend a day talking to faculty and staff about student retention. During the break, a librarian friend and I compared notes. She was as impressed with Tinto as I was, and she added something: “I’m wondering if he studied to be a Jesuit.”

Huh?

Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus, a prestigious Roman Catholic religious order for men that emphasizes education. Tinto hadn’t mentioned religion.

“It’s the way he thinks,” she said. (Although she wasn’t Roman Catholic, she’d been a librarian at a Jesuit high school.) “Before he answers a question, he puts it into a larger context.”

We went back into the meeting room, and she was right – Tinto reframed every question before he answered it. Later that day I Googled him and found that my friend was also right about the Jesuit connection: Tinto had a degree in physics from Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York. (I once took a course at Fordham myself, but – alas – I don’t think it had any permanent effect on my brain.)

I have another story about thinking-about-a-thinker, and then I want to apply this idea to writing. A few years ago, when I was helping a friend edit a book about Bernard Shaw’s ideas about women, I started thinking about my own encounters with feminism.

My starting point had been Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which I read in high school shortly after it was published. (It’s still one of my favorite books, and later I was thrilled to learn that Friedan did a lot of her writing at that most sacred of places, the New York Public Library.)

Odd, I thought – Friedan’s thinking was much like Shaw’s: She was interested in the ways that society manipulates women’s thinking to further its own ends. And suddenly I realized she must have been exposed to Marx in her youth. (Shaw’s penchant for critiquing ideologies was a direct result of his Marxism.) Perhaps, I mused, she’d had a boyfriend who was heavily into Marx.

I headed for the library and started searching through the early chapters of Friedan’s autobiography, Life So Far. And there it was: She’d been a fervent Marxist during her college years. (Incidentally, the early years in a famous person’s life are almost always the most interesting part of any biography. Maybe that’s another reason I keep reading The Little Princesses.)

Those of us who write, edit, and teach so often get sidetracked from what really matters: thinking. A teaching colleague – Ellen Massey – once remarked that our developmental writing courses were really courses in thinking. She was right, and it was an insight that had a powerful effect on what I was trying to accomplish with my students.

What about you, reading this? Who influenced your thinking? What thinking habits are unique to you?

There’s nothing – I repeat, nothing – like a powerful idea to energize and empower your writing. (Those of us who teach writing know that we get much better papers from our students when we give them something stimulating to think about.)

If you want to get to know yourself better (and perhaps find some unexpected springboards for writing), start journaling about thinking. I know that’s not very specific advice. That’s because you need to start from your unique perspective, not mine. If you’re not sure where to start, think about your role models – people you’ve admired not for what they know, but how they think. (Some of you already know how impressed I am by Carolyn Hax’s unusual take on everyday problems in her Washington Post advice column.)

You have an exciting journey ahead of you!

Village Wooing is one of Bernard Shaw’s lesser-known comedies. Only three scholars have had anything to say about it, and I’ve seen the play performed only once. Last year I spent a great deal of time thinking about Village Wooing because a friend asked me to write an article about it for a book that he was putting together.

While I was studying the play, I noticed a snippet of dialogue about a usage issue – the placement of only in a sentence – that I’m going to talk about today. A village shopkeeper – a single woman identified only as Z. – is pursuing a travel writer, a widower identified only as A. Here’s the exchange:

Z. Well, your second marriage may be an agreeable surprise, maynt it?
A. What, exactly, do you mean by my second marriage? I have only been married once. I mean I have been married only once.

How like Shaw: His central character is a stickler for grammar! (I’ll explain the rule about only in must a moment. I should add that Shaw considered apostrophes ugly and omitted them whenever he could – so he used maynt instead of the more correct mayn’t in Z’s question.)

In a short play like this Village Wooing, everything counts. When A. catches himself making a usage mistake, he establishes himself as an educated person and – despite the romantic promise of the play’s title – a stuffy person who might not seem attractive to the gregarious Z. This exchange is a good example of Shaw’s skill at exposition – helping audiences get to know the characters without slowing down the movement of the play. (I guess I should relieve your curiosity by explaining that A. and Z. do decide to marry before the final curtain.)

Today I want to focus on the misplaced only that A. stumbled over. I’m going to begin by explaining his mistake, and then I want to go on to ask whether it really was a mistake.

Expert writers are careful to place only right next to the word it modifies. Here’s a mini-lesson I’ve often used with my students. Notice how the meaning changes every time only is moved to a different position in the sentence:

Only I kissed her.

I only kissed her.

I kissed only her.

All three sentences are correct, and they all mean something different.

Although Shaw had little formal education (he attended school for only a year), he had a thorough knowledge of English usage and a reputation as a curmudgeon. But this is where it gets interesting. I’ve been reading Shaw for lo-these-many-years, and I can testify that he wasn’t always fussy about where he positioned only in a sentence – and I’m not just talking about his informal pieces. Take a look at this example from The Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman (the play that won Shaw a Nobel Prize):

I have only made my Don Juan a political pamphleteer, and given you his pamphlet in full by way of appendix.

Mind you, this is from a writer who scrupulously oversaw every detail of publication. So we can’t say that Shaw was just being careless, especially since there are many other examples of a misplaced only in his prodigious output.

Here’s what I think: Although Shaw knew the rule, sometimes he didn’t give a damn about it.

Can you do the same – ignore a rule because you don’t feel like obeying it? Or because it makes a sentence awkward – or you think it’s a stupid rule?

In a word: yes.

I’m thinking about the lovely song “I Only Have Eyes for You” (you can listen to it here). Would the song be as wonderful if the title were changed to “I Have Eyes Only for You?” I don’t think so. 

I’m wondering if our fetish about correct placement of only can be traced back to the well-meaning but misinformed grammarians who thought language had to be logical. That’s not true. Language is a multi-dimensional invention that can’t be squeezed into a logical system. “Misplaced” – like beauty – may be only in the eye of the beholder. (Or may only be in the eye of the beholder. Take your pick.)

Can you follow Shaw’s lead and place only wherever you think it works best? Of course – but remember that you may raise some eyebrows if you’re writing for a sophisticated readership.

My own practice is to be casual with only in everyday conversation. But when I’m writing professionally, I’m careful and precise. What are your thoughts?

I used to teach a remedial English course that ended with a pass-fail final exam: Students submitted an essay to a committee, which decided which students could proceed to Composition I.

I was present at one of those grading sessions when a carelessly written essay (from one of my students – sigh) caused some controversy. Two committee members gave it a thumbs-down, but a third member asked them to reconsider. “This student used a semicolon correctly,” he said. “Doesn’t that indicate real writing skill?”

I held my breath as the paper was reread. (Instructors weren’t supposed to comment about their own students.) There was a whispered conference – and then the committee chair said “Pass!” and put a blue checkmark on the paper.

How did a remedial English student manage to use a semicolon correctly? The answer is that all my students learned how to use semicolons the first day of class – and they were required to use one on every assignment. It was a good motivational tool for students who thought English usage was a mystery they’d never crack…and good insurance for that scary final exam.

Here’s what I told students to do: Write two sentences. Change the first period to a semicolon, and lower-case the next letter. And I would add: “You now have a master’s degree in semicolons.” (If you, reading this, want a Ph.D. in semicolons, we’ll get there in a moment.)

So you could insert a semicolon after one of the sentences in the paragraph above:

Write two sentences; change the first period to a semicolon, and lower-case the next letter. CORRECT

But don’t the two sentences need a connection? Yes, they do – but it doesn’t have to be something mystical or complicated. Almost everything we write – even a jokey email – has a string of connected sentences.

Compare my common-sense approach to semicolons with this explanation that I just found on a university website:

Semicolons help you connect closely related ideas when a style mark stronger than a comma is needed.

“A style mark stronger than a comma” – does anyone (besides the person who wrote that) know what it means? How on earth could you apply such a vague explanation?

Here’s another favorite:

Link two independent clauses to connect closely related ideas.

If you, reading this, are an English teacher, I submit this challenge to you: Hand out strips of paper and ask your students to write an independent clause. I guarantee that most students will just stare at you blankly. Yes, they always listen politely when we ramble on about independent clauses. But many of them don’t understand what that we’re talking about.

OK. End of rant. Let me help you get that Ph.D. in semicolons. Here’s what you need to know: Semicolons are required with a special kind of list – one with at least one item containing a comma.

Invited speakers include Jimmy Thompson, a Little League coach; Dr. Winnie Goldblatt, a pediatrician; The Reverend Susan Sanchez, a youth minister; and Lionel Fordham, an elementary school principal.  CORRECT

I wish I could reach out across the miles, hand you your sheepskin, and shake your hand. Congratulations!