First Aid: The Bones of Freshman Composition

To Be or Not to Be?

If someone asked me to tell the story of my life, I might begin like this:

I was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1942. I have been told that my father came home from the hospital saying over and over, “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” There is no record of how my mother felt about this fact. I was soon to be made aware of how my sister felt about it, though. My birth was in May, 5 months and 3 weeks after Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan, so there was a war on. There has been a war on during nearly every one of the sixty years since I was born.

You could find a number of faults with this paragraph, though you couldn’t find anything grammatically incorrect. It simply stinks. Why? Start answering that question by looking for the verbs in each sentence:

I was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1942. I have been told that my father came home from the hospital saying over and over, “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” There is no record of how my mother felt about this fact. I was soon to be made aware of how my sister felt about it, though. My birth was in May, 5 months and 3 weeks after Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan, so there was a war on. There has been a war on during nearly every one of the sixty years since I was born.

Every verb in bold type is a form of the verb “To Be.” (When you want to talk about a verb by name, you say “to” and then the verb: to walk, to scream, to caress, to finagle, etc.  Putting a “to” in front of a verb creates the infinitive, and makes the verb into a noun. In other words, the infinitive can’t be used as a verb in a sentence.)

That verb, “to be,” came to me easily and unconsciously, a handy, all-purpose tool, always ready for use to express any thought or memory that occurred to me.  Ready, also, to render those thoughts and memories dead on arrival on the page.

What Do Verbs Do?

Verbs describe action. Action makes sentences live. You can tell a living body from a corpse because the corpse just lies there. The living body moves, even in sleep.

Try this: get in front of a mirror and be. Easy, eh? No matter what you do or don’t do – whether you do jumping jacks or paint your face blue or just stand there – you’ll be being.

Because it signifies any action, including no action, the verb “to be” makes dead sentences. Nothing moves. Could I have written the same autobiographical paragraph without using the verb “to be?” Sure:

My mother brought me into the world in May, 1942 at Evanston Hospital. Many years later, my aunt Helen described to me my father’s ecstatic reaction to having a son. I don’t know how my mother felt about that, but my sister soon began to let me know how she felt, tormenting me until I got big enough to stop her. A few months before my arrival, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, and my country had gone to war. It has stayed at war with one enemy or another during most of my 60 years.

To get rid of the “to be” verbs in that paragraph, I first asked of each sentence, “Who did what?” If someone or something is, then someone or something made it that way. If I “was born,” I sure wasn’t born without nine months and some intense hours of intense effort by someone, namely my mother.  If I “was told” of my father’s reaction, someone must have told me, namely my aunt. If Pearl Harbor “was attacked” by Japan, then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Why go to all this trouble? Try to imagine an action without first imagining who or what performs that action. Can you see flight without a flyer? Biting without a biter? If you can, write me a letter and tell me how to go about it.

Every sentence that uses “to be” as its main verb asks its readers either to imagine an action without a named actor (“I have been told”) or to imagine an action before knowing who or what performs that action (“Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan”). That makes the readers’ work harder.  You don’t want to make the readers’ work harder. If you do, the readers will soon come to dislike you, and won’t want to give what you have to say a fair hearing, and may simply stop reading before even finding out what you have to say.

Write this list of the commonest tenses of “to be” on a card, stick it in the edge of your mirror, and study it until you know it cold. Learn to hate these words:

Again, a sentence like “There is a tree standing there that has been growing by the fence for many years” is not grammatically incorrect. But you can feel your eyelids drooping halfway through it.  What does what in that sentence? “An old walnut tree stands by the fence.” You can say in 8 words what the first sentence said in 21. In a 300 word draft that has to be cut to 250 words, the second sentence makes over 1/4 of the necessary cuts.

Two words matter for another reason. Whether in school or in the “real world,” most writing assignments impose some limitation on the number of words you can use. You can’t worry unduly about this limitation as you’re drafting the assignment, but you’ll have to worry about it when preparing your finished piece. You’ll probably have to cut it. Learning to eliminate “to be” verbs gives you one of the best razors available.

The second sentence also saves two words. Do two words matter? They do. Words take time to read. If you save your readers a little time, they will love you for it. You want your readers to love you. People tend to listen to what those they love want to tell them. Don’t learn to hate them because they’re “wrong.” They aren’t. A sentence like “There are several reasons why Athenian civilization declined” isn’t wrong.  It could simply be improved by asking, “Who did what?” Answer: “Athenian civilization (who?) declined (did what?) for several reasons.” The second sentence lets the readers know immediately what happened.

Let Me Be

I don’t mean to say that you should never use the verb “to be” in a sentence. I do say that you’ll become a more efficient and interesting writer if you learn to view “to be” as guilty until proven innocent. In other words, learn to get rid of it whenever you can. Once you get to revising a draft, ask of each sentence you’ve written, “Who does what?” Look for perfectly good verbs you’ve buried as other parts of speech, and turn them back into verbs. (For example, “standing there” becomes “stands” in the second sentence because that’s what the oak tree is doing.)

Examples

1. There will be no whining allowed by this coach.

Who’s doing what?  We don’t know who might have been whining. The only potential actor present in the sentence is “this coach.”  What does he do? He allows. This coach allows no whining.

2. He will never have been a Chicago Cub.

If he made it onto the Cub’s roster, what would he do?  Since the Cubs are a baseball team (at least in theory), he would play baseball for them. He will never play for the Cubs.

3. It is such an angry essay it is hard to read.

In this example, no actor appears. You need to look for a potential action and then ask yourself who might perform that action. Readers may find the essay’s anger repellent.

Practice

Rewrite these sentences to get rid of the “to be” verbs. (Actual people wrote all of these sentences. As Dave Barry says, “I am not making these up.”)

1. The moon may be invisible to astronomers when it is perfectly obvious to lovers.

2. What are the reasons for Fabio’s despicable behavior?

3. Chicago was a city that never slept.

4. The reason this is, is because the mechanic was drunk and so the transmission was left on the garage floor.

5. An example of this is in the beginning of this story all of the author’s opinions were in parentheses.

6. The first fear of the boy was that he would never be able to find his way home.

7. Taxpayers are left to decide what the tax forms may be asking of them.

8. The movie was successful in allowing the viewers to understand the characters.

9. He was traumatized by the memories of the war.

10. The only problem is that it is hard to understand the essay if you don’t pay attention to what the essay has to say.

11. One of the problems was that the task of finding the author’s point of view was hard.

12. The colored lights were a great way to get people’s attention on the carnival.

13. The two styles of goaltending were effectively demonstrated through the contrasting performances of the goalies for Detroit and Phoenix.

14. The people are in fear of further attacks by their enemy.

15. The second story Wright tells is surprising.

16. The fabricating of the chips was poorly done by the plant in Scranton.

17. Opinions are not a lot for the voter to base a serious conclusion on.

18. He was afraid that he would be punished by the supervisor.

19. Supporting this statement is exactly what Gardner doesn’t do.

20. She is the only one who will ever understand the meaning.

21. Her story is seen over the span of 22 years.

22. In both of the essays the issues of segregation were included.

23. The reason the essay may be ineffective is because of its lack of factual information.

24. To say that television is responsible for America’s drug problems is foolish.

25. The man is covered in mud.

(Even professional writers fall lazily into overuse of “to be” verbs. Rewrite the following selections to get rid of those verbs.)

1. In Mamá’s house (everyone called my grandmother Mamá) was a large parlor built by grandfather to his wife’s exact specifications so that it was always cool, facing away from the sun. The doorway was on the side of the house so no one could walk directly into her living room. . . . This room was furnished with several mahogany rocking chairs. . . . It was on these rockers that my mother, her sisters, and my grandmother sat. . . .

(Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Casa: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood,” The Conscious Reader, 6th Ed., pp. 64-5)

2. Medfield was a very distinct reality to me. There was even a leftover colonial custom that gave the town a concrete definition. By 1692 the settlements around Boston were growing quickly and their perimeters were hazy because of conflicting land grants and native treaties. The executive power of each town was vested in the Board of Selectmen. . . .

(John Preston, “Medfield, Massachusetts,” CR,  p. 83)

3. This man who worked himself to death . . . was fifty-one years old and a vice- president. He was, however, one of six vice-presidents….He was, of course, overweight, by 20 or 25 pounds. . . . His second child is a girl, who is twenty-four and newly married.

(Ellen Goodman, “The Company Man,” CR, p. 115)

4. . . . some locals had come by, pounded on the front door, and made threats. One was said to have brandished a machete. They were angry and shocked, as the whole nation was in the aftermath of the surprise attack. . . . It was  Monday night, the day after Pearl Harbor, and there was a rattling knock on the front door.

(Garrett Hongo, “Kubota,” CR, pp. 186, 187)

5. It was not the fact that she disagreed with me that was so disturbing. She’s a teen-ager, she disagrees with me every day. What was so disturbing was the success of the anti-abortion movement at depicting people like me as heartless, amoral abstractionists who care more about rights than about life.

(Victoria Bissell Brown, “Abortion Fight Is over Choice,” CR, pp. 202-3)

6. This is the age where everything is known, everything told. . . . Also available is a voice-changer that alters one’s voice; this is useful, its makers say, for a man who wishes to pretend he has a secretary.

(Roger Rosenblatt, “Who Killed Privacy?” CR, pp. 443-4)

7. The family resemblance between football and war is, indeed, striking. Their languages are similar. . . . Their principles and practices are alike. . . . And the virtues they celebrate are almost identical.

(John McMurtry, “Kill ‘Em! Crush ‘Em! Eat ‘Em Raw!” CR, p. 475)

8. Rock and roll is a way of life; certainly it is music, but it is also big business. Selling records, compact discs, tapes, and concert appearances is at the center of a multi-billion-dollar international industry. . . . Creating an image is an all-important part of the process. The leather-jacketed Beatles, for instance, were cleaned up and put into suits by their manager, Brian Epstein, to help them achieve commercial success.

(Jack Santino, “Rock and Roll as Music, Rock and Roll as Culture,” CR, p. 452)

9. In the early 1960’s, I was in college at Albany State. My major interests were music and biology. In music I was a contralto soloist with the choir, studying Italian arias and German lieder. The black music I sang was of three types. . . .

(Bernice Reagon, “Black Music on Our Hands,” CR, p. 456)

10. The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the Sexual Object sought by all men, and by all women. She is of neither sex, for she has herself no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she is the reward of achievement. She need never give positive evidence of her moral character because virtue is assumed from her loveliness, and her passivity. If any man who   has no right to her be found with her she will not be punished, for she is morally neuter. The matter is solely one of male rivalry.

(Germaine Greer, “The Stereotype,” CR, p. 293)

Dead on Arrival

Read these two paragraph from a best-selling novel, Anita Shreve’s Fortune’s Rocks:

“The cottage is a modest one by some standards, although Olympia’s father is a wealthy man. But it is unique in its proportions, and she thinks it lovely beyond words. White with dark blue shutters, the house stands two stories high and is surrounded by several graceful porches. It is constructed in the style of the grand hotels along Fortune’s Rocks, and in Rye and Hampton to the south: that is to say, its roof curves shallowly and is inset with evenly spaced dormer windows. The house has never been a hotel, but rather was once a convent. . . . Indeed, an oddity of the structure is its many cell-like bedrooms. . . . Attached to the ground floor of the house is a small chapel. . . . ”

“There is no mistaking this gaze. It is not a look that turns itself into a polite moment of recognition or a nod of encouragement to speak. Nor is it the result of an absent-minded concentration of thought. It is rather an entirely penetrating gaze with no barriers or boundaries. It is scrutiny such as Olympia has never encountered in her young life. And she thinks that the entire table must be stopped in that moment, as she is, feeling its nearly intolerable intensity.”

Shreve’s writing suffers from addiction to the verb “to be.” Can you feel your eyelids begin to droop after a couple of sentences? Nothing happens in either one. In the second paragraph, the young woman Olympia experiences the electric moment of meeting eyes with the older man who will shortly become her first lover. As Shreve renders it, the moment has all the electricity of a 15-watt light bulb covered with cobwebs. Study this writing. Go thou and sin no more.

Who Done It?

“Don’t put the cart before the horse,” your great grandmother often advised you. Since you’d never seen either a cart or a horse in your natural life, you had no idea what her advice meant. She should have said, “Don’t hitch the U-Haul to the front of the All-Wheel-Drive, Off-Road Suburban Assault Vehicle.”

However she said it, she meant, “First things first.” I’ve suggested that you first ask of any sentence, “Who did what?” (The answer to “Who?” is the Subject of the sentence, or ought to be. The answer to “Did what” is the Verb.)

You can look at any sentence as a set of answers to a set of questions: Who? Does (or did, or will do, etc.) what? To whom? When? Where? Why? How? A sentence may answer all these questions:

The cat    deposited   a dead squirrel   gently    on my bed    each morning     to show her love.

(Who?)  (Did what?)   (To whom?)    (How?)   (Where?)         (When?)                 (Why?)

A sentence must  answer the first two questions – Who? Did what? – or it isn’t a sentence.  Sometimes it answers only those two questions:

Sean            slept.

(Who?)  (Did what?)

If you write some words, capitalizing the first letter of the first word and ending with a period, you are claiming that you’ve answered the first two questions. If in fact you haven’t answered one or both of them, you’ve written a fragment – a piece of a sentence – no matter how many other questions the words answer:

In the evening     by the river     gently          kissed                 her.

(When?)                 (Where?)      (How?)    (Did what?)    (To whom?)

Those words answer a lot of questions, but fail to tell who did the kissing. They don’t make a sentence.

In other words, you can define a sentence as a group of words that answers the questions “Who? Did what?” and any other questions it needs to answer to make sense.

“Sean slept” makes sense because “sleeping” isn’t something you do to anyone or anything but yourself. Those two words don’t raise any question they don’t answer. “Sean kissed,” though, makes us ask, “Kissed whom?” (or, if Sean’s a little strange, “Kissed what?”). You can’t kiss nothing. Those two words raise a question they don’t answer. They don’t make a complete sentence.

Here’s the advice: because every sentence you write must answer the first two questions, answer them first.

This may contradict advice you’re gotten from English teachers. Many of them seem fixated on the necessity of “transitions,” and their students wind up feeling that they need to introduce every sentence by connecting it to the previous one. If you think and imagine clearly, you’ll rarely need to do that. Your reader will understand how one idea or event follows another.

If you begin sentences with transitional phrases or clauses, or, for that matter, by answering any questions other than “Who did what?” you create many opportunities for those sentences to get tangled up in themselves, leaving you and your readers confused and ill-humored. If you start right off with the subject and verb, usually the rest of the sentence will write itself.

Practice

Rewrite these sentences – which, again, various people actually wrote – so that the subject (Who or What?) comes first, the verb (Did what?) second.

1. Almost all the information used for support comes from surveys.

2. A downside to that causes Americans to stay within their boundaries and not want to open up to other countries’ ways of doing things.

3. Americans’ bitter tastes in their mouths may be left from politicians.

4. The first way that the author uses to convince his readers the media do not control the culture is by bringing up past events.

5. The best way for the voices of the voters to be heard by politicians is through polls.

6. The author’s use of organizational skills takes the readers through the material clearly.

7. By using facts taken from surveys the author’s essay has a gain in interest.

8. The basis for the general’s decision originated from intelligence of advance scouts.

9. This technique of quoting polls is quite persuasive in that, when using facts as a foundation for his beliefs, causes the reader to agree with him because it makes sense.

10. Some Americans believe that building more prisons will make them safer, as stated by the Governor.

11. All those liberties are what cause Americans to think their country is great.

12. It is thought by some that many of our problems are self-inflicted.

13. An effective way to measure things is with the metric system.

14. In spite of his best effort, the test brought failure to Louis.

15. When reading news stories, many opinions are quickly formed.

16. For him to be able to survive, the basic necessities were needed.

17. The point he wanted to get across had to do with whether a man who has confessed to gambling should be allowed in the Hall of Fame or not.

18. While reading Jim Harrison’s Julip, he brought up many interesting characters.

19. And through all of the hardships he speaks of over the last third of the century, he states that Americans have been a people who have come through them.

20. First, in Wattenberg’s presentation, he uses very strong words.

(I made up the 5 following sentences. Fix them as you have the previous 20. Then try turning them into one sentence.)

1. Strongly the general dictated to his troops the orders.
2. The orders were received by the exhausted troops.
3. Exhausted as they were, the real situation at the front was unknown to the troops.
4. The objects of their thoughts were only a warm bed and a hot meal.
5. Warm beds and hot meals were being enjoyed by others behind the lines.

Beyond the Simple Sentence

Unless all you ever have to write is Dick and Jane Go Berserk or Dick and Jane Buy an Idiotically Expensive SUV and Die in a Rollover, you won’t be happy forever just writing simple sentences. Spot ran. Spot ran to greet Dick and Jane. Dick’s and Jane’s SUV pancaked Spot. The pattern will become boring for both you and your reader. (Nevertheless, that pattern of Subject-Verb-Completer remains the basic pattern, and learning to recognize that pattern and use it will help your writing stay clear and concise.) How can you vary this pattern?

Multiple Subjects, Multiple Verbs

If two sentences show two different subjects performing the same act, put both subjects into one sentence:

I saw the blimp explode. My sister Jane did, too.

My sister Jane and I saw the blimp explode.

If two sentences show the same subject performing two different but related acts, put both verbs into one sentence:

The Visigoths ruled Southern France in the 5th Century. They terrorized the Romans.

The Visigoths ruled Southern France and terrorized the Romans in the 5th Century.

Compound Sentences

If two simple sentences make separate statements of more or less equal importance, you can combine them with a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions are: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. They can be remembered as FANBOYS.

Each one shows how the second clause relates to the first. (A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb.)

“And” means “in addition to,” very much like the “+” sign in math:

The night suddenly became still, and then he saw the leopard.

“But” indicates that the second clause opposes or contradicts the meaning of the first:

He saw the leopard, but the leopard didn’t see him.

“For” indicates that the second clause caused the first:

He stood dead still, for he knew of the leopard’s keen ears.

“Or” indicates that only one of the two clauses will prove true:

The leopard will eat him, or he will kill the leopard.

“Nor” indicates that neither clause will prove true:

He will not kill the leopard, nor will the leopard kill him.

“Yet” indicates that the second clause will come as a surprise:

He didn’t kill the leopard, yet the leopard died the next day.

Notice that, if you replace the first comma with a period and remove the coordinating conjunction, you return to two simple sentences:

He didn’t kill the leopard. The leopard died the next day.

If you can do that, you know that your original sentence had two independent clauses.  So a compound sentence can be defined as two independent clauses joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction.

Complex Sentences

You might also want to show that one of two simple sentences somehow depends on the other:

If she can find her keys, Holly will go to the store.

In that sentence, replacing the comma with a period will not  create two simple sentences.  It will create a fragment and a simple sentence:

If she can find her keys. [fragment]  Holly will go to the store. [simple sentence]

Why is “If Holly can find her keys” a fragment? Because it forces you to ask a question it doesn’t answer within itself: if Holly can find her keys, what will happen? A simple sentence must answer any question it raises before it ends. A complex sentence can be defined as a dependent clause joined to an independent clause. The two clauses may appear in either order, dependent/independent or Independent/dependent. If the dependent clause comes first, as in the example, it is followed by a comma. If the independent clause comes first, no comma is necessary:

Holly will go to the store if she can find her keys.

Common subordinating conjunctions that introduce dependent clauses:

after, as, as if, as soon as, as though, before, in order that, provided, since, so that, than, though, until, when, whenever, where, wherever, whereas, whether, while.

EXERCISES

Write 14 compound sentences, two for each coordinating conjunction.

Write 20 complex sentences using the subordinating conjunctions listed above. Write them with the dependent clause first, the independent clause last. Then, rewrite them with the independent clause first, the dependent clause last.

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Modifiers

As you worked on the practice sentences, you probably noticed that making one change usually forced you to make one or more other changes in the sentence.  You began to recognize that English is a “word order language.”

That means that English syntax (organization of sentence parts) creates meaning by the placement of words in a particular order. Paying conscious attention to this fact can help you say what you intend to say, and frequently help you eliminate many unnecessary words as well.

Dr. Ernest Brennecke of Columbia University dreamed up the following set of sentences:

1. Only I hit him in the eye yesterday.
2. I only hit him in the eye yesterday.
3. I hit only him in the eye yesterday.
4. I hit him only in the eye yesterday.
5. I hit him in the only eye yesterday.
6. I hit him in the eye only yesterday.
7. I hit him in the eye yesterday only.

In this example, you can see that the meaning of “only” depends on its placement in the sentence, and the meaning of the sentence depends on the meaning of “only.”

In sentence 1, “only” means “I and no other person,” and the sentence confesses responsibility.

In sentence 2, “only” means “merely,” and the sentence means that poking someone in the eye doesn’t amount to much of an assault.

In sentences 3 and 4, “”only” means “solely,” and the speaker is trying to limit his responsibility to an assault on one person (sentence 3) or on one part of one person’s anatomy (sentence 4).

In sentence 5, “only” means “single,” and the assault looks considerably less forgivable – hitting a poor, partially-sighted fellow.

In sentence 6, “only” means “just” or “as recently as,” and the sentence implies that here the victim comes again, looking for another poke in the peeper.

In sentence 7, “only” again means “solely,” and the sentence claims that the speaker is innocent of any previous or subsequent assault.

In short, placing a word before another word or phrase generally indicates that it answers a question about the following word or phrase:

1. “only I” – you and how many others?
2. “only hit him in the eye” – what other damage did you to him?
3. “only him” – who else did you hit?
4. “only in the eye” – where else did you hit him?
5. “only eye” – how many eyes does he have?
6. “only yesterday” – how recently did you hit him?
7. “yesterday only” – how many times have you hit him in the eye?

A word like the “only” in our example modifies the meaning of the word or phrase it applies to. A modifier may be a single word or a group of words that make one unit of meaning (phrase). Misplaced modifiers cause many sentences to say things their writers didn’t intend to say:

Still in her nightgown, the police marched Julie to the patrol car.

The writer obviously meant to say that the police didn’t even allow Julie to get dressed before they took her away. The writer probably wanted the reader to feel indignant at their lack of consideration for Julie’s sense of decency. Instead, the writer said that the police were in Julie’s nightgown. The reader can’t be certain whether Julie was in there with them or not. In either case, the reader will likely react to the image the sentence creates with laughter, not indignation. The writer should have said,

“The police marched Julie, still in her nightgown, down the steps.”

This example suggests a general rule: put modifiers as close as possible to the words or phrases they modify – generally right before them.  Practice doing that with the following sentences.

Practice

1. After raising the Titanic, hundreds of jewels were found by the salvage crew.

2. Gussied up like a cheap strumpet, the principal sent the teenager home to change into more appropriate clothing.

3. While walking to work, the birds singing were what I noticed.

4. For all his brilliance, happiness was never found by Cole Porter.

5. After giving his speech, the audience reaction was less than pleasing to Jason.

6. With several young puppies, little rest is granted to the mother Collie.

7. After winning the contest, the prize was quite a disappointment. (Obviously, you’ll need to give a name to the person who found the prize disappointing.)

8. Shana saw with her mother several insurance salesmen. (Two possible rewrites, one more interesting than the other)

9. With two of her kits playing, I saw the mother fox outside her den.

10. Under three different sets of titles Len Deighton has written the same three spy novel plots three times.

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Writing Is Simple

“Writing is one of the most easy, pain-free, and happy ways to pass the time in all the arts. . . . Sometimes, it is true, agony visits the head of a writer. At these moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and, of course, ultimately denied.”

–Steve Martin, “Writing Is Easy!” Pure Drivel, p.5

Probably you have been forced to write during your school years, so you already know that writing is not easy. It requires that you put what’s in your head and heart into a code – whatever language you happen to speak – so that other people, who are not inside either of those organs, can understand what’s in there. Each of those other people knows some of the code, and every one of them understands every word of the code differently. Not easy? Impossible.

Hitting a decent crosscourt backhand shot on a tennis court is simple. Writing a sentence that can be understood by most readers is simple. Neither one is easy.

Both require practice. Note Hemingway’s comments in an interview with George Plimpton:

Hemingway:
I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer:
Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway:
Getting the words right.

When Hemingway was trying to get the words right on that page, he had already become an internationally known correspondent for some of the best American, Canadian and European newspapers. He had published a collection of short stories and his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. A successful professional writer, and there he was, rewriting one page 39 times, “getting the words right.” What could he have meant?  What can we learn from it?

He did not mean making the words complicated, difficult, unusual, exotic. He once said of his fellow writer William Faulkner, “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.” Another fellow writer, Katherine Anne Porter, agreed with Hemingway: “But there is a basic pure human speech that exists in every language. And that is the language of the poet and the writer. . . . You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand. . . . ”  So did the poet William Carlos Williams: “I couldn’t speak like the academy. It had to be modified by the conversation about [around] me. As Marianne Moore [a fellow poet)] used to say, a language dogs and cats could understand.” [Plimpton]

That would be a simple language. Simple doesn’t mean easy.

“Anybody can play weird, that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple – awesomely simple – that’s creativity.”

–Charles Mingus’ response to a reporter asking about creativity.

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Commas and Periods by Ear

Commas and periods are the two punctuation marks drawn directly from speech. A comma means, “That’s the end of that part of the thought, but it’s not the end of the sentence yet.” A period means,”That’s the end of this sentence.” In speech, we make commas by pausing without dropping our voices in pitch, and we make periods by both pausing and dropping our voices in pitch. (“Pitch” means how high or Iow a tone sounds.)

1. Read the following paragraph aloud and practice hearing the pauses without drop in pitch (commas) and the pauses where the pitch drops (periods).

Finally it is time to leave. Now the camera is in the front seat of the car, sitting where Kelvin is sitting. We see what he sees. Slowly the terrain changes. Winding, wooded roads give way to straight, one-lane roads. The foliage recedes from the highway. Then we are on a freeway. The environment has become speeding cars, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels. Soon, we are in a city. There is noise, light, buildings everywhere. The natural landscape is submerged, invisible. Homocentric landscapes, abstract reality prevail. From there it’s a fast cut to space. . . .  [Mander]

2. Read the same paragraph aloud, but substitute nonsense syllables for the words. This will help you concentrate on the pitch differences.
3. Practice listening to the following unpunctuated paragraphs aloud, putting in the commas and periods as you hear them.

The war bit into Fields deeply he discussed it at great length one afternoon with Lionel and John Barrymore Gene Fowler and John Decker the artist their hatred of the foe provoked them to have quite a few drinks and the drinks increased their hatred of the foe around four o’clock in full battle humor they got in a car and drove down to enlist at the time besides being fairly well along in both years and alcohol most of them were suffering from some incapacitating illness for example it was thought best to take Lionel Barrymore’s wheelchair along in case they got immediate overseas assignment his colleagues assisted him from the car to his chair after which they pushed him in the girl at the recruiting center after her first shock had them fill out several forms upon which she noted many doubtful entries John Barrymore gave his age as 19 Fowler outlined somewhat more military experience than General Pershing’s and Fields requested duty as a commando the girl looked them over carefully then made what all of them cherished as a topping example of spot gubernatorial wit “who sent you she said the enemy? [Taylor]

To a mechanic a “shot” fan belt was a worn one to a bartender a “shot” was a one-ounce glass of whiskey to a decathlon champion a “shot” was an iron ball to be thrown as far as he could throw it to a tennis player a “shot” was what he stroked over a net to a junkie or a physician a “shot” was an injection by hypodermic syringe to a motion-picture director a “shot” was any given camera setup and to Morris Bloom a “shot” was something fired from a gun you could buy off a shelf like a ripe banana I was very happy I wasn’t learning English as a foreign language I was far too old to be taking a shot at such a formidable task. [McBain]

Punctuation Marks to Avoid at Almost All Costs

The semicolon

The only remaining use for this punctuation mark is to separate independent clauses within the same sentence:

I fought the law; the law won.

This is correct, but semicolons seem to affect people who start using them much as heroin or cocaine affect people who start using them. Addiction rapidly ensues. You never have to use a semicolon, and you’ll be better off if you never develop a taste for them. The example sentence can also be written in two preferable ways:

I fought the law, and the law won.

I fought the law. The law won.

The exclamation point

This mark is used to represent a very loud voice, raised to emphasize the importance of what is being said. If you say what you have to say simply and clearly, its importance will be clear. You will do little writing that requires you to holler at your reader.

Plurals as Plurals

If you write, “A sailor is at the mercy of the sea,” you mean – as any reader will understand – that all sailors are at the mercy of the sea. A common convention in English writing allows you to use a single subject to represent all subjects of its category.

Don’t do it – not because it’s “incorrect,” but because it’s likely to get you into trouble with pronouns and verbs later in the sentence. If you mean to make a statement about a group, make it in the plural.

a. A person can’t always get what he or she wants.

b. People can’t always get what they want.

a. When an athlete takes steroids, he or she also takes on long-term risks.

b. When athletes take steroids, they also take on long-term risks.

(Anyone, everyone, someone, no one, anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody – these are all singular.)

a. Anybody who bets on baseball games should have his or her head examined.

b. People who bet on baseball games should have their heads examined.

Put the next three sentences into plural form:

1. Everyone was crowded around the coat rack in search of his or her coat.
2. The cover does not tell much about the contents of a book.
3. A mammal is special form of vertebrate.

ING

Present participles are verbs with an “ing” stuck on the end: Walk (verb) — Walking (present participle). A participle is not a verb. It may form part of a verb (hence its name, participle), but it can never act as a verb alone, so it leads to many sentence fragments and other grammatical errors. ‘Walking down the road to the cafe” is a fragment – it has neither subject nor verb. Use verbs, not present participles. Learn to notice ‘ing,” and get rid of it.

1. Walking down the street, the birds sang to me.
2. Before making his presentation, the electricity failed.
3. He saw her waiting for the bus. (Who was waiting for the bus?)
4. Sending the letter, noting its contents before he did. (Who sent the letter?)
5. The new part failed immediately. Leading to another two-day shutdown.

Keep It Short: Some Horrible Examples

It was in a bemusement without heat or envy at a condition which could supply a man with the obvious leisure and means to spend his days painting such as this and his evenings playing the piano and feeding liquor to people whom he ignored and (in one case, at least) whose names he did not even bother to catch.

–William Faulkner, The Wild Palms, Random House, 1939

The views which he sometimes had of his own unworthiness, and of the excellency and glory of the plan of salvation, as they are recorded by himself, are so far beyond anything that falls within the experience of ordinary Christians, that they are no doubt often contemplated with surprise, and sometimes, perhaps, may even be thought to savor of enthusiasm; but it admits of no question that they were not only the genuine workings of faith, but that they marked a maturity and elevation of Christian character that cast the highest attainments even of the better part of Christians in the shade.

–“Jonathan Edwards,” The Christian Parlor Magazine

But as to a woman of sense and spirit, the admiration of even the noblest and most gifted man, is esteemed as nothing, so long as she remains conscious of possessing no directly influencing and practical sorcery over his soul; and as notwithstanding all his intellectual superiority to his mother, Pierre, through the unavoidable weakness of inexperienced and unexpanded youth, was strangely docile to the maternal tuitions in nearly all the thing which thus far had any ways interested or affected him; therefore it was, that to Mary Glendinning this reverence of Pierre was invested with all the proudest delights and witcheries of self-complacency, which it is possible for the most conquering virgin to feel.

–Herman Melville, Pierre, HarperCollins, 199

Topic and Topic Sentence

The emergence of AIDS, Ebola, and any number of other rain-forest agents appears to be a natural consequence of the ruin of the tropical biosphere. The emerging viruses are surfacing from ecologically damaged parts of the earth. Many of them come form the tattered edges of tropical rain forest, or they come from tropical savanna that is being settled rapidly by people. The tropical rain forests are the deep reservoirs of life on the planet, containing most of the world’s plant and animal species. The rain forests are also its largest reservoirs of viruses, since all living things carry viruses. When viruses come out of an ecosystem, they tend to spread in waves through the human population, like echoes from the dying biosphere. Here are the names of some emerging viruses: Lassa. Rift Valley. Oropouche. Rocio. Q. Guanarito. VEE. Monkeypox. Dengue. Chikungonya. The hanta-viruses. Machupo. Junin. The rabieslike strains Mokola and Duvenhage. LeDantec. The Kyasanur Forest brain virus. Then there is HIV – which is very much an emerging virus, because its penetration of the human species is increasing rapidly, with no end in sight. The Semliki Forest agent. Crimean-congo. Sindbis.O’nyongnyong. Nameless Sao Paulo. Marburg. Ebola Sudan. Ebola Zaire. Ebola Reston.

–Richard Preston, The Hot Zone

Put your topic sentence first in the paragraph. It will tell your readers what to expect in the rest of the paragraph. If your paragraph is long or full of detailed examples, like this one, it will give your readers a place to look back to and remember why they’re reading what they’re reading.

The Introductory Paragraph: What, Who, Why?

In your opening paragraph, particularly in a letter or e-mail, you should answer three questions for your readers: What  is the subject about which you’re writing, who are you – that is, why are you qualified to comment on the subject – and why are you writing about this subject?

Dear Postmaster Schentag:

I write to recognize the excellence of a longtime USPS employee, Walt Pryor. Mr. Pryor has been stationed at the North End Office at 2940 North Prospect for many years, and is soon slated to retire from the service. [These two sentences answer what and why.] I have observed Mr. Pryor at work for the past 14 years since I moved to my present address. Since I operate a mail-order used book business, I am a nearly daily user of the North End Office, so I’ve had the opportunity to see Mr. Pryor at work during many peak mailing hours. [These two sentences answer who.]

He has been consistently efficient, calm, good-humored and unflappable during the busiest times. He is one of those rare individuals who can conduct pleasant, humane conversations with his customers without losing his concentration on the postal task at hand. He is extraordinarily knowledgeable of postal regulations. In fact, I have never heard him asked a question to which he did not have the answer. This deep knowledge of his job allows him to work steadily and efficiently without ever evincing any sense of hurry or stress.

Walt Pryor, in short, is not only a superior worker, but a genuine human. After his retirement, I suggest that the USPS ought to consider hiring him as a consultant in the training of personnel.

Sincerely,
Malcolm McCollum

Summation – How to Conclude a Paragraph

(The writer has taken to reading fishing books in order to learn how to catch a mammoth trout he’s discovered in a small pond near his house.)

The angler had metamorphosed into the ichthyologist, and the prevailing prose reflected the change – if mud can be said to reflect. I found myself correcting it as I had done freshman themes in my years as a professor. You had to hack your way through it as through a thicket. Participles dangled, person and number got separated and lost, cliches were rank, thesaurusitis and sesquipedalianism ran rampant, and the rare unsplit infinitive seemed out of place, a rose among nettles. Yet, instead of weeding their gardens, these writers endeavored to grow exotics in them: orchids, passion flowers. Inside each of them was imprisoned a poet, like the prince inside the toad. What came out was a richness of embarrassments: shoddy prose patched with purple – beautifully written without first being well written.

–William Humphrey, My Moby Dick, Doubleday, 1978

At the end of the paragraph, sum up and reinforce the point of the paragraph. Again, you will make your readers’ lives easier if you lend them this helping hand. People tend to like people who make their lives easier.

Simplicity and Brevity

“As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say, “In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that” than to say “I think”…. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

“Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,

nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet

riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but

time and chance happeneth to them all.

“Here it is in modern English:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels

the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities

exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity,

but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must

invariably be taken into account.

–George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Collected Essays, Volume IV,  Harcourt, Brace, 1968

Simple does not mean easy. As Orwell points out, using cliches (“think outside the box,” “at the end of the day”) is much easier than actually imagining, and putting into clear, simple words, what you are trying to say. The disadvantages of this practice are that both you and your readers may end up with no clear idea of what you are trying to say.

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Chances are, you won’t grow up wanting to write when you don’t have to. You can take this chapter, then, as a sort of first-aid kit, to be kept in your trunk in case of emergencies. I still think it’s full of useful advice for anyone who has to write for any reason, as many people have to. I hope it also illustrates that paying attention to language and how it works can provide some fun. Work is more fun than fun.