usage

Steven Pinker: ‘Many of the alleged rules of writing are actually superstitions’

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This post by Steven Pinker originally appeared on The Guardian on 10/6/15.

Bad English has always been with us, but clarity and style are far more important than observing dusty usage diktats

People often ask me why I followed my 2011 book on the history of violence, The Better Angels of Our Nature, with a writing style manual. I like to say that after having written 800 pages on torture, rape, world war, and genocide, it was time to take on some really controversial topics like fused participles, dangling modifiers, and the serial comma.

It’s not much of an exaggeration. After two decades of writing popular books and articles about language, I’ve learned that people have strong opinions on the quality of writing today, with almost everyone finding it deplorable. I’ve also come to realise that people are confused about what exactly they should deplore. Outrage at mispunctuation gets blended with complaints about bureaucratese and academese, which are conflated with disgust at politicians’ evasions, which in turn are merged with umbrage at an endless list of solecisms, blunders, and peeves.

I can get as grumpy as anyone about bad writing. But as a scientist who studies language for a living (and who has had to unlearn the bad habits of academic writing) I long ago developed my own opinions on why so much prose is so egregious.

 

Read the full post on The Guardian.

The Old Editor Brings It

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This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 10/5/15.

The question: I believe you are an expert at this. Please explain the usage of take and bring! I am driven crazy by what, seems to me, is the mixed and incorrect usage of these words.

The Old Editor answers: What causes distress is a schoolroom oversimplification, the curse of English grammar.

Your teachers likely told you that bring is for movement toward the speaker, take for movement away from the speaker. This is apt in many cases.

But that distinction collapses when, as Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says, when the point of view is irrelevant. This will require some explication.

Grammar Girl gives an example: “The simple rules fall apart when you consider an event in the future where nobody has arrived yet. Do you bring rum cake to the school bazaar or do you take rum cake to the school bazaar? It simply depends on where you want to place the emphasis of the sentence—which perspective you want to adopt.”

 

Read the full post on The Baltimore Sun.

 

You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Chances

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This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 5/7/15.

Yesterday I tweeted: “ ‘Staunch the flow’? Am staunchly upholding a preference for ‘stanch.’ #amediting”

Dai Hawkins, a regular and thoughtful reader, promptly pointed out that the history in the Oxford English Dictionary shows that the two words have been functionally interchangeable for centuries. He later also cited Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage to similar effect.

He was quite right. To insist on limiting staunch as an adjective meaning “steadfast” and stanch as a verb meaning “to stop the flow of” is an arbitrary choice, though the American Heritage Dictionary’s usage note indicates that these are still the most common senses in the United States.

Editing often means making arbitrary choices. A house style merely indicates that when there is more than one acceptable way to capitalize or abbreviate, we arbitrarily pick one to avoid distracting the reader with needless variants. But when we have pairs of words with blurred meanings, as staunch/stanch, the arbitrary choice becomes more difficult.

 

Read the full post on The Baltimore Sun.

 

The Weird Agonies And Little-Known Science Of Wordnesia

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This article by Matthew J.X. Malady originally appeared on Slate on 3/4/15.

One hour and seven minutes into the decidedly hit-or-miss 1996 comedy Black Sheep, the wiseass sidekick character played by David Spade finds himself at an unusually pronounced loss for words. While riding in a car driven by Chris Farley’s character, he glances at a fold-up map and realizes he somehow has become unfamiliar with the name for paved driving surfaces. “Robes? Rouges? Rudes?” Nothing seems right. Even when informed by Farley that the word he’s looking for is roads, Spade’s character continues to struggle: “Rowds. Row-ads.” By this point, he’s become transfixed. “That’s a total weird word,” he says, “isn’t it?”

Now, it’s perhaps necessary to mention that, in the context of the film, Spade’s character is high off nitrous oxide that has leaked from the car’s engine boosters. But never mind that. Row-ad-type word wig outs similar to the one portrayed in that movie are things that actually happen, in real life, to people with full and total control over their mental capacities. These wordnesias sneak up on us at odd times when we’re writing or reading text.

Here’s how they work: Every now and again, for no good or apparent reason, you peer at a standard, uncomplicated word in a section of text and, well, go all row-ads on it. If you’re typing, that means inexplicably blanking on how to spell something easy like cake or design. The reading version of wordnesia occurs when a common, correctly spelled word either seems as though it can’t possibly be spelled correctly, or like it’s some bizarre combination of letters you’ve never before seen—a grouping that, in some cases, you can’t even imagine being the proper way to compose the relevant term.

 

Read the full article on Slate.

 

Are You In Style?

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This post by Kate Siegel Bandos originally appeared on San Francisco Book Review on 2/5/15.

Fashion and other popular magazines, TV shows, and numerous websites tell us how we should be dressing, doing our hair, and decorating our homes so that we are always IN STYLE. What about publishers? Are you paying attention to being up-to-date with writing styles?

If you are working with a seasoned editor, hopefully they know the latest style rules for writing. Of course, there is more than one “style” book that details the dos and don’ts of writing. However, you will always be safe—especially when writing materials for journalists, if you follow the AP (Associated Press) style guidelines.

How writers and journalists feel about commas is almost as divisive as the views of Democrats and Republicans. The Oxford comma (also known as the “serial comma” or “Harvard comma”) is the name given to the optional final comma in a series. In the phrase “ham, egg, and chips,” it’s the comma between “egg” and “and.” While the AP Stylebook advises against it, others insist on it because it makes the meaning clearer. Like everything that is optional, it has its adherents and its detractors. But make a decision and be consistent.

For the 2014 edition of AP Stylebook, there were five key changes that you should be aware of for both your book(s) and all media materials:

 

Read the full post on San Francisco Book Review.

 

I Don't Tolerate Poor Grammar

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This essay by Cheryl Connor originally appeared on Forbes on 10/21/12.

And I’m not alone. Even the Wall Street Journal agrees.

Poor grammar and writing is an epidemic in the workplace. While the era of social media and texting has caused many to believe it’s a problem they couldn’t resolve, a number of businesses are finally finding the nerve to crack down. A recent HBR article by Kyle Wiens, I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar, noted wryly that in his company, anyone who thinks an apostrophe was one of the 12 apostles or who tosses commas around with the abandon of a shotgun would be fortunate to find their way to the foyer before he shows them the door.

His article drew 3,013 comments (ironically, many of them taking him to task for ending a sentence with a preposition and referring to “company” in the plural, a convention that while common in American English is apparently still frowned upon overseas.) Which brings up another point – have you ever noticed how much argument a discussion of grammar inspires? It seems the “grammar police” are most vigilant about the 1-2 archaic rules they hold dear, while they blithely break or ignore the dozens of rules they don’t know.

 

Read the full post on Forbes.

 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Grammar

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This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 10/3/14.

Online, discussions of grammar tend to display confusion about what the subject is, and the usual admixture of rubbish and emotion does not help.

There is, of course, the confusion between grammar as grammarians and linguists discuss it technically, and spelling and punctuation. But other, unstated meanings are often involved.

A post by Lucy Ferriss at Lingua Franca, “Grammar: The Movie,” identifies some of the additional meanings that surface in a new documentary.

 

Spelling errors: If you write it’s for its in your cover letter or resume, or confuse there/their/they’re, you’re probably not going to get the job. But these are merely spelling errors, as likely the result of carelessness as ignorance. Of course, they’re obvious, so easy to spot that even a manager can see them, but they are still trivial.

 

Bad writing: Lord knows there is plenty of slack, inexpert, and impenetrable writing to be found, but that is not a problem for grammarians to address. Academic writing, for example, is notoriously wordy and opaque, but it is usually grammatical.

 

Read the full post on The Baltimore Sun.

 

Science Says You Can Split Infinitives and Use the Passive Voice

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This post by Chris Mooney originally appeared on Mother Jones on 10/3/14.

Steven Pinker explains why you don’t have to follow bogus grammar rules.

Leave it to a scientist to finally explain how to kill off bad writing.

In his new book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Steven Pinker basically outdoes Strunk and White. The celebrated Harvard cognitive scientist and psycholinguist explains how to write in clear, “classic” prose that shares valuable information with clarity but never condescension. And he tells us why so many of the tut-tutting grammar “rules” that we all think we’re supposed to follow—don’t split infinitives, don’t use the passive voice, don’t end a sentence with a preposition—are just nonsense.

“There are so many bogus rules in circulation that kind of serve as a tactic for one-upmanship,” explains Pinker on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. “They’re a way in which one person can prove that they’re more sophisticated or literate than someone else, and so they brandish these pseudo-rules.”

Unlike past sages of style, Pinker approaches grammar from a scientific perspective, as a linguist. And that’s what leads him to the unavoidable conclusion that language is never set in stone; rather, it is a tool that is constantly evolving and changing, continually adding new words and undoing old rules and assumptions. “When it comes to correct English, there’s no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum,” writes Pinker in The Sense of Style.

Indeed, Pinker notes with amusement in the book that in every era, there is always somebody complaining about how all the uncouth speakers of the day are wrecking the Queen’s English. It’s basically the linguistic equivalent of telling the kids to get off your lawn. Why does this happen? “As a language changes from beneath our feet, we feel the sands shifting and always think that it’s a deterioration,” explains Pinker on the podcast. “Whereas, everything that’s in the language was an innovation at some point in the history of English. If you’re living through the transition, it feels like a deterioration even though it’s just a change.”

 

Click here to read the full post or listen to the podcast on Mother Jones.

 

You’ve Been Writing Sentences Wrong All Your Life! Find Out Why

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This post by K.M. Weiland originally appeared on her Helping Writers Become Authors site on 9/21/14.

The sentence. It’s the building block of all books. Without it, we may have a poem, a song, a movie, a painting, an interpretative dance. But we sure as scuttlebutt don’t have a book. Most of us learn how to write (and diagram!) sentences in grade school. Out of the many potential pitfalls of writing a story, surely the simple sentence isn’t likely to be one of them. But what if I said you’ve been writing sentences wrong all your life?

And I’m not talking grammar here, folks. You can have a perfectly parsed, perfectly punctuated sentence that would have that grade school teacher of yours blushing for pride—and it can still be wrong as wrong for your novel. (I’m also not talking motivation-reaction units, or MRUs, which I’ve addressed elsewhere.)

Why We’re All Writing Sentences Wrong
So what’s with this pandemic of poor sentences? Why are even the best diagrammers amongst us at risk?

Basically, it all comes down to this: we totally take the sentence for granted. The very fact that we’ve all been writing more-or-less grammatically correct sentences for most of our lives means we don’t even think about what we’re doing. Subject? Check. Predicate? Check. Period at the end? Check. Done.

That may be good enough for your latest email to the bank. But it’s not good enough for an author.

 

Click here to read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors.

 

12 Most Go-To Grammar Tips

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This post by Becky Gaylord originally appeared on 12 Most on 8/19/14.

Most of us must communicate in writing — not necessarily with paper and a writing instrument anymore, yet digital media has changed only the tools we use. In fact, as new-fashioned means of communication have multiplied, so have demands for the old-fashioned skill of conveying information in writing.

See, we still write cover letters, memos and notes. But now, we also write status updates, blog posts, emails, online comments, tweets, bullets for slide presentations, captions for visuals to share on social media, and so on.

In nearly all cases (text messages aside) correct grammar matters. This is especially true if communicating for work or to a professional audience. Using correct grammar begets credibility. Think of it as an extension of appearance: Spiffy beats sloppy.

The goal, though, is to be spiffy, swiftly. And that’s the purpose of this post: It’s an organized, streamlined guide. It’s alphabetized. And, it gives one-word answers. (Example sentences follow each answer, giving context.)

So, next time you need grammar help on the fly, here are 12 go-to tips!

 

1. Accept/Except

Accept = Receive
I must accept blame for the accident because I ran the red light.
He accepted the award on behalf of the whole group.

Except = Excluding
Everyone is going except Harry.
I like all vegetables except broccoli.

 

2. Advice/Advise

Advice = Noun
The advice you gave me was really useful.
No, I don’t need, or want, your advice.

Advise = Verb
He advised her to be careful in dealing with the complicated situation.
I don’t know anything about it; please advise me how to proceed.

 

Click here to read the full post on 12 Most.

 

Our Use Of Little Words Can, Uh, Reveal Hidden Interests

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This article by Alix Spiegel originally appeared on NPR. Its content and conclusions can be very helpful when it comes to writing dialog that reveals character.

One Friday night, 30 men and 30 women gathered at a hotel restaurant in Washington, D.C. Their goal was love, or maybe sex, or maybe some combination of the two. They were there for speed dating.

The women sat at separate numbered tables while the men moved down the line, and for two solid hours they did a rotation, making small talk with people they did not know, one after another, in three-minute increments.

I had gone to record the night, which was put on by a company called Professionals in the City, and what struck me was the noise in the room. The sound of words, of people talking over people talking over people talking. It was a roar.

What were these people saying?

And what can we learn from what they are saying?

That is why I called James Pennebaker, a psychologist interested in the secret life of pronouns.

About 20 years ago Pennebaker, who’s at the University of Texas, Austin, got interested in looking more closely at the words that we use. Or rather, he got interested in looking more closely at a certain subset of the words that we use: Pennebaker was interested in function words.

For those of you like me — the grammatically challenged — function words are the smallish words that tie our sentences together.

 

Click here to read the full article on NPR.

 

Bubble Vocabulary: The Words You Almost Know, Sometimes Use, But Are Secretly Unsure Of.

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This post by Seth Stevenson originally appeared on Slate on 4/29/14.

Shibboleth. Casuistry. Recondite.

A little while back, I was chatting with a friend when he described a situation as “execrable.” He pronounced it “ex-EH-crable.” I’d always thought it was “EX-ecrable.” But execrable is a word I’d mostly just read in books, had rarely heard spoken, and had never once, in my whole life, uttered aloud—in large part because I wasn’t exactly sure how to say it, and because the nuances of its definition (beyond “bad”) escaped me.

Since we have a trusting, forthright relationship, I decided to broach the topic. “Is that how you pronounce that word?” I asked. “And what exactly does it mean?” Here my friend confessed he was not 100 percent certain on either count. He added that, earlier that same day, he’d pronounced avowed with three syllables and then immediately wondered if it might only have two.

We’ve all experienced moments in which we brush up against the ceilings of our personal lexicons. I call it “bubble vocabulary.” Words on the edge of your ken, whose definitions or pronunciations turn out to be just out of grasp as you reach for them. The words you basically know but, hmmm, on second thought, maybe haven’t yet mastered?

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes a Bubble Vocabulary quiz, on Slate.

 

The Secret Rules of Adjective Order

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This post by Katy Waldman originally appeared on Slate on 8/6/14.

It is a lovely warm August day outside, and I am wearing a green loose top. Does the second part of that sentence sound strange to you? Perhaps you think I should have written “loose green top.” You’re not wrong (though not entirely right, because descriptivist linguistics): An intuitive code governs the way English speakers order adjectives. The rules come so naturally to us that we rarely learn about them in school, but over the past few decades language nerds have been monitoring modifiers, grouping them into categories, and straining to find logic in how people instinctively rank those categories.

If you’re someone whose reflexes scatter the moment you try to lift the veil on your unconscious, this fascinating little-known field (little-known fascinating field?) will drive you nuts. On the other hand, thinking about how adjectives work may bounce you to an epistemological Zen state, wherein you can contemplate amid flutes what it means to partake of Redness and whether former child actress means something different from child former actress. Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.

Maybe I am overqualifying this article about qualifiers (or is that the point?).

 

Click here to read the full post on Slate.

 

The Art Of Using Correct Verb Tenses In Your Writing

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This post by Writer’s Relief Staff originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 4/2/14.

Enforcing consistent verb tense in your writing is crucial. Nothing makes an editor’s brain hurt more than trying to read through distracting or confusing verb tenses. If one sentence has so many varying tenses that readers don’t know if you’re coming or going, you can be sure your work is going to end up in the editor’s reject pile.

But choosing the right verb tense isn’t always easy. Let’s start with the basics:

The Simple form (aka stick-figure art)
Past: I drew.
Present: I draw.
Future: I will draw.

Jake drew a picture of Mary.

So simple and easy, you’re probably thinking: Thanks, Captain Obvious. So let’s take it up a notch. What if you want to imply action that ends in a specific time frame? Then, you would use the Perfect form:

 

Click here to read the full post on The Huffington Post.

 

While You Are Out…

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This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 5/23/14.

The holiday weekend has started, and many of you are undoubtedly trapped in slow-moving traffic on your way to the beach or the mountains. And because it’s a holiday weekend, those of you who are not trapped on the road won’t be reading anyhow, but enjoying summery drinks on the verandah.

That makes it more the pity that you will be missing these links to some choice pieces of writing about language by my friends and colleagues. Check them out when you get back.

Item: So you think you know something about grammar? Prove it by taking the Stroppy Editor’s grammar quiz.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes links to four more items of interest on the topic of language, on The Baltimore Sun.