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Grammar and style guide by Laurent Grenier,
author of the book A REASON FOR LIVING
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Listed below are keywords or key groups of words that can be used to launch a search with the function Find (Ctrl+F). Such keywords as “compound” and “punctuation” will yield many results; just keep pressing Enter on your keyboard to jump from one result to another until you hit upon the one that is relevant to your particular grammatical or stylistic problem (note that any of the following keywords or key groups of words can be used effectively, if sometimes less narrowly, as fragments; for example, instead of launching a search with “quotation” or “farther and further” you can launch it with “quotat” or “farther a”).
1) Words and expressions: adverb, such as very – after and before – among – and, or, or nor – all – antithetical contrast – be – begin with "but." – between – can I, will you, or should we – each – each or every – earth, moon, and sun – east – either ... or and not only … but also – emphatic conjunctions such as however and therefore – ever and never – every other – even – farther and further – fewer – for example, that is, or namely – get – "he or she" – "he wondered" locution – however – if and whether – if-clause – if-this-then-that statement – in the event that – less – -ly adverbs – more, most, and least – more than one – much – myself – neither – nonparallelisms with rather than – or or nor – providing – sentences with that omitted – synonyms for "he said." – than is a conjunction – that and which – that and who – that which – the "he said" locution – the object of to, between, or any other preposition – the subjective whoever or the objective whomever – "there was" constructions – therefore, however – together with, along with, as well as, in addition to, or plus – too-clause – use who to refer to – west – what is – what may be used in – who and whom – wish – yes, maybe, and no
2) Convention and punctuation matters: acronym – abbreviation – address – amount – attribution – bracket – capitalize – century – city – colon – comma – compound – contractions – dash – date – decade – decimal – decisions – define a word in text – dialogue – ellipsis – elliptical – exclamation – figures or spelled-out numbers – foreign phrases – fraction – generic term – historical period – holiday – holy day – hyphen – hyphenation – initial – instruction or command – interjection – interruption – italics – kinship term – list – multiple question marks – name – names of governmental and judicial bodies – number – paraphrased quotation – paraphrased statement – parentheses – parenthetical – percentage – period – popular name – punctuate – punctuation – request – question – quotation – quoting speech – raised-eyebrow quotation marks – semicolon – setting off words under discussion – slash – state – temperature – time of day – title – treating a given compound consistently – vowel combination – weights and measures – well-known proverb or saying – years
3) Grammar matters: alternate subjects – a noun to be modified by another noun – apposite – case – clause – collective noun – conjunction – conjunctive – dangling participial phrase – defining constructions – end with preposition – error of agreement – error of parallelism – faulty parallelism – good usage – grammar – gerund – infinitive – introductory – linking verb – noun – object complement – omission – omit – one-idea subjects – phrase – plural and singular – possessive – predicate – preposition – present progressive – pronoun – relative pronoun – relative times – sentence – singular idea – spelling – standard word order – subjunctive – syllepsis – tense – the implied subject of the introductory phrase – time clause – unchangeable condition – universal truths – verb
4) Style matters: 1 + 1 = ½ – a clear English sentence – active verbs – active voice – abstraction or vagueness – abstract – adjectives and adverbs – adjective that exists solely as decoration – amateur – ambiguity – amusements – a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning – a strong, distinctive, authoritative writing voice – avoid – background information – balance between dialogue and beats – banality – beat – breaking up a very long paragraph into more manageable chunks – break your writing up on a larger scale – breathing space – bring your ear into play – chance to breathe – characterization – clumsiness – clumsy and wordy past perfect tense – clichés – composition – condescending – consistency – connotation – constant interruptions – creation of characters – define the action without overdefining it – definite assertions – describing your character's emotions – explanations – dialect – digression – don’t overstate – draft – enthusiasm – exposition in disguise – fiction – figures of speech – first person, third person, and omniscient – flashbacks – flatness – flourish – flowery, poetic figures of speech – formality – four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity – freshness – fresh words and images – generalities – giving us your character's views of the world rather than your views of your character – good editor – good style – good writing – hack's favorite constructions – how to sell – immediacy – irritating the reader – lecture – less is more – manageable chunks – memoir – monologue – mix it up – multiple meanings – narration and description – narrative – obscurity – opportunities for misreading – over-explaining – passive verb – passive voice – patronize – perspectives and tones – pet interests – physical action – physical description – pointless, distracting, clichéd – precise verbs – profanity – proportion problems – putting some distance between yourself and your manuscript – redundancy – redundant phrases – repetition – resist the urge to explain – revision – rewriting – running commentary – sales – short sentence – short words – show rather than tell – specific detail – split infinitive – squinting modifier – step by step – stick to what you know – stiffness – strained or forced or awkward – strip every sentence to its cleanest components – subtle approach – summarizing – surprise – turn readers off – unity – vague words – varying the rhythm – verbs that can say exactly what you want – when you fill in all the details – white space on the page – wordy phrase
STYLE GUIDE
Use among if more than two items are discussed.
Incorrect: She had to choose between three options.
Correct: She had to choose among three options.
You may use between in referring to three or more people or things if each is considered singly and separately.
Correct: Tensions between Canada, Mexico, and the United States eased following the implementation of the NAFTA agreement.
Capitalize the first word of all sentences, including sentences within sentences.
- The rule is, Never run near the swimming pool.
Also capitalize a complete sentence that follows a colon.
- He had only one goal: He was going to become president of the firm.
You should not, however, capitalize a sentence that is enclosed within parentheses and inserted within another sentence.
- Ellie slipped on her velvet heels (she at last had a reason to wear them) and left for the club.
Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation even if it is not a complete sentence.
- When I asked Mr. Wilson where he was going, he said, “To the mall.”
Capitalize holidays and holy days, including the word day when it is used as part of a holiday’s name.
- Labor Day
- Fourth of July
- Ash Wednesday
Capitalize popular names for historical periods, but do not enclose them in quotation marks.
Incorrect: the “dark ages”
Correct: the Dark Ages
Position a colon following a question after the question mark.
- What do you really mean?: It was a question she often asked herself while talking with her father.
Place a comma before a coordinate conjunction (e.g., and, but, or, nor) when it links two independent clauses. (A clause is independent if it could stand alone as a sentence.)
- Mitchell spent a fortune on his computer, but his desk was a bargain.
Use a semicolon instead if a comma appears within one of the clauses.
- Mitchell spent a fortune on his computer; but his desk, which he found in a thrift store, was a bargain.
If the clauses are short and closely related, you may omit the comma between them.
- Mother talked and I listened.
In a list of three or more things linked by a conjunction, you should place a comma after each item except for the last. Be careful not to omit the serial comma – that is, the comma before the conjunction.
Incorrect: We need a hammer, saw and screwdriver to finish the project.
Correct: We need a hammer, saw, and screwdriver to finish the project.
If a comma appears within any of the items in a list, use semicolons instead of commas to separate the listed items.
Incorrect: Our best players are Bobby, the shortstop, Joyce, the catcher, and Becky, the left fielder.
Correct: Our best players are Bobby, the shortstop; Joyce, the catcher; and Becky, the left fielder.
If a list ends with etc., insert a comma after the abbreviation.
- Bring your tent, sleeping bag, backpack, etc., to the ranger’s station.
To alert readers that something has been omitted, insert a comma in place of the missing words.
- Yancy was awarded the trophy for first place; Cynthia, for second place.
In a short sentence with a simple construction, however, the comma can be left out if the missing element is obvious.
- The wind was cold, and the sky dark.
A comma belongs inside a closing quotation mark, even when it is not part of the quotation.
- “He never had a chance,” the soldier muttered.
If the quotation was a question or an exclamation, the question mark or exclamation mark at its end would replace the comma.
- “Did he ever really have a chance?” the soldier asked.
If a compound adjective precedes a noun, hyphenate the words that make it up if it is not obvious that they function as a unit. For example, old car dealer suggests the dealer is elderly, but old-car dealer makes it clear that it is the cars the dealer is selling that are old.
If there is little chance of misreading, you usually do not need to hyphenate a compound adjective before a noun.
Unnecessary hyphens: civil-service job; high-school teacher; real-estate agent
Better: civil service job; high school teacher; real estate agent
Most compound adjectives that include a present or past participle are hyphenated when they appear before a noun.
- far-reaching implications
- chocolate-covered raisins
If the compound appears after the noun it modifies, no hyphen is necessary.
- The implications were far reaching.
- The raisins are chocolate covered.
If a compound’s first word is an adverb ending in ly, it is usually spelled as two words.
- carefully planned agenda
However, if the second half of the compound is hyphenated, a hyphen should also appear between the compound’s components.
- badly-drawn-up contract
When the same word appears at the end of several hyphenated adjectives listed in a row, you can omit the common word from all of the adjectives except the final one. Be sure to retain all of the hyphens, however.
Awkward: The wedding guests were staying in fifth-story, eighth-story, and tenth-story rooms.
Better: The wedding guests were staying in fifth-, eighth-, and tenth-story rooms.
Most compound adjectives that include a number are hyphenated, regardless of whether the number is spelled out or expressed as a numeral.
- three-inch nails
- 190-mile trip
Exceptions are numbers preceded by a dollar sign or followed by the word percent.
- $50 billion budget
- 35 percent growth
Place a semicolon between two sentences connected by a conjunctive adverb. Insert a comma after the adverb if it directly follows the semicolon. Insert one before and after the adverb if it is in another position.
Incorrect: Jaime wrote a novel, however it was never published.
Correct: Jaime wrote a novel; however, it was never published.
Or: Jaime wrote a novel; it was, however, never published.
In text express the day and year of a date in numerals. Spell out and capitalize the name of the month.
Incorrect: He was born on 12/8/60.
Correct: He was born on December 8, 1960.
Or: He was born on 8 December 1960.
The elements of a date are ordered in one of two sequences: day-month-year or month-day-year. Day-month-year dates have no internal punctuation. Month-day-year dates include a comma before and after the year. (If the date is followed by another punctuation mark, however, omit the comma after the year.)
- The school year ran from September 14, 1996, to June 3, 1997.
In a date consisting of only a month and year, do not insert a comma before or after the year.
- The conference was held August 1989 in Cincinnati.
In a date consisting of only a month and day, express the day as a cardinal number (e.g., 2, 17, 28) even though it is read as an ordinal (e.g., 2nd, 17th, 28th).
Incorrect: I will arrive April 18th and return May 1st.
Correct: I will arrive April 18 and return May 1.
If the day stands alone, it may be expressed as an ordinal numeral or spelled out in words.
- I’ll meet with you on the 8th.
- I’ll meet with you on the eighth.
Note that the article the precedes a numbered century unless it is used as an adjective. In that case, insert a hyphen between the number and the word century.
- 12th-century Europe
- eighteenth-century poetry
Decades may be spelled out in lowercase type or expressed as numerals. Whichever style you adopt, use it consistently throughout a document.
Incorrect: the sixties and 1970s
Correct: the sixties and seventies
Or: the 1960s and 1970s
Note that when a decade is represented in numbers, an s should follow the year given. Do not insert an apostrophe between the year and the letter s.
Incorrect: the 1930’s
Correct: the 1930s
Decades are capitalized only when they are part of a popular nickname for a period.
- Gay Nineties
- Roaring Twenties
Years are expressed as numerals unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence. Instead of spelling out a year in this position, try to rephrase the sentence so that the year appears within it.
Awkward: Nineteen eighty-seven saw a plunge in the stock market.
Better: The stock market plunged in 1987.
In years of five or more digits, insert a comma before every three digits, counting from the right. Do not use commas in years with less than five digits.
Incorrect: 1,890; 50000 BC
Correct: 1890; 50,000 BC
When choosing between farther and further, pick farther for a reference to distance and further for all other contexts.
Incorrect: Chicago is further from Dallas than from St. Louis.
Correct: Chicago is farther from Dallas than from St. Louis.
Fewer should be used with a plural noun that describes a group of individual items that can be counted.
Incorrect: Less than 25 people attended the event.
Correct: Fewer than 25 people attended the event.
Less is also the correct choice with a plural noun that describes a single distance, period of time, or sum of money.
- less than 40 miles away
- less than 13 minutes
- less than $760
Spell out and hyphenate simple fractions, such as one-half, two-thirds, and three-eighths. Also spell out any fraction at the beginning of a sentence.
- The glass is one-third full.
- Four-fifths of the class passed the test.
Capitalize the words city and state when they appear as a part of a place name.
New York City; Washington State
But: the city of New York; the state of Washington
The abbreviation U.S. may be used as an adjective, but you should spell out United States when it is used as a noun.
- The U.S. Department of Commerce
- But: The Department of Commerce of the United States
A noun or pronoun that precedes a gerund should be in the possessive case.
Incorrect: Not even a heart attack could curb Eddie eating.
Correct: Not even a heart attack could curb Eddie’s eating.
Exceptions to this rule include indefinite pronouns (e.g., everybody, anyone). Put these in the nominative case when they appear before a gerund.
Incorrect: Have you ever seen anyone’s running as fast as he is?
Correct: Have you ever seen anyone running as fast as he is?
You may also use a nominative before a gerund if the possessive form sounds unduly awkward.
Awkward: He was thrilled by the woman’s asking him out on a date.
Better: He was thrilled by the woman asking him out on a date.
A better solution, though, is to eliminate the gerund by rephrasing the sentence.
- He was thrilled that the woman asked him out on a date.
Infinitives (e.g., to eat) are often used incorrectly in the place of gerunds (e.g., eating).
Incorrect: She had no intention to marry him.
Correct: She had no intention of marrying him.
In speech, the verb get is sometimes used instead of be to form a passive verb. In writing, however, using a form of be is generally preferred.
Informal: Roger got hurt on the construction site.
Better: Roger was hurt on the construction site.
The words if and whether are largely interchangeable. When choosing between them, keep in mind, however, that whether has a more formal tone.
Sometimes, an if clause in the middle of a sentence can be read in more than one way.
Ambiguous: Mr. Thomas needs to know if she’s coming.
In these cases, for clarity, consider either beginning the sentence with the if clause or substituting if with the less ambiguous whether.
Better: If she is coming, Mr. Thomas needs to know.
Or: Mr. Thomas needs to know whether she is coming.
Usually, it is unnecessary to follow whether with the words or not.
Wordy: I don’t care whether or not he attends.
Better: I don’t care whether he attends.
Used in some ways, though, a whether phrase is incomplete without or not.
Unclear: I will support him whether his is telling the truth.
Better: I will support him whether or not he is telling the truth.
If you are in doubt, try substituting if for whether. If the sense of the expression is unchanged, the words or not can be left out.
Compound indefinite pronouns are always spelled as one word. However, if the two words that make up a compound are used instead as an adjective and a noun, they should be spelled as two words.
- Anyone who was interested could attend. [Anyone is used as a pronoun.]
- Any one of those interested could attend. [One is used as a noun and modified by the adjective any.]
Most indefinites are considered singular, except when they stand in for a plural entity. In that case, they should be treated as plural.
- Neither wants to go to the park. [singular]
- Both want to stay home instead. [plural]
The word to may be omitted when an infinitive follows certain verbs, including help:
- I will help mow the lawn.
Reflexive and intensive pronouns should not be used in place of a personal pronoun as the subject of a sentence or as the object of a verb or a preposition.
Incorrect: Herself will be traveling with Hank and myself.
Correct: She will be traveling with Hank and me.
Set off an interjection at the beginning of a sentence with a comma or an exclamation point.
- Well, I never thought of that.
- Goodness! You have certainly grown.
When an exclamation point is used, the word that follows it should be capitalized.
If an interjection appears in the middle of a sentence, insert a comma before and after it.
- I haven’t seen you for, oh, nearly a decade.
Use quotation marks, not italics, to signal that a word is used ironically or figuratively.
By convention, italics are used to set off some special words and terms within sentences, including:
sic in quotations
technical or unfamiliar terms
titles of books and some other creative works
A whole number amount should be expressed as a decimal only if an amount with both dollars and cents appears in the same sentence.
Incorrect: I owe you $4, and Jim owes me $5.23.
Correct: I owe you $4.00, and Jim owes me $5.23.
But: I owe you $4, and Jim owes me $5.
Express rounded amounts of more than $1 million with a numeral preceded by a dollar sign and followed by a word such as million or billion.
Incorrect: 56,000,000 or $56 million dollars
Correct: $56 million
As a general rule, spell out numbers from 0 to 10, and use numerals to express numbers 11 and greater.
- She and her three cousins sent out 125 Christmas cards.
However, always use numerals to express numbers used with fractions, numbers followed by units of measurement, money amounts, dates, percentages, and decimals.
Always spell out a number at the beginning of a sentence. If the number is unwieldy when expressed in words, rephrase the sentence so that the number appears in the middle or at the end.
Incorrect: 1,457 people attended the concert.
Acceptable: One thousand four hundred and fifty-seven people attended the concert.
Better: The concert was attended by 1,457 people.
If a number has five or more digits, insert a comma after every three digits, counting from the right.
Incorrect: 10650; 5188990
Correct: 10,650; 5,188,900
However, do not use commas in numbers of four digits, street numbers, temperatures, telephone numbers, or ZIP codes.
Add the suffixes nd, rd, and th to numerals greater than ten to create their ordinal form.
- Julie placed 12th; James, 23rd; and Patricia, 32nd.
In text, express rounded numbers greater than 1 million with a numeral followed by a word such as million or billion.
Incorrect: Of the nearly 23,000,000 people in the country, only 4,567,988 live in cities.
Correct: Of the nearly 23 million people in the country, only 4,567,988 live in cities.
When a parenthetical statement is an independent sentence, place the punctuation at the end of the sentence and inside the closing parenthesis.
- The girl started to cry. (She had wanted a blue bike, not a red one.)
Insert a period after an initial when it stands in for a personal name.
- W. E. B. Du Bois
Periods are sometimes omitted from a set of initials that are commonly used in place of the name of a well-known figure.
- JFK
- FDR
In a decimal, a period should separate the whole number from the fractional number.
- $345.76
If ellipsis points follow a complete statement, be sure to include four periods after the sentence – one to represent the period needed to punctuate it and three to represent the ellipsis points.
- The memo stated, “The end of the year will soon be here.… Your bonuses will be announced then.”
A request should be punctuated with a period even if it takes the form of a question.
- Will you please fill out this form.
Lowercase kinship terms – such as sister, father, and cousin – unless they are used in place of a name or as part of a name.
Incorrect: Oswald’s Sister met mother and aunt Jane.
Correct: Oswald’s sister met Mother and Aunt Jane.
To make an open or a hyphenated compound plural, change the principal noun in the compound, rather than its modifier, from the singular to the plural form.
- chief of staff, chiefs of staff
- lieutenant colonel, lieutenant colonels
- ex-president, ex-presidents
- mother-in-law, mothers-in-law
Some nouns are identical in their plural and singular forms.
- aircraft
- buffalo
- corps
- series
- species
The indefinite pronoun each does not have a possessive form. To express ownership, use the phrase of each, not each’s.
Incorrect: each’s report card
Correct: the report card of each
To form a possessive of a singular noun, add an apostrophe and an s to the end of it, even if a noun ends with the letter s.
- the boss’s assistant
Exceptions to this rule are some expressions that include the word sake.
for goodness’ sake
for appearance’ sake
for conscience’ sake
To form a possessive of a plural noun, add only an apostrophe if the word ends with an s.
- companies’ earnings
Usually, using a possessive with an of phrase is considered redundant.
Incorrect: the cry of the baby’s
Correct: the cry of the baby
Or: the baby’s cry
An exception is made if a person possesses many things like the thing named.
- a friend of Marie’s
Objects usually follow their prepositions and are always in the objective case. Be careful not to use the nominative form of a personal pronoun when the pronoun is the preposition’s object.
Incorrect: between you and I; from he and she; among they
Correct: between you and me; from him and her; among them
For readability, avoid using more than two prepositional phrases in a row.
Unwieldy: I drove through the snowstorm over the mountains after midnight to reach her house.
Better: Through the snowstorm, I drove over the mountains after midnight to reach her house.
In speech, the words of, up, and down are sometimes used with another preposition. In formal writing, however, omit these words if they do not add any meaning to the sentence.
Incorrect: General Stafford stormed out of the door.
Correct: General Stafford stormed out the door.
If these words are part of a compound preposition, however, they should not be left out.
Incorrect: He’s completely out time.
Correct: He’s completely out of time.
When a series of objects share the same preposition, either repeat the preposition before each object or include it before only the first.
Incorrect: Janie drove to the supermarket, the bank, and to the drugstore.
Correct: Janie drove to the supermarket, to the bank, and to the drugstore.
Or: Janie drove to the supermarket, the bank, and the drugstore.
Do not, however, omit a preposition that functions as part of a verb.
Incorrect: Jeffrey was annoyed and angry at the barking dog.
Correct: Jeffrey was annoyed by and angry at the barking dog.
Many grammar experts in the past insisted that a sentence should never end with a preposition. In most cases, the rule still holds. Nearly all experts now agree, however, that a preposition may appear at the end of a sentence if moving it to another position would create an awkward construction.
Awkward: I want an income on which I can count.
Better: I want an income I can count on.
If a collective noun is treated as a unit, a pronoun referring to it should be singular. If the noun’s components are emphasized, however, the pronoun should be plural.
- The council reached its decision.
- The council cast their votes for president.
If a sentence includes a phrase such as can I, will you, or should we, place a comma before and after the phrase and end the sentence with a question mark. (If the phrase falls at the end of the sentence, omit the second comma.)
- You know, don’t you, how much we care about you?
- We shouldn’t leave the office yet, should we?
If a quotation is a statement and it appears at the end of a question, place the question mark outside the closing quotation mark. Omit the period that would normally appear at the end of the quoted statement.
- Are you sure she said, “We’re going to Albuquerque”?
If a quotation appears at the end of a statement or command, place the period that punctuates the sentence inside the closing quotation mark.
- When I asked if she was feeling well, she said, “Oh, sure.”
If the quoted material ends in a question mark or exclamation point, however, omit the period.
- When I asked if she was feeling well, she said, “What?”
- When I asked if she was feeling well, she said, “You bet!”
Commas should be placed inside closing quotation marks, even if they are not part of the quotation.
- “I’d be happy to do the job,” he volunteered.
Colons and semicolons, on the other hand, always belong outside closing quotation marks.
- Tully insisted there are two “necessities”: health and peace of mind.
- The girl said, “My friends are my family”; in fact, they were the only family she had ever known.
Question marks and exclamation points should be placed inside closing quotation marks only if they punctuate the quoted material. If they apply to the sentence as a whole, they should be positioned outside.
- Oscar asked, “What is your favorite song?”
- But: Did you know that my favorite song is “Night and Day”?
Do not enclose a paraphrased statement in quotation marks.
Incorrect: She said that “she will be home by the 4th.”
Correct: She said that she will be home by the 4th.
Or: She said, “I’ll be home by the 4th.”
Use single quotation marks (‘ ’) to mark the beginning and end of a quotation inside a quotation.
- Her assistant explained, “They claimed the package was ‘misplaced,’ but I think it was stolen.”
To tell readers that a word is used figuratively, you may enclose it in quotation marks.
- The neighborhood dogs held a “meeting” in the park every afternoon.
A word may be placed in quotation marks to show that it is used ironically.
- The teenagers snickered at their teacher’s “stylish” leisure suit.
Be careful to use this device sparingly, if at all. Before resorting to quotation marks to communicate irony, try rephrasing your sentence so that your words themselves establish the tone you want.
If you define a word in text, enclose the definition in quotation marks. The word itself should be set in italics.
- Reboot means “restart.”
You can also use quotation marks to set off a translation of a foreign term or phrase.
- She graduated summa cum laude (Latin for “with highest praise”).
Use italics, not quotation marks, to give added emphasis to a word or phrase.
Incorrect: He is “very” sorry for what he did.
Correct: He is very sorry for what he did.
Quotation marks (“ ”) are used to mark the beginning and end of a passage quoted directly from speech or written material.
- “Ask not what your country can do for you,” Kennedy cried out, “ask what you can do for your country.”
Do not change the person of a pronoun in a quotation to make a sentence sound less awkward. Instead, if possible, re-edit the quotation to eliminate the problem.
Incorrect: Will Rogers once wrote that he “never met a man he didn’t like.”
Correct: Will Rogers once wrote, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”
If words are omitted in the middle of a quotation, replace them with ellipsis points – three periods with spaces between them. Do not add ellipsis points before or after a quotation.
When quoting a complete statement, replace the period at its end with a comma if a phrase identifying the speaker directly follows it. If the sentence ends with a question mark or an exclamation point, retain this punctuation and omit the comma.
- “He’s not coming,” Mary said.
- “How do you know?” asked Tony.
- “I just do!” she shouted.
Do not use quotation marks with a paraphrased quotation or with a well-known proverb or saying.
Incorrect: Marcie said that “she wanted to move to Paris.”
Correct: Marcie said that she wanted to move to Paris.
Incorrect: I would “never count my chickens before they’re hatched.”
Correct: I would never count my chickens before they’re hatched.
If a quotation is brief, you should run it into the surrounding text.
- The report maintained that “the future looks bright” but cautioned stockholders not to become “overly optimistic about profits in the short term.”
Below is a list of some commonly used redundant phrases. In formal writing, they should be replaced with the words enclosed in parentheses.
as to whether (whether)
biography of one’s life (biography)
but nevertheless (nevertheless)
circle around (circle)
come to an end (end)
connect together (connect)
consensus of opinion (consensus)
eliminate altogether (eliminate)
join together (join)
just exactly (exactly)
last of all (last)
may possibly (may)
never at any time (never)
reason why (reason)
shuttle back and forth (shuttle)
skirt around (skirt)
strangled to death (strangled)
Many redundant phrases consist of an adjective and a noun. For instance, past history is redundant because history by definition refers to events that occurred in the past. In this example and those listed below, the adjective can be eliminated without changing the phrase’s meaning.
advance planning
close proximity
definite decision
end result
excess verbiage
final outcome
first priority (this is acceptable if you are writing about a series of priorities)
free gift
general consensus
invited guest
joint cooperation
main protagonist
major breakthrough
mutual cooperation
old adage
passing phase
past history
personal friendship
prototype model
representative cross section
root cause
separate entities
serious danger
true facts
To avoid redundancy, use acronyms as adjectives with care. Do not follow an acronym with a noun that is included in the term the acronym represents, as in the following examples:
- Incorrect: AMA association
- Correct: AMA
- Or: American Medical Association
Use who to refer to people; which, to ideas or things. Use that to refer to either.
- Elsie, who loves to travel,…
- The Bahamas, which is a popular vacation destination,…
- The assignment that the students received…
- The students that completed the assignment…
A relative pronoun can be omitted if the meaning of the sentence is clear without it.
- The woman he married
What may be used in place of either a singular or a plural noun. When a clause beginning with what is used as a subject, the number of the verb should agree with the number of the noun that what represents.
- What is important is this moment in time.
- What are important are the moments we have together.
Capitalize earth, moon, and sun only when they are used in connection with other celestial bodies. In more casual references, these terms should be lowercased.
- The Moon orbits Earth, just as Mercury, Venus, Earth, and the other planets orbit the Sun.
- But: In the morning, the sun shined bright; in the evening, the moon glowed.
A semicolon can be used in place of a conjunction to connect two independent clauses.
- The clock read 12:03; it was time to go.
It is also used between independent clauses joined by a conjunction when at least one of the clauses includes a comma.
- Orville, who arrived late with Betty, Morris, and Faith, missed my solo; but I was surprised he came at all.
A semicolon should precede a word or phrase such as for example, that is, or namely when it introduces a list of items.
- An artist must have certain traits; for example, perseverance, confidence, and courage.
Semicolons should replace commas to separate items in a list if at least one of the items includes a comma.
- The students with the highest test scores were Joe, with an 87; Amy, with a 92; and Frederick, with a 99.
Semicolons should always be placed outside closing quotation marks and parentheses.
- She tried to find the “right words”; nothing would dissuade him.
- In first place was a palomino (a tan horse with a white mane); he won by a nose.
A sentence fragment is a clause or phrase that does not form a complete sentence but is punctuated as though it does. Fragments are often used in informal correspondence or fiction, particularly in dialogue to communicate halting speech. In formal writing, however, they should be rewritten as complete sentences or attached to another related sentence.
The easiest fragments to identify are phrases that do not include a subject-verb combination.
Incorrect: The party was a great success. The best one ever.
Correct: The party was a great success. It was the best one ever.
Or: The party was a great success – the best one ever.
In English, the subject usually precedes the predicate.
- The woman he’d been waiting for was knocking at the door.
This order can be reversed to emphasize the subject.
- Knocking at the door was the woman he’d been waiting for.
Use the present tense for statements of universal truths or unchangeable conditions regardless of the tenses of other verbs in the sentence.
- The teacher knew that boys always blame their dogs. [past, present]
To indicate a range of consecutive months or years, a slash can be used in place of a hyphen.
- March/April profits
- winter of 1988/89
When two titles are held by the same person, the titles can be connected either by a slash or a hyphen.
- Thomas Lee is the new secretary/treasurer.
- Or: Thomas Lee is the new secretary-treasurer.
Unless you are writing specifically for readers in the United Kingdom, you should use American spellings. Whether your audience is American or international, American spellings are likely to be more familiar.
Temperatures should be expressed with a numeral and the degree symbol (°), set without a space between them.
- The weather report says that it will be 99° by noon.
Use one of the following abbreviations to designate which temperature scale you are using. These abbreviations are capitalized but are not punctuated with a period.
- C Celsius
- F Fahrenheit
Place the abbreviation directly after the degree sign.
- The boiling point is 212°F (100°C).
Except in very formal writing, express weights and measures with numerals. Always use a numeral if the unit of measurement is abbreviated.
That and which are pronouns used to introduce dependent clauses. If a clause includes information that is essential to the meaning of the sentence, it should begin with that.
- My portrait was the only one that was stolen.
If the sentence would still express a complete idea if the clause was omitted, choose which instead.
- My portrait, which was painted last year, was stolen.
As in the example above, a comma should appear before and after a which clause. (If the clause appears at the end of a sentence, omit the second comma.) A that clause, however, should not be set off by any punctuation.
Incorrect: A car, that runs well, is all I need.
Correct: A car that runs well is all I need.
The pronouns that and who can be used to introduce dependent clauses that are essential to the meaning of a sentence. In most cases, you should choose who if the pronoun’s antecedent (the word the pronoun represents) is a person and that if it is not.
- The chef who prepared the meal is famous for his lasagna.
- The lasagna that he prepared was delicious.
There are two common exceptions to this rule:
You may use who if the antecedent is an animal
- The dog who appeared on her doorstep has become her favorite pet.
and use that with a human antecedent if it represents a class of people.
- A baby that giggles is always a delight.
Both who and whom can be used to introduce dependent clauses. Which word is correct depends on the function of the noun it represents, or its antecedent. If its antecedent is the subject of a verb, use who. If its antecedent is the object of a verb or of a preposition, use whom.
- The man who came to the meeting… [subject of came]
- The man whom she met at the meeting… [object of met]
- The man with whom she attended the meeting… [object of with]
A time of day designating an hour, half hour, or quarter hour is usually spelled out in text. If you prefer, you may express hours with numerals instead.
- I will need to leave at one fifteen.
- Ms. Miller will visit the office at 7 PM.
The titles Mistress, or Missus (Mrs.), Mister (Mr.), and Doctor (Dr.) are always abbreviated when they precede a proper name. The abbreviations should be capitalized and punctuated with a period. Although the title Ms. does not stand for another word, it too should be followed with a period for consistency’s sake.
Professional, military, religious, and honorary titles are capitalized if they appear before a name or are used as a name in dialogue.
- Professor Fred H. Smith
- Could you please explain your theory, Professor?
If only a last name is given, spell out the title.
Incorrect: Gen. Taylor
Correct: General Taylor
In text the title of a creative work – such as a book, painting, or movie – is styled to distinguish it from the surrounding words. Most words in the title are capitalized, and the title as a whole is either set in italics or enclosed within quotation marks.
Always capitalize the first letter of the first and last word in a title. Articles, coordinating conjunctions, the to in infinitives, and prepositions of less than five letters are lowercase; all other words should be capitalized. A preposition should be capitalized if it functions as part of a verb.
- Barefoot in the Park
- How to Write Short Stories
- Getting Out
In long titles that include punctuation, capitalize any word that follows a punctuation mark, such as a colon used to separate a title and subtitle.
- Jackson Pollock: An American Saga
The titles of the following works are set in italic type: books (including poetry collections and anthologies of short stories and essays), magazines, newspapers, book-length poems, plays, movies (including made-for-TV movies and animated movies), television series, radio shows, operas and other long musical compositions, record albums, ballets and modern dance pieces, paintings, sculptures, and other works of art.
The titles of these works are set in roman type within quotation marks: newspaper articles, magazine articles, essays, short stories, short poems, television episodes, songs, comic strips.
Use a singular verb with a subject with two or more elements connected by or or nor. If the subject includes both singular and plural nouns, however, the verb should agree with the noun closest to it.
- The manager or her assistant works late.
- The manager or the assistants work late.
Also use a singular verb with a singular subject followed by a phrase that begins with together with, along with, as well as, in addition to, or plus.
- The manager as well as his assistant works late.
For clarity, consider replacing such phrases with the word and. If you do, change the verb from a singular to a plural.
Voice is the property of a verb that indicates the relationship between the action the verb describes and its subject. In the active voice, the subject performs the action. In the passive voice, the subject receives it.
- Active: Joshua eats the strawberry pie.
- Passive: The strawberry pie is eaten by Joshua.
Generally, the active voice creates a more concise and immediate sentence than the passive. It is therefore preferred for most writing.
Do not shift from one voice to another within a sentence.
Incorrect: Jennie pled for mercy, even though her guilt was admitted.
Correct: Jennie pled for mercy, even though she admitted her guilt.
Be alert to not only a word’s denotation (dictionary definition) but also its connotation – the set of ideas that is associated with it. For instance, psychiatric hospital and madhouse are synonyms, but the former conjures up an image of an organized institution while the latter suggests a den of chaos and squalor.
Avoid using vague words. Writing, for example, that a lecture was “interesting” is to say little. Entertaining, informative, or controversial are all better choices because these adjectives provide more precise information. When choosing between synonyms, think carefully about the small ways in which their definitions differ, and select the word that most closely fits your meaning.
One of the most prevalent errors in word choice is using a wordy phrase when a single word would suffice. Too often, insecure writers mistakenly believe that extraneous words give their writing an air of authority; in fact, readers are far more likely to be annoyed than impressed by wordiness, particularly in business documents. Note the difference in the readability of the two sentences below.
- At the present time, I am of the opinion that we have the ability to meet our quota in the near future. [22 words]
- I now think we can meet our quota soon. [9 words]
Wordy: In spite of the fact that I am working on another project, I will begin the report in the near future.
Better: Although I am working on another project, I will begin the report soon.
GOOD ENGLISH
Language is an artful game, sometimes casual and sometimes competitive, and those who know its conventions, techniques, and finer points – those who have a command of good English – play it better than those who don’t. They are consistent - and consistency is an important secret of their game.
Many errors in grammar do not violate deep principles at all – they merely violate convention. Those who are not aware of the principles and are therefore not aware of the difference between a violation of principles and a violation of convention must face every problem in expression in an almost superstitious way hoping the jumble of half-remembered and quite likely dubious precepts in their minds – Don’t split infinitives; Don’t end a sentence with a preposition – will see them through.
A sentence is a group of words that are grammatically dependent on one another but are not grammatically dependent on any words outside the group.
Grammatical dependence is what determines whether a group of words is a sentence, whether the group contains enough words, too few, or too many and whether the relationships among the words are easy or difficult for a listener or reader to understand.
I discovered the overalls. When I was ladling out the chowder. The fragment is easy to see. The second “sentence” is merely a dependent clause of the first sentence. The word When makes the clause dependent on something outside itself, so the word group When I was ladling out the chowder does not meet the definition proposed in the discussion just preceding this rule. It must be joined to the first sentence, on which it depends: I discovered the overalls when I was ladling out the chowder.
Fragments are sometimes deliberately employed to produce special effects: I said a year ago that this company was headed for trouble. Which is where we’ve arrived, as these figures will show. There should ordinarily be a comma after trouble rather than a period, but presenting the dependent clauses as if they constituted a separate sentence gives them an emphasis that may be desirable. The device should be used sparingly and alternatives should be considered; a dash after trouble would give the clauses similar emphasis.
In a well-written paragraph each sentence should add its thought to the thoughts of preceding sentences whether or not it begins with a conjunction. Sentences that begin with conjunctions are now accepted except in very formal writing. But remember that some people still condemn such use of conjunctions.
Many sentences are elliptical – that is, they leave out one or more words that the listener or reader can be expected to supply. The missing word or phrase is called an ellipsis. An elliptical sentence is not a fragment; fragments are faulty grammar, but elliptical sentences are usually quite respectable grammatically. (They are, however, sometimes ambiguous. For example, John loves money more than Mary has an elliptical dependent clause, which could be filled out in two very different ways: more than Mary loves money or more than he loves Mary.)
The stock has always performed as well or better than expected attempts to be a compact sentence and does leave out some dispensable words, but the second as in the adverbial construction as well as should not be omitted; it should be as well as or better than expected.
The stock has always performed as well as expected or better and The stock has gone up as much as IBM if not more are, however, correct. These are elliptical sentences. It is permissible, and often desirable, to let the listener or reader supply the missing words, which would be than expected in the first example and than IBM in the second example. Thus, though the first part of a phrase pair must be complete, the second part can be elliptical.
Profits were higher than they were in the preceding year. We can leave out they were – such an omission is proper ellipsis. And if we don’t leave out they were, we can even leave out in; phrases such as in the preceding year, which are called prepositional adverbial phrases, can often be shortened by omitting the preposition, as in Quarterly earnings will be announced [on] Friday. But we cannot leave out both they were and in without creating a false comparison.
He either will or has already left is wrong. The verb form left is appropriate with the second auxiliary verb, has, but inappropriate with the first, will. This kind of error is sometimes called syllepsis. The sentence should be He either will leave or has already left.
Changed verb forms can often be omitted in the second construction: He didn’t go but should have; He hasn’t gone but will. When the first application of the verb is omitted, it is an error of grammar, but when the second application is omitted, it is a grammatically permissible syllepsis, though it may be undesirable, as it is to some degree in each of the two examples.
When no auxiliary verb is involved but a verb changes form because of a change in person, the verb can be omitted in the second construction: I drive more than she; I supply his financial support, his mother his emotional support. When an auxiliary verb is involved and changes form because of a change in person, the whole compound verb can be omitted as long as the form of the actual verb is the same, as in I am going to jail, you to your just reward, in which the omitted auxiliary verb is are, but the omitted actual verb is going, the same form as in the first clause.
Sometimes an omitted verb has the same form as a supplied verb but a different meaning. He is crazy already and quickly driving his wife crazy may look fine – not only is the verb supplied in the first construction but it is unchanged in form in the second construction. However, the omission of is in the second construction is at best questionable. In the first construction, is is a linking verb – He is crazy – but in the second construction, it is an auxiliary verb – He is driving. The same word should not be forced to carry two different meanings, so it should be repeated in the second construction.
Occasionally the multiple meanings of verbs are used deliberately for a humorous effect, a device sometimes also called syllepsis but more precisely called zeugma: He took his hat and his leave.
You better do it right now is an odd but very common error; the verb had is left out completely. In speech, You had better is quite properly contracted to you’d better, then improperly blurred to You better.
He is the man went to Washington is distinctly folksy. However, He is the man we sent to Washington is good standard grammar. We cannot ordinarily leave out a subjective relative pronoun such as who, but we can often leave out an objective relative pronoun such as whom. In simple sentences, the distinction is clear even with pronouns such as which and that, which have the same form in subjective and objective cases; we accept This is the house Jack built but not This is the house fell down around Jack – we have to supply the pronoun which or that to serve as the subject of fell.
The same relative pronoun cannot be used both as the object of one verb and the subject of another, with the exception of the pronouns whoever and whomever. In a complicated sentence, it may take some study to reveal that a relative pronoun is trying to play two grammatical roles. Thus They were all fully occupied in preparing for the invasion of the mainland, which they had planned as the next stage in Allied strategy and was to follow in less than a month is troubling – mysteriously so until it is noticed that which is both the object of they had planned and the subject of was to follow. But the error occurs in simple sentences too, such as Do what you like and makes you feel good, in which what is supplied as the object of like but omitted as the subject of makes.
We disagreed only with regard to what the disaster was due has one too few uses of the preposition to, which is needed after due as well as after regard: We disagreed only with regard to what the disaster was due to. Similarly, It was a disaster the significance of which no one was entirely ignorant needs of at the end to go with ignorant; the earlier of after significance cannot play two roles. It must be admitted that the correct versions of these sentences are much harder on the ear or eye than the incorrect versions, and that rewriting them would be advisable. Sentences can end with prepositions, despite the oft-heard dogma that they should not, but a sentence that does is likely to be a sentence in which the word order is not standard, because in standard word order a preposition is followed by its object. Sometimes there is no good reason to depart from standard word order. Certainly We disagreed only about the cause of the disaster is easier and pleasanter to read than a sentence so twisted that a preposition can be mislaid among its convolutions.
There is neither enough time nor energy is faulty; it should be There is neither enough time nor enough energy. The error can be considered faulty parallelism.
He was expelled for failing physics and gambling is ambiguous because of an omitted preposition; it should be He was expelled for failing physics and for gambling, to prevent gambling from being momentarily taken as a second direct object of failing. Text that contains many opportunities for misreading can be profoundly irritating.
The word that is often omitted in such constructions as I believe I’ll go home and He said I could stay. These omissions are fine, but sometimes when that is left out it is not clear where it belongs. The expectation is falsely high earnings will be reported could mean either The expectation is that falsely high earnings will be reported or The expectation is falsely high that earnings will be reported. Sentences with that omitted should be inspected with extra care.
It takes special alertness to catch omissions that are grammatically correct but invite misreading, since we already know what we mean. Ambiguity is always with us. Yet the effort to reduce ambiguity is well worth making and should be part of the process of revising any carefully composed work.
Refer back is redundant in Please refer back to the previous chapter. But the re in refer does not necessarily have the same meaning as back. Obviously it doesn’t in Please refer to the next chapter. While reading Chapter 10, one might expect to be referred to Chapter 12 but would not object to being referred back to Chapter 8; the back might be dispensable, but it would remind me that I am being referred to text I have already read. It is wrongheaded and simpleminded to leap on every redundancy.
I venture to say that you wouldn’t find me so contemptible if I’d split the money with you begins with a somewhat quaint flourish. However, an occasional flourish is not only permissible but desirable; flourishes can add nuance and expression to otherwise bald statements and convey the feeling of the writer or speaker about the statement. Of course, writers or speakers who use I venture to say, I would hazard that, and similar expressions to begin every other sentence are nervous, or pompous, or uncertain, or just clumsy with language.
He liked sailing, swimming, and to fish is a simple example; most of us don’t have to be told that the third item in the series should be fishing, producing a series of three gerunds rather than two gerunds and an infinitive, or else the first two items should be to sail and to swim, producing a series of three infinitives. Yet wrong as the example seems, its grammar is technically correct, since either a gerund or an infinitive can be used as an object of liked. The error is an error of parallelism.
He liked sailing, beachcombing forays, and swimming is a subtler example of faulty parallelism. Although sailing, beachcombing, and swimming are all gerunds, beachcombing does not stand alone but merely modifies the noun forays, so instead of a series of three gerunds we have a gerund, a modified noun, and another gerund. If we take out forays, the series is properly parallel.
He liked sailing, swimming, and other seaside activities is not a case of faulty parallelism. The third item in the series is not parallel in meaning and significance to the other two, but characterizes them and represents a group of unnamed activities.
Two infinitives and a noun combine in a series much less happily – that is, they are farther from parallel – than two gerunds and a noun.
He liked to sail, swim, and had a passion for beachcombing is in real trouble, because the last item is not part of the series at all but is the second part of a compound predicate: He liked... and had... . The error seems glaring but is very common. He liked to sail and swim and had a passion for beachcombing is correct: two predicates to go with He, and two parallel objects to go with liked. If we want to avoid the run-together look of sail and swim and had, we can put a comma after swim.
He has either gone swimming or gone sailing is precisely parallel; gone swimming and gone sailing are grammatically similar and share their relationship with he has. The sentence can be made nonparallel all too easily by misplacing either: He has either gone swimming or sailing omits a repetition of gone, and He either has gone swimming or gone sailing omits a repetition of has. These failures of parallelism are not really offensive in the casual context of the example, but they are noticeable.
With the conjunctive pairs either ... or and not only ... but also, the item following the first conjunction and the item following the second conjunction should be grammatically similar.
Note that this is not true of all conjunctive pairs. With the conjunctive pair whether ... or, the item following the second conjunction usually can be and often should be shorter. I don’t know whether he has gone swimming or he has gone sailing is precisely parallel but not natural English; the second he should come out, and has or has gone could come out.
He has either gone swimming or gone to town with his father is not strictly parallel – gone swimming and gone to town with his father are both predicates and hence are grammatically equivalent, but they are structured differently and make different uses of the verb gone. That is quite all right; correlative items should be as grammatically similar as their meaning permits, but they cannot always be grammatically identical. He has gone either swimming or to town with his father is not all right; since gone functions differently with swimming and to town, it should be repeated.
Sentences that are more ambitious than the examples above often fall into misplacement of correlative conjunctions because of an inverted or otherwise unusual word order. The effect is to make serious prose seem somewhat scatterbrained, as in Not only had classical anticommunism returned to Washington in official rhetoric, but also in military programs and the reassertion of self-confidence. There is a failure of parallelism, because the item introduced by Not only is a clause, but the item introduced by but also is merely a prepositional phrase.
He sails more than me can be considered an error of parallelism, since He and me are grammatically parallel and should therefore be in the same case.
He learned to swim that summer, but more than swimming with his friends on the broad public beach he liked to sail to the deserted strands of the islands in the bay fails to make swimming and to sail parallel, but then perhaps they are not really parallel in thought anyway – there is an implication that when he got to those deserted strands he liked to swim there, and consequently the parallel in thought is between swimming with friends and swimming alone rather than between swimming and sailing. English is not mathematics, and language can sometimes compare nonparallel things – can compare apples and oranges. Careful parallelism is not the only important property of good English, and sometimes it is a dispensable property.
Antithetical constructions are used to state that something is true of one thing but untrue of another. He liked sailing and swimming but not to walk on the beach is faulty parallelism; to walk should be changed to walking.
He chose to sail to the island rather than swimming there is nonparallel, and it is easily made parallel by changing swimming to to swim or simply to swim – it is often permissible to leave out to in an infinitive, though to should be either consistently included or consistently omitted in the second and subsequent infinitives in a series. However, nonparallelisms with rather than are often not objectionable, even in such a straightforward sentence as the example, and sometimes they are necessary. He sailed to the island rather than swam there is parallel, and He sailed to the island rather than swimming there and He sailed to the island rather than swim there are not, but the second and third versions do not mean the same as the first; the first version simply tells us what he did and did not do, whereas the second suggests to us and the third tells us that he made a conscious decision between alternatives.
When the negative rather than construction precedes the positive construction, parallelism is actually an error: Rather than swam there, he sailed to the island is not English, though the nonparallel swim and swimming would both be English. The normally conjunctive phrase rather than is often used, and used correctly as if it were a prepositional phrase such as instead of, and when it is so used, the rule that items joined by conjunctions should be as grammatically similar as possible must sometimes be abandoned.
The case of a noun or pronoun is determined by the function of the word within its sentence – by whether it is the subject of a verb, the object of a verb or preposition, or the possessive modifier of another word. English nouns have only two forms for the three cases, since the subjective and objective forms are the same; the possessive case is formed by adding an apostrophe and s or sometimes just the apostrophe. Some pronouns, such as one and anybody, also have only two forms, but some others have not just three but four. I, me, and my are subjective, objective, and possessive forms, and there is also a special form for the so-called independent possessive, mine, which instead of merely modifying another word acts like a noun: Let’s take your car, since mine has bald tires.
Since nouns have the same form in the subjective and objective cases, violations of this rule occur only with a few pronouns – the personal pronouns I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, and they/them, and the relative or interrogative pronoun who/whom and its indefinite form whoever/whomever.
It was she I was writing about may seem puzzling at a glance, because there is no objective pronoun and I was writing about seems to require one. The temptation is to make it It was her I was writing about, thus providing an objective pronoun. This is an error – It was she is correct, since a pronoun is governed by its own clause. The missing objective pronoun, whom, has simply been omitted, as is entirely permissible. With the ellipsis filled in, the sentence becomes It was she whom I was writing about.
I invited people whom I thought would get along together is just as wrong. The pronoun whom is the subject of would, not the object of thought, and it should therefore be who. Often a relative clause such as who would get along together is interrupted by another clause such as I thought. Perhaps the fuzziness about the object of the verb in the interrupting clause explains an odd fact. Even though the relative pronoun in the sentence I invited people who I thought would get along together is subjective, it can be dropped: I invited people I thought would get along together. Normally we could not omit a subjective pronoun – we could not make it I invited people would get along together – but the interrupting clause permits the omission, just as if the pronoun were objective, as it is in I invited people whom I thought you would like.
I met a man whom I thought to be better dressed than I is correct. Whom is objective as the subject of the infinitive to be. In I saw a man whom I thought better dressed than I, the infinitive is omitted but understood, and whom remains correct.
Whoever, unlike other pronouns, can play two roles in a sentence at once. It can function as the subject of one verb and the object of another, as in I will invite whoever wants to come, in which whoever is the subject of wants and also the object of invite (though more precisely it is not whoever but the entire clause whoever wants to come that is the object of invite). Whomever can function as the object of verbs in two clauses, as in I will invite whomever you choose, or as the subject of a verb and the object of a preposition, as in Whomever we send invitations to is sure to come. Other combinations of function are possible. As the examples here show, the form of the pronoun – whether it is the subjective whoever or the objective whomever – is determined by the role it plays in its own clause, which is the clause that completes its meaning, defining who whoever or whomever is.
She sails better than him seems wrong to most of us. The word than is a conjunction, and conjunctions join words or word groups of similar grammatical significance – two adjectives modifying the same noun, two subjects or two objects of the same verb, two clauses, and so on. In She sails better than him, than joins a clause and an objective pronoun, which is not a proper function of a conjunction. Use of objective pronouns with than has been exceedingly common for centuries, however, especially with first-person pronouns: She thinks she’s better than me; She sails better than us. Consequently, some modern dictionaries accept than as a preposition, condoning its use with objective pronouns, since the objects of prepositions should be in the objective case. I advise denying oneself this liberty, since there are many who condemn it.
John, he of the big mouth, won’t be invited and Let’s not invite John, him of the big mouth are both correct. In the first sentence, he of the big mouth is in apposition to John, the subject of the sentence, and the pronoun he is in the subjective case. In the second sentence, him of the big mouth is again in apposition to John, but John is the object of the sentence, and the pronoun him is in the objective case. The case of a pronoun in apposition is determined by the case of the word that it is in apposition to.
All of us are going may seem puzzling, since us are going is impossible. But in All of us are going, the pronoun us is the object of the preposition of, not a word in apposition to the subject of the verb; there is no apposition in the sentence. The entire phrase All of us is the subject, and the case of the pronoun is determined by its role within its phrase.
A subject complement is a word or phrase that follows a linking verb such as is or seems; it’s the that in This is that, and it’s the gray in All cats seem gray. A subject complement isn’t the object of a verb but something linked to the subject by a verb. The rule for subject complements is very simple: They should be in the same case as the subject they are linked to, which is, of course, the subjective case.
It’s me and It’s us break the rule, a fact that has probably generated more incredulity among grammar-school students than any other precept of “good grammar,” because It’s I and It’s we seem impossibly unnatural to them. I advise breaking the rule whenever the subjective pronouns I and we seem stiff or prissy, as they do following the informal contraction It’s and in many other situations. That was we singing outside your window last night; When you hear three knocks, it will be I; His chief victim was I – such sentences may obey the rule, but they are idiomatically objectionable.
It's him and It's her cannot be defended quite as energetically, because the rule-observing It's he and It's she, though perhaps slightly stilted, are not outlandish; most careful speakers and writers do use them. It’s them is perhaps more often defensible, because It's they is more than slightly stilted. The ear must be the judge.
I put the subject of a gerund in the possessive case, if possible. I dislike that man’s wearing a mask and I dislike that man wearing a mask are different statements. In the first, the wearing of the mask is disliked; in the second, the man is disliked. In the first statement, wearing is a gerund – that is, a special verb form that functions as a noun – and it is the object of the sentence, with the possessive phrase that man’s modifying it. Such a possessive “owns” the action implied by the gerund and thus is considered the subject of the gerund. In the second statement, wearing is a participle – that is, a special verb form that functions as an adjective – and that man is the object of the sentence, with the participial phrase wearing a mask modifying it.
However, very often the objective case rather than the possessive case is used for the subject of a gerund, especially when it is unlikely that the gerund will be misperceived as a participle, as in I dislike him wearing a mask. Many writers and editors, and some of the grammarians whose books they use for reference, condemn use of the objective case if the possessive case is possible. Since such use of the objective case will not escape criticism, I advise against it.
There are two types of gerund. One type is exactly like a noun - it can be the subject or object of a verb; it is modified by articles and adjectives, and it cannot take a direct object. The other type is mostly like a noun but has some of the characteristics of a verb or a participle – it too can be the subject or object of a sentence, but it is modified by adverbs and can take a direct object. In The inappropriate wearing of a mask is forbidden, the gerund wearing is of the first type; in Inappropriately wearing a mask is forbidden, the same gerund is of the second type. We do not mix the types in modern English, though fluent users of the language did mix them in previous centuries; The trouble and vexation that attended the bringing these animals thus far is hardly to be conceived, in which bringing is modified by the, just as a noun would be, but has the direct object these animals, just as a verb or participle would have.
Every modern fluent user of English automatically uses the possessive for the subject of gerunds of the first type – I dislike that man’s inappropriate wearing of a mask – because the “nounness” of the gerund is so evident. But a great many fluent speakers and writers use the objective for the subject of gerunds of the second type – I dislike that man inappropriately wearing a mask – because the “nounness” of the gerund is obscured by its adverbial modifier and direct object. When the objective is used instead of the possessive, the gerund can be perceived as a participle modifying man rather than a gerund modified by man, and the meaning is likely to be different. Sometimes it makes little difference to the sense of a sentence whether a verb form ending in ing is understood as a participle or as a gerund. For example, I don’t remember his ever being angry and I don’t remember him ever being angry mean very nearly the same thing. But often there is a difference, and if we mean the ing word to be a gerund rather than a participle, we should use the possessive case for its subject.
When the subject of a gerund is not a simple noun or pronoun but a group of words, it may be impossible or at least bizarre to use the possessive. For example, the possessive in Many of us don’t approve of a man whom we voted against’s being elected is bizarre. It may seem reasonable enough to dispense with the possessive in such situations: ... a man whom we voted against being elected. However, rephrasing may be worth the trouble.
There is no sense in both of us going cannot be called an error – it is virtually an idiom, and certainly both of us cannot be made possessive. The fastidious may nevertheless make it There is no sense in our both going, which is just as idiomatic and allows the possessive.
John having worn a mask, no one knew he was there begins with an absolute construction. The word having is not a gerund but a participle. Past participles can be used in absolute constructions too: The mask removed, we all recognized John.
Who is the subjective case and whom is the objective case. But for a century and a half, educated speakers and writers often use who and whoever when the objective case is called for: Who are you going to invite? I’m going to invite whoever I choose. Certain failures to use the objective are perceived as glaringly wrong, such as To who will you send invitations? But most get by, and their correct equivalents can seem labored and prissy. In formal writing it is best to use whom and whomever in every objective situation.
The object of to, between, or any other preposition must be in the objective case, just as the object or indirect object of a verb must be.
But is a conjunction in She left but he didn’t, whereas in Everyone but he left and Everyone left but I, it is a preposition, with the same meaning as the preposition except, and its object must be in the objective case: Everyone but him left; Everyone left but me.
Since like is a preposition, it should not be used to mean as or as if, which are conjunctions.
Exception: The preposition of is sometimes followed by the possessive case, as in Any friend of John’s is a friend of mine, in which both John and mine are possessive.
Neither of us is crazy is correct; it is elliptical for Neither one of us is crazy, with one the real subject and us merely the object of the preposition of. It is you that are crazy is more complicated. Many grammarians would argue that the verb should agree with the “true” subject, you, when the statement is positive, but with It when the statement is negative: It is not you that is crazy, it is I. This second position seems sensible to me. The subject of the relative clause is the pronoun that, and if the sentence states that the antecedent of that is you, there is a good argument for making the verb in the relative clause agree with you, whereas if the sentence states that the antecedent of that is not you, there seems no argument at all for making the verb agree with you – it seems better to let it agree with some not-yet-specified someone.
One of those disasters that often occurs when you’re traveling befell me contains a typical error of agreement caused by confusion. The antecedent of that is disasters, not One, so the verb should be occur.
In My suitcase as well as the briefcase containing all my tax records were stolen, the long phrase as well as the briefcase containing all my tax records is not part of the subject, but it has incorrectly influenced the number of the verb.
We’d correctly say Pork chops and potatoes is his favorite snack, because the subject is a singular idea. Similarly, when phrases joined by and are used as the subject of a sentence, they may add up to a single idea and thus require, or at least permit, a singular verb. Losing my suitcase and missing my appointment with Smith were my worst mistakes has a clearly plural subject and requires its plural verb, but Reaching for my suitcase and finding it gone was heart breaking has a subject that is plural in structure but singular as an idea and requires a singular verb.
Discontent and disenchantment run through his work and Reorganization and reinforcement take time have two-idea subjects and plural verbs, but A pervasive discontent and disenchantment runs through his work and Thorough reorganization and reinforcement takes time have one-idea subjects and singular verbs, though plural verbs would not be wrong.
When singular subjects joined by and are merely a wordy or joking way of referring to a single thing, the verb is singular: My son and heir was supposed to be keeping an eye on the luggage. Somewhat similarly, fanciful expressions such as everybody and his grandmother are usually singular: Everybody and his grandmother was there.
When singular subjects joined by and are preceded by each or every, the verb must be singular: Each suitcase and briefcase has to be checked; Every tourist and business traveler has had similar experiences; Every girl and boy brings his or her own lunch. This is true even if each or every is repeated before the second element: Each suitcase and each briefcase has to be checked.
When one of the subjects is singular and the other is plural, the number of the verb is determined by the number of the closer subject: The bellboys or the taxi driver was probably involved; The taxi driver or the bellboys were probably involved. Nor follows the same rule: Neither the bellboys nor the taxi driver was involved; Neither the taxi driver nor the bellboys were involved. This rule permits sentences that are correct but clumsy. Such sentences can be rewritten to avoid the clumsiness, but note that paired subjects of different number are far more likely to occur than paired subjects of different person, and a policy of not allowing them may be quite onerous.
A guest or two was standing near and One or two was hostile disobey the usual convention, since the closer subject is two, but are idiomatically correct, even in formal writing. The plural were would also be correct.
I think not only the bellboys but the taxi driver was involved; I think not only the taxi driver but also the bellboys were involved. Both subjects are positive, but the verb occurs only with the subject preceded by but or but also, and the subject preceded by not only does not affect the number of the verb. Of course, if the verb occurs with the subject preceded by not only, it agrees with that subject: I think not only were the bellboys involved but the taxi driver.
Collective nouns, such as family, group, and committee, can take either singular or plural verbs, depending on whether they are being thought of as singular or plural. The committee is qualified to decide makes a statement about the committee as a unit; The committee are not all qualified to decide makes a statement about some of the individual members. The number of a collective noun should if possible be consistent throughout a written work.
About 50 percent of the population is rural and About 50 percent of the population are farmers are both correct. Although rural and farmers in these examples are only subject complements, not subjects, and do not directly determine the number of the verb, they do reflect that About 50 percent is, or at least can be, thought of as a singular in the first example and is necessarily thought of as a plural in the second. About 50 percent of the respondents were rural and Half have no insurance similarly require plural verbs because the subjects have to be thought of as plural.
There are many words that can switch back and forth from their singular to their plural meanings quite freely even in different clauses of the same sentence. Example: Physics is my field, but the physics of this device baffle me.
Five boys is certainly a plural – what could be more plural than a plural noun modified by a number larger than one? Yet Five boys is not enough even for a scrub game is correct. In that example, the plural are could be used too, but sometimes it cannot be. Five dollars are too much is wrong, or at best unidiomatic; a sum of money is thought of as singular. Usually we know without thinking about it whether a noun modified by a number is really plural, as in Five boys were enrolled for soccer, or just a unit that is plural in form. We can switch back and forth freely: Seven silver dollars were exposed on his grubby palm, but Seven dollars was not enough for a motorcycle.
More than one can only be plural in meaning but nevertheless often takes a singular verb, either modifying a noun or standing alone: More than one child was crying; More than one was crying.
In The secret is more controls, the singular subject The secret is linked to the plural complement more controls by the singular verb is. The subject, not the complement, determines the number of the verb.
All as a subject sometimes mistakenly gets a plural verb when it has a plural complement. All is often clearly plural, as in All are glad to be home, in which it refers to some group of people. Often it is clearly singular, as in All is lost, in which it refers to a totality not a plural of some kind.
In some constructions, what combines the functions of the demonstrative pronoun that or those and the relative pronoun which. For example, the cumbersome That which is important is the money becomes What is important is the money, and the cumbersome Those which are welcome are large donations becomes What are welcome are large donations. As may be apparent in the second example, what are is often somewhat troubling; what is accepted by grammarians as a plural relative pronoun as well as a singular one, but nevertheless it seems happier in singular constructions. There is a strong tendency to mix singular and plural verbs, as in What is welcome are large donations, and the tendency is stronger when some verb other than is follows what and there are several words between the first and second verb, as in What warms the cockles of our hearts are large donations. The advice of most writers on grammar and usage, including me in the first edition of this book, is to resist this tendency and allow ourselves only either What warm the cockles of our hearts are large donations or What warms the cockles of our hearts is large donations, with the verbs agreeing in number. In the singular-verb version, which I think is preferable, it is entirely correct for is not to agree in number with donations, since donations is merely the complement in the construction, not the subject, and it is the subject that determines the number of the verb.
John (and his parents) was at the zoo yesterday. A parenthetical subject has no effect on the number of the verb. John as well as his parents was entranced by the monkeys and The zoo in addition to the parks was closed during the war years are correct. Phrases such as as well as and in addition to indicate a parenthetical construction. Their position, even their lives, was now at risk goes too far, however; it requires the plural were. When a second subject is modified by even, it seems to take more than a pair of commas to make the subject parenthetical. Even emphasizes the element and entitles it to affect the verb. The troubling commas can be avoided, of course – Their position and even their lives were now at risk.
Make a pronoun and its antecedent agree in number, person, and gender. The antecedent of a pronoun is the noun or noun phrase that it represents. In I asked Bill, but he can’t go, the antecedent of the pronoun he is the noun Bill. Pronouns do not always have antecedents, and some logically can’t have antecedents. In the question Who can go? the interrogative pronoun Who has no antecedent.
Any, none, and such combinations of pronouns as Any of them and none of you are primarily singular. Formerly the rule was that they always had to be considered singular, but this rule has wisely been loosened, since they are often clearly plural in meaning. Thus None of the citizens vote as often as they are supposed to, in which both the verb and the pronoun are plural, is correct. The plural pronoun is also correct in None vote as often as they are supposed to.
In the sentence The dog didn’t come, though I called him and rattled his dish, and the next morning he was still missing, the pronoun is first objective as the object of called, then possessive as a modifier of dish, and then subjective as the subject of was still missing.
Don’t let a pronoun have more than one likely antecedent. The resources of the Ruhr were very great, but the capacity of the war industries to take advantage of them was much reduced when they became a prime target of Allied air raids is a carefully written sentence, but we can’t tell whether it was the resources or the war industries that became the prime target. Ambiguous pronouns are difficult to catch, because we ourselves know what we mean. Once we’ve caught one by careful checking for possible misreadings, we may decide to let it go, believing that the misreading is too unlikely to worry about. This decision is sensible enough.
The basic tenses are past, present, and future, but English has a lot more than three tenses – by some counts, it has more than thirty. We have not just I cooked, I cook, and I will cook, but the present perfect I have cooked, the past perfect I had cooked, and the future perfect I will have cooked. These tenses – now there are six – also have progressive forms: I was cooking, I am cooking, I will be cooking, I have been cooking, I had been cooking, and I shall (or will) have been cooking. Some tenses have a special emphatic form: I do cook, I did cook. Various other combinations with auxiliary verbs can be considered separate tenses: I was going to cook, I would be cooking, I would have been going to cook, and so on.
Keep the tense of a verb in proper relation to the tenses of other verbs in the sentence or passage. A very high percentage of the time, we know without thinking about it when there is only one proper tense for a verb and when we have a choice of tense and we are safe enough just using the tense that seems right. It is usually only when we do think about it, perhaps feeling that we have lost ourselves in a maze of relative times, that we make errors, applying misremembered rules and momentarily losing our ear for the natural tense.
Often a subordinate verb that expresses something that is always true, not just true at the time of the main verb’s action, is in the present tense, as in Galileo believed that the earth moves around the sun – but moved would not be wrong, and some would consider it preferable, since a subordinate clause in the present tense is slightly jarring when the main clause is in a past tense.
When the actions of a main verb and a secondary verb take place at different times and this fact is evident because of some modifying word for the secondary verb, the verbs can often be either in the same tense or in the logically appropriate different tenses: He always goes out after he comes home or has come home; He went out after he came home or had come home. In She arrived after he had left the party and He had left the party before she arrived, the past perfect has no necessary function, because the adverbs after and before express the time relationship. Some grammarians would call the use of the past perfect in these examples redundant, and therefore wrong. Although redundancy is not always an ultimate evil that must be stamped out wherever it appears, there is perhaps something slightly illogical about indicating time differences with both an adverb and a tense; He left the party describes an action, and after he left the party seems sufficient to describe anything subsequent to that action. Nevertheless, the past perfect is acceptable and to some ears preferable.
Smith said he arrived at the bank on time and went to the vault. The verbs arrived and went are not in the proper tense relative to the verb said; since Smith’s arrival and his going to the vault took place in time previous to the time established by Smith said, the verbs should be had arrived and had gone. However, suppose the account of what Smith said goes on for a long paragraph or even for pages. Are we required to let Smith’s said force every subsequent verb into the clumsy and wordy past perfect tense? No. In such a circumstance, it is not only permissible but desirable to let the tense slide to the simpler past tense, and the sooner the better.
If they swim well, their father smiles contains two indicative verbs in the present tense, swim and smiles. If they don’t swim well and we want to state what the effect on their father would be if they did, we use subjunctive verb forms: It’s too bad they don’t swim well. If they swam well, their father would smile. The verb swam looks like a past tense and the verb would smile looks like a special form of the past tense used to show habitual action, and that is what they would be in a different context: The children sometimes swam well. If they swam well, their father would smile. But in the original context, there is no “pastness” to the meaning of the verbs; the sentence is a statement about an imaginary present rather than an actual past, and the verbs are subjunctive. Subjunctive forms used to make statements about an imaginary present typically are identical with indicative forms used to make statements about an actual past.
The would have ... would have error may be appealing partly because using the same tense in the if clause and the main clause seems a neat and balanced way of arranging things. But an if-this-then-that statement is necessarily not balanced – one part of it is a condition and the other part is a conclusion based on that condition – and therefore the tenses should not be balanced. The subjunctive sequence of tenses is If A were then B would be; If A had been, then B would have been. A subjunctive form occurs in both the first clause and the second, but the forms are of different tenses. (Note that if-then statements about the future, which in American English are usually indicative rather than subjunctive in both clauses, show the same pattern of different tenses: If A happens, then B will happen. The British often use a subjunctive form for the if clause: If A should happen, then B will happen.)
I wish you would have paid me is another common error; it should be I wish you had paid me.
He acts as if he were rich, He acted as if he were rich, and He will act as if he were rich are correct, and so are He acts as if he had been elected, He acted as if he had been elected, and He will act as if he had been elected.
The present infinitive very frequently has a future meaning, as in I am to go tomorrow. In this construction, it is like the present progressive tense, which is formed with the present participle and can also indicate future time, as in I am going tomorrow.
The subjunctive mood is not used to express what something is or what something does, as the indicative mood is, or to make a direct command, as the imperative mood is. It is used to express what something might be or do, should be or do, or must be or do. In a way it is the most distinctively human of moods, because it expresses possible being or action rather than actual being or action. Animals can exist only in the real world, but we exist in imaginary ones as well, and we need the subjunctive mood to think about and talk about our imaginary worlds.
Clauses that begin with if or as if are not always subjunctive. If he is rich he will be welcome is indicative; the if clause presents a condition that may be true. He acts as if his life is in danger and He acts as if his life were in danger are both correct; the indicative as if clause in the first sentence implies that his life may well be in danger, and the subjunctive as if clause in the second sentence implies that it is unlikely that his life is in danger – it states a condition that is, or at least is believed to be, contrary to fact.
She knew that if she were to graduate she would have to study harder is an error; were should be was. Again, the sentence can be tested by seeing if it can be put in the present tense – if it can be, it must be an indicative sentence, not a subjunctive one. And it can be: She knows that if she is to graduate she will have to study harder.
The active voice is simple and direct: Smith hired Brown. The passive voice reverses the position of the agent of the verb and makes the object of the verb its subject: Brown was hired by Smith. When we are children, we often perceive ourselves as objects of action more than as subjects of it, and we use the passive voice even though it takes more words and requires more complicated constructions. The passive voice is a feature of childish expression. It does make childish expression weak compared to adult expression, and therefore teachers try to get us to make more use of the active voice. We do have to become adults, do have to learn to think of ourselves as the subjects of action as well as the objects of it. However, the passive voice is respectable, is capable of expressing thoughts and shades of meaning that the active voice cannot express, and is even sometimes more compact and direct than the active voice.
The passive voice permits not naming the agent of the verb, because the object of the active verb becomes the subject of the passive verb. If the agent is too obvious, too unimportant, or too vague to mention, the passive is usually better.
The pussyfooting passive is admittedly often overused. These arrears cannot be overlooked, and if payment is not made promptly our legal staff will be notified and rigorous action will be taken is an offensive, falsely polite way of saying We cannot overlook these arrears, and if you do not make payment promptly we will take rigorous legal action. In the passive sentence, the writer seems to pretend that the recipient of the letter is being threatened by abstract forces beyond the writer’s control – the credit system, perhaps. By not naming the agent of the threats, the writer avoids admitting responsibility as the agent. The pussyfooting passive is essential in journalism – often the writer does not know who did something or is not free to say who did it, but wants to say it was done.
Adjectives and adverbs are the parts of speech that the term modifier brings to mind – adjectives modify nouns and sometimes pronouns, and adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. However, the term also includes phrases and dependent clauses that define or elaborate on words or other phrases and clauses.
The possessive my is classified as a definitive adjective. (Other definitive adjectives are the articles the and a and the demonstrative adjectives this, that, these, and those.) After definitive adjectives come numerical adjectives modifying what remains of the word group. Then there are judgmental and descriptive adjectives, such as beautiful and furry.
Because adverbs can wander and because they can modify adjectives, other adverbs, and whole sentences as well as verbs, there may be several words or phrases in a given sentence that an adverb can modify, and this makes confusion and ambiguity possible even in sentences that are grammatically correct. We can’t accept completely abstract logic is ambiguous. The adverb completely could modify either the verb preceding it or the adjective following it. Such a modifier is sometimes called a squinting modifier – it seems to look in two directions at once. Squinting modifiers can be hard to find when we’re looking over what we’ve written, because we ourselves, of course, know what we mean, and the grammar is not incorrect, just ambiguous. The example could be made unambiguous by making it either We can’t completely accept abstract logic or We can’t accept logic that is completely abstract.
I’m only going to tell you once has a misplaced modifier - it should be I’m going to tell you only once – but it is not ambiguous, and it is not graceless either; it is almost an idiom. The “correct” version may sound a little stiff. Sometimes taste must determine when positioning a modifier precisely is desirable and when it is too fussy.
It was impossible to completely follow his logic contains a split infinitive, but it is far better than either It was impossible to follow completely his logic, which is unnatural or It was impossible completely to follow his logic, which is both unnatural and ambiguous. As is frequently the case, we do have a good alternative to splitting the infinitive: It was impossible to follow his logic completely. Fewer and fewer writers, and few grammarians, subscribe to the rule against the split infinitive. And yet there is some virtue in obeying it. If we choose to avoid split infinitives, we should also take the trouble to recast sentences to avoid putting the modifier in an unnatural place.
Inspecting the books, the error was immediately apparent contains a dangling participial phrase. The word the participle should modify must be some word signifying whoever inspected the books.
Providing, as in Providing the books are complete, we will find the error, is accepted by dictionaries as a conjunction, but it is nevertheless much condemned. I advise using provided instead.
I feel badly about it is such a common error that some authorities accept it as idiomatically correct, though no one would say I feel well about it. The verb feel is a linking verb in these examples, not an ordinary verb as it can be in other sentences, such as I feel strongly about it and We feel similarly about it. A linking verb links its subject to the following word or phrase. I is a pronoun and cannot be modified by or linked to an adverb, but it can be modified by or linked to an adjective. Thus it should be I feel bad about it.
The most common linking verb is, of course, be. Other common verbs that can be linking verbs include seem, appear, look, become, grow, taste, smell, sound, remain, stay and stand. Most of them are not always linking verbs. The verb smell is not a linking verb in He vigorously smells the wine or in He smells less acutely than the winemaster, but it is a linking verb in He smells winy after his sessions in the cellar.
You have to hold the camera vertically for close-up portraits is incorrect. It is the camera, not the holding of it, that has to be vertical; the sentence should read You have to hold the camera vertical for close-up portraits. The error is similar to the error in I feel badly, but instead of a linking verb it involves an object complement – a noun or adjective that follows the actual object of a verb to complete the meaning. In They elected him president, the noun president is an object complement; in They called him crazy, the adjective crazy is an object complement. Sometimes a sentence can be phrased either with adverbs or with object complements with no significant change in meaning: Slice the steak thinly or Slice the steak thin; Let us see it clearly and plainly or Let us see it clear and plain.
Precision with adjectives and adverbs can be important. In opening his poem on his father’s dying with the line Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas was being precise. He wanted his father to remain himself as he faced death, not to be gentle and resigned, but he did not want his father to die ungently and painfully which is what Do not go gently would mean. To communicate his meaning, Thomas used gentle as what is called a predicate complement – a construction that is quite common, as in I came home tired and Don’t go away mad, and is not likely to give any fluent user of the language trouble, but that does surprise us and make us pay attention when we find it in Thomas’s line where we would expect an adverb.
Spoken language, rich and beautiful as it can be in other respects, must often be less compact and complex than written language, because it does not have the precise syntactical signals that marks of punctuation represent.
Imprecise punctuation, which is a feature of the writing of the badly educated and is by no means uncommon in the writing of the well educated, can be worse than no punctuation at all, because it gives false signals. It also gives the writer away. It doesn’t just suggest ignorance of “good English,” as might an occasional grammatical lapse; it exposes muddled ideas and faulty connection of ideas, an impairment not only of expression but of thinking.
There is often more than one valid way to punctuate a sentence. Also, punctuation practices change more quickly than grammatical rules, and there is more disagreement about them from authority to authority, from stylebook to stylebook. Nevertheless, punctuation can be absolutely wrong.
Sentence structure is a basic part of language, and ordinarily we don’t have to think about it very much. However, when we are not sure how to punctuate a sentence, we do have to think about its structure, and usually in terms of three basic questions:
1. Is it a simple sentence, a compound sentence, or a complex sentence?
2. If the sentence includes a dependent clause or phrase, is the dependent clause or phrase parenthetical or defining?
3. Does the sentence begin with the main clause or with an introductory word, phrase, or dependent clause?
Mary writes is the simplest sort of simple sentence, containing just a subject, Mary, and a verb, writes. Mary writes me letters is still a simple sentence, though now the verb has the direct object letters and the indirect object me. Mary and John write is also a simple sentence, though it has the compound subject Mary and John. And Mary writes and telephones is a simple sentence, though it has the compound predicate writes and telephones. A sentence can get quite long and complicated and still remain a simple sentence. Until recently Mary and John, my grandchildren, wrote me letters twice a month and telephoned every Sunday afternoon is a simple sentence, even though it includes an introductory adverbial phrase, a compound subject with an appositive, a compound predicate, a direct and an indirect object for one of the verbs, and an adverbial phrase for each of the verbs. It is simple because in spite of its complexity and its three commas, it still merely connects one subject or set of subjects to one action or set of actions.
John writes, and Mary telephones is a compound sentence. It consists of two clauses, either of which could stand alone: John writes, Mary telephones. They are independent clauses – that is, not only does each have its own subject and predicate (the minimum any clause must have), but neither one is dependent on the other. A compound sentence is merely a group of two or more simple sentences (or complex sentences, discussed below) that have been made one sentence by punctuating them appropriately and often by using a conjunction such as and. John, who is my grandson, doesn’t write anymore contains the dependent clause who is my grandson. Mary still gets the urge to telephone just before the rates go up on Sunday contains the dependent clause just before the rates go up on Sunday. Both are complex sentences – that is, sentences with one or more dependent clauses. The clause who is my grandson is obviously not an independent clause (unless one makes it a question); it is an adjectival clause modifying John. The clause just before the rates go up on Sunday is not independent either; it is an adverbial clause modifying gets the urge to telephone. Each dependent clause merely modifies something in the main clause.
They wanted to go on writing and telephoning, but after they moved into my house I told them to stop has an independent clause extending up to the comma and then another independent clause, I told them to stop at the end, so it is a compound sentence. The second independent clause is modified by the dependent clause after they moved into my house, so the sentence is also a complex sentence. Thus we have a compound/complex sentence – a compound sentence in which at least one of the independent clauses is modified by a dependent clause.
We may now be able to identify a sentence as simple, compound, or complex, but to punctuate it properly we must answer the second and third of the three questions listed at the beginning of the rule – we must determine whether any dependent constructions are parenthetical or defining and whether the sentence begins with the main clause. Essentially this requires us to consider the meanings of the separate parts – the phrases and clauses – that form the sentence and the relationships among these meanings that give the sentence its overall meaning. Writers who punctuate improperly very likely do not always understand what their sentences mean and perhaps do not always understand even what they want them to mean; if they inspected their writing carefully enough to punctuate it properly they might actually improve their ability to think.
One part of a sentence may be like a parenthetical remark – helpful, perhaps even very important, but not essential to the meaning of the rest of the sentence. Another part may actually define the meaning and hence be essential. A primary purpose of punctuation is to indicate this distinction.
His son, who is a good swimmer, made the rescue contains the parenthetical dependent clause who is a good swimmer. The pair of commas around the clause are, in their effect on the structure of the sentence, exactly like a pair of parentheses: His son (who is a good swimmer) made the rescue. Omitting one comma or the other would be just as bad an error as omitting one of the parentheses. Parenthetical constructions are often called nonrestrictive, because they do not restrict the meaning of the word or words they relate to but only expand on that meaning; they could be removed from the sentence without changing the basic meaning of the subject-predicate combination that makes up the basic sentence.
Parentheses themselves often do suggest that what they enclose is a digression or a bit of incidental information that should not distract the reader from the main point of the sentence, but pairs of commas, and especially pairs of dashes, frequently emphasize what they enclose.
When a parenthetical clause begins a sentence, the first comma is, of course, omitted: Although he swims well, he has no lifesaving training. The second comma – in the example, the one after well – is optional but often desirable.
Parenthetical elements don’t have to be clauses; they can also be phrases or even single words. His son, John, made the rescue has the parenthetical element John. John, swimming strongly, reached the child in time has the parenthetical element swimming strongly.
The examples of parenthetical constructions above might lead one to conclude that such constructions must always be set off by punctuation. However, sometimes they are not. In John as well as his brothers has received lifesaving training, the phrase as well as his brothers is parenthetical. The phrase has no effect on the basic meaning, John has received lifesaving training. The phrase as well as and some others can be so clearly parenthetical, so clearly an interruption, that the signal of enclosing punctuation is not needed.
His son who is a good swimmer made the rescue is quite different from the earlier example with commas. When the sentence has no commas, the subject is no longer just His son, but a specific son who is a good swimmer, as distinguished from other sons who aren’t. There are no commas because who is a good swimmer is now a necessary, integral part of the sentence essential to the meaning. Defining constructions are often called restrictive, because they restrict the meaning of the word or phrase they relate to. Like nonrestrictive elements, restrictive elements can be single words or phrases as well as clauses. Because they are an essential part of the meaning, they should not ordinarily be separated from the words they relate to by commas – though, as will be explained, they sometimes can and sometimes should be so separated when they begin a sentence and in certain special situations.
His son John who is a good swimmer made the rescue is good news but bad punctuation. The lack of punctuation clearly tells the reader that both John and who is a good swimmer are defining elements, but that can’t be the case, because surely only one son is named John. The clause who is a good swimmer must be considered a parenthetical element and thus be set off with a pair of commas or other marks.
In His son, the one who is a good swimmer, made the rescue the interrupting construction is obviously defining – it pins down which son is meant – but it just as obviously requires the commas, unlike the defining constructions in earlier examples. The reason is that the one who is a good swimmer is actually an alternate subject of the sentence; The one who is a good swimmer made the rescue is as grammatically valid a sentence as His son made the rescue. The complete sentence has two beginnings and one ending, and the commas are necessary signals of the second beginning. Although careful writers generally avoid having to begin sentences twice to make their meaning clear, alternate subjects are sometimes employed for rhetorical effect.
An appositive is a noun, or a group of words acting as a noun, that immediately follows another noun to define it or further explain it. My friend Mary is getting married uses Mary as a defining appositive, narrowing down friend to a specific friend, and no commas are used. Mary, my friend from school, is getting married uses my friend from school as a parenthetical appositive, and parenthetical commas are used.
When a noun and another noun in apposition to it are both completely specific, the noun in apposition is considered parenthetical: My husband, John, is at work; John, my husband, is at work. Both John and my husband are completely specific. Parenthetical commas can often be omitted in phrases such as my husband John and my sister Mary, even though there could be only one husband and there may be only one sister. My husband John can be considered a unit, somewhat like my Uncle Bob, rather than an ordinary case of noun and appositive; it often would be spoken without pauses. My sister Mary can also be considered a unit when the existence of other sisters is unknown or irrelevant.
An introductory construction is anything that precedes and modifies the main clause or any independent clause in a sentence. It may be a single word, such as However; it may be a phrase, such as In view of the circumstances; it may be a dependent clause, such as When I’m ready. It may be either defining or parenthetical. Frequently an introductory construction is followed by a comma, which serves as a signal that the main clause is about to begin. I’ll call you when I’m ready contains the defining dependent clause when I’m ready. When I’m ready, I’ll call you puts the dependent clause first, as an introductory construction; When I’m ready is still a defining clause, restricting the meaning of I’ll call you, but because it is introductory it can be set off with a comma. Thus after an introductory construction, a comma is not the signal of a parenthetical element but simply a clarifying pause.
A comma is not always required following an introductory construction – When I’m ready I’ll call you is fine, since the introductory clause is short and very closely related to the main clause. The comma can sometimes be omitted even when the introductory clause is parenthetical, as in Although he swims well he has no lifesaving training, which might benefit from a comma after well but does not strictly require it. Commas or omitted commas are clear indications of parenthetical or defining constructions only when the constructions are not introductory.
Dinner being over we began to quarrel requires a comma after over to separate the absolute phrase Dinner being over from the main clause; an absolute phrase, even though it is not an independent clause, is independent of the sentence containing it, and its independence is honored in speech with a distinct pause.
A moment later, he left the room, and we discussed the issue more openly; omitting the comma after later would make it more apparent that the introductory phrase modifies only he left, not we discussed, for which it is not a very suitable modifier – it indicates a point in time, and we discussed indicates an activity that extends over time.
Therefore, however, in addition, and many similar words and phrases are usually followed by a comma when they are used to introduce a sentence: Therefore, let’s talk about something else. There is some flexibility when such words and phrases are used in a compound sentence to introduce a second clause: Tempers were beginning to rise, and therefore we changed the subject. A comma after therefore would not be incorrect, but it would give the sentence a loose look, with no distinction made between the major pause after rise and the minor or missing pause after therefore. Tempers were beginning to rise; and therefore, we changed the subject uses a semicolon for the major pause and a comma for the minor one, which is correct but gives the sentence more punctuation than it really needs.
We’re going to discuss it, and then we’ll decide what to do is a compound sentence – that is, it has two independent clauses. We’re going to discuss it can stand alone as a complete sentence, and so can Then we’ll decide what to do. When joined by and, the clauses are separated by a comma. A semicolon could be used instead, and if and is omitted, a semicolon should be used. When and is supplied, a semicolon is usually an unnecessarily strong mark of punctuation; the comma is better.
Often when the second independent clause begins with an introductory construction, the comma is misplaced: We’re going to discuss it and, when we’ve worked it out, we’ll let you know should have a comma after discuss it and no comma after and. The comma after out is optional in this example.
Let's sit down and I’ll tell you a story is a compound sentence and could have a comma after down, but it is better without the comma. This is often the case when the clauses of a compound sentence are short; the syntactical signal a comma would provide just isn’t needed, because even though there are two clauses, the sentence can be absorbed as a unit.
It’s an unusual problem and no one knows much about it, but we’re going to discuss it and then we’ll decide is a double compound sentence – two independent clauses joined by and connected to two other independent clauses joined by and. We could put commas after problem and discuss it, but if we do, we had better change the existing comma after about it to a semicolon to avoid a loose string of three commas: It's an unusual problem, and no one knows much about it; but we’re going to discuss it, and then we’ll decide. This would have been considered the best way to punctuate the sentence a generation or so ago, and in formal prose it remains a good way but the trend today is to use light punctuation. With only one internal mark, the comma after about it, the sentence is smoother and just as easy to understand.
As a general principle, it is sensible to omit a comma between independent clauses that are both modified by the same dependent clause or introductory phrase. Tomorrow morning, I’ll come over, and we’ll see the lawyers in the afternoon is not such a case – the second independent clause is not modified by Tomorrow morning. But Tomorrow morning, I’ll come over and we’ll see the lawyers is such a case, and though the comma omission is not required for clarity in this example, it is nevertheless desirable to indicate the shared relationship with the introductory phrase. If in a given example of a shared introductory phrase the sentence begins to seem unwieldy and to require a comma between clauses just for ease of reading, it is likely that the sentence has outgrown its structure and should be divided or recast.
Commas that have no function should be omitted, just as words that have no function should be omitted.
We’ll check the books, and let you know next week justifiably uses the comma to make it clear that the adverbial phrase next week modifies only let you know, not check the books. Often a comma is helpful to counter the tendency of modifiers to link themselves to the wrong word or phrase. He left, and mixed a tray of drinks justifiably uses the comma to keep the first verb from momentarily seeming to share the object a tray of drinks with the second verb, as in He mixed and served a tray of drinks. Verbs joined by and are likely to be perceived as having equal effects on the rest of the sentence containing them.
He mixed the drinks, then served them necessarily uses the comma, because the and that would normally join the predicates is missing. The comma often is used in place of a missing word, and even though its primary function is to separate – to prevent conjunction – it can replace the conjunction and; the slight pause it represents leaves mental room for the omitted word.
He is doing well, and will rise to the top if he keeps it up justifiably uses the comma to separate predicates that are quite different in significance – one is a statement about the present and the other is a prediction. When the verbs in a compound predicate are in different tenses, as they are in the example, a comma is often justifiable. Somewhat similarly He was not doing well, and was eaten by a bear has a justifiable comma; the verb in the first predicate is active, the verb in the second predicate passive.
The figures do not prove, but merely suggest that trouble is ahead is incorrect, because it separates prove from its object, which is also that trouble is ahead; the verbs share the same object. The sentence must have either two commas or none. Two commas make a proper parenthetical interruption, but a single comma cuts one verb or the other from its object.
The expectation is falsely high earnings will be reported, which most readers would have to read twice to get the meaning – which is falsely high, expectation or earnings? – and they couldn’t be sure of it then. Inserting a comma after is would make the meaning clear, though inserting that there instead would be better. Of course, that should be inserted after high if that is the intended meaning.
If the modified element is not a single word but a compound noun, such as merchant ship or dishwater blonde, the first word of the compound may be mistakenly treated as part of a series of adjectives and preceded by a comma, as in Ours was a solid, old-fashioned, merchant ship and Our captain was a blowzy, profane, dishwater blonde, which should not have their second commas.
Toward the hazy cape, the weary whalers rowed, with subject and verb in normal order but the adverbial Toward the hazy cape at the beginning rather than at the end, is only partially inverted. The comma after cape is wrong. In standard order, the basic sentence is The weary whalers rowed toward the hazy cape, and when the adverbial toward the hazy cape is moved to the beginning, it is still part of the basic sentence, not an introductory construction.
Use a comma before and, or, or nor preceding the last of a series of three or more words or phrases. The safe contained coins, jewelry, and documents has a series of three nouns. He emptied the safe slowly, carefully, and completely has a series of three adverbs. He came in, sat down, and began to tell his story has a series of three predicates. His manner was not shifty, shy, or sheepish, but his flying, fluttering, and flouncing hands suggested some deep anguish has a series of three adjectives and a series of three adjectival participles. In all such cases, I advise using a comma before the and that connects the last item in the series to the preceding items. This rule is old-fashioned. Don’t use it if you don’t want to. I remember the gleam of the rain-washed pavement, the distant clatter of streetcars, the garlicky aroma wafting from the restaurant downstairs and the simple dress she wore is one of those jocose examples invented by writers like me to bully readers and attempt to amuse them. But such sentences do occur. Thus those who customarily omit the final serial comma must take special care to make an exception when the final item in the series can be misread as part of the preceding item. Why bother making exceptions? Play it safe and use the final serial comma. Use of the final serial comma does not, unfortunately, always guarantee that a series will be read correctly. They invited Smith, the chief of police, and me could mean that three people were invited or that only two were invited, with the appositive the chief of police, correctly set off by commas, identifying Smith. Such ambiguity is common. In the example, it could be avoided by using dashes instead of commas if only two people were invited or by rewording – perhaps replacing the chief of police with Chief of Police Brown – if three were invited.
Various complexities are permissible. His manner was not shifty, or shy or sheepish, or even much of a manner at all; yet his hands, flying, fluttering and flouncing, and flirting with each other, suggested some more than ordinary concern uses the commas and absence of commas with deliberate intent to connect some items in the two series more closely than others.
Two predicates and a clause do not make a series. Nor do two objects and a predicate: He picked up a king, a jack, and added another king should be corrected to either He picked up a king, a jack, and another king or He picked up a king and a jack, and added another king.
He opened the book, not to read it, but to seem occupied is, in my opinion, overpunctuated. The comma after book would rarely be heard in speech; the comma after it might not be heard either. The omission is virtually required by idiom when the negative element is very short: They advised making not war but love; He gave not time but only money to the cause; I think not she but he is to blame.
He opened the book, not only to read it, but to seem occupied is wrongly punctuated. The sentence has no negative element; both not only to read it and but to seem occupied are positive. There should be no comma after book, and the comma after it is optional.
Don’t ordinarily put a comma after a conjunction just because what follows is an introductory word, phrase, or clause. This rule applies not only to coordinating conjunctions such as and, but, and or but to subordinating conjunctions such as that, if, and when. The wind had risen, and, throughout the night, the rain beat against the windows and The storm was over, but, in its aftermath, the heavy rain continued are overpunctuated. The and in the first sentence and the but in the second are coordinating conjunctions, connecting independent clauses. There is no reason to have commas after them; a conjunction should not have its joining function contradicted by a comma.
General principle of modern punctuation: to use punctuation lightly and omit it when the signal it would give is false or unnecessary.
He said that, although he couldn’t stay long, he would come. There is no justification for the comma after that. The entire word group although he couldn’t stay long, he would come is the object of He said, and putting a comma in front of it is like improperly separating verb and object, though the intervening that makes it less obvious that the separation is being committed. The comma after long, marking the end of the introductory clause of the two-clause word group, is optional but quite desirable, both because the clause is not very short and because the meanings of the clauses it separates are opposed.
Smith, Jones, and, somewhat later, Brown arrived benefits from the commas because somewhat later interrupts an otherwise very regular series, and the commas apologize for the interruption. These and similar exceptions can be justified and therefore do not contradict the rule: Don’t ordinarily put a comma after a conjunction just because what follows is an introductory word, phrase or clause.
His office gave him little satisfaction, and his wife, none requires the comma after wife so that the reader can be certain that something has been omitted there – a repetition of gave him. Note that the comma after wife, required as it is, is really rather a nuisance; His office gave him little satisfaction, and his wife gave him none gives more satisfaction as a sentence.
He quit his job, and his wife, her excessive social engagements does not require the comma after wife, because the only possible meaning is his wife quit her excessive social engagements. We can take out the comma and still be sure both where a word is missing and what the word is. Since the comma has no function, it should be taken out.
I am writing, Mr. Smith, to confirm our agreement and Tell me, my friend, whether this is a sensible course are typical examples of forms of address that interrupt the course of a sentence. If the commas are omitted in the first example, Mr. Smith becomes the indirect object of writing and the meaning of the sentence changes completely. If the commas are omitted in the second example, there is no change in meaning, but the pauses that would be very clearly heard before and after my friend are not indicated and the sentence is quite hard to read.
But officer, I wasn’t speeding and Oh my friend, what a fool I’ve been omit the first of the parenthetical commas. It is quite proper to omit the first comma when quoting speech and in some cases when trying to give written words some of the immediacy of speech, but in writing that is meant to be read rather than imagined as spoken, the correct punctuation is: But, officer, I wasn’t speeding and Oh, my friend, what a fool I’ve been.
John said: “I’m looking for a job” replaces the comma with a colon. This is correct, and some writers always use the colon rather than the comma when the attribution precedes the quotation. However, the colon is a strong mark of punctuation, and it holds the reader up more than the comma does. It may be desirable, particularly in nonfiction, to hold the reader up – perhaps to emphasize the importance of what follows or to introduce a quotation that runs for several sentences – but otherwise the comma is smoother.
“I,” John said, “am looking for a job” shows the standard form when the attribution comes in the middle of a quoted sentence: comma before and comma after, making the attribution parenthetical. (If the interruption of the quotation is not an attribution, dashes should be used, not commas: “I” – John paused and seemed to glow with self-esteem – ”am looking for a job.”)
Sometimes a quotation is used as a noun within the grammar of a sentence: His battle cry is “More benefits and fewer taxes”; His reply was “No comment.” This can be the case even with verbs such as say that are normally used in attribution: He never said “I agree” when he did not; He was a poor pickpocket, for as he passed on he always said “Thank you.” In each of these examples, the quotation is not an ordinary one but a group of words acting grammatically as a noun – the quotations in the first pair of examples are acting as subject predicates, and those in the second pair are acting as direct objects, which are grammatical functions of nouns. When a quotation is so used – as a noun phrase – it should not have a comma before it, nor should there be one between it and the attributive construction: “No comment” was his reply. Similarly, The Quaker maxim “Do well before you do good” was his motto should have no commas; the quotation is a defining appositive. He paused politely when she cried, “Stop thief!” would be better without the comma. Similarly, The man who wrote, “We are all thieves at heart,” must have kept unusual company, in which the attribution is in a subordinate clause introduced by the relative pronoun who, would benefit greatly from removal of the commas. Sometimes one can think of a good reason to omit the comma, sometimes only a tenuous one. In He muttered something like, “Don’t take the Constitution too seriously” the comma jarringly separates the preposition like from its object, the quotation – good reason, I think, to omit it. In I heard people in the crowd say, “I thought this was a republic,” and “The king should live so long” I would omit both commas, which clutter the sentence, and perhaps argue that the quotations aren’t really dialogue but just samples of overheard utterances, so the standard convention can be suspended.
On the other hand, sometimes a quotation that is quite clearly presented as a noun phrase may more naturally be preceded by a comma. For example, in The big question to him was always “Did my novel hold your interest?” the quotation is clearly functioning as a noun would – it is used as a subject complement – and there should not be a comma. But in He asked, “So how do you like my new office?” but all he wanted to know was, “Did my novel hold your interest?” – in which the quotation is again a subject complement – the comma is defensible; the grammar of the sentence may make the quotation a subject complement, but it is still being presented as an item of dialogue.
Human language does contain gray areas, and perhaps the more gray matter a human writer has, the more time he or she must expect to spend in those gray areas, trying to make words and punctuation better serve shades of meaning.
We’re going to discuss it, then we’ll decide what to do may seem less obviously a comma fault, because then seems to be performing the role of a conjunction. But then here is an adverb, modifying decide; it is not a conjunction. The comma should be a semicolon, or else it should be followed by and. Note, however, that We discussed it, then decided is correct. It is not a compound sentence. It merely has a compound predicate, and the comma indicates the missing conjunction and – an odd role for a comma, which normally prevents conjunction, but the pause it indicates represents the missing word.
The problem was simple, the solution was difficult uses a comma instead of a semicolon to emphasize the contrast – in this case an antithetical contrast – between the two independent clauses. The comma is especially desirable if the second clause is made elliptical: The problem was simple, the solution difficult. If we make it The problem was simple; the solution was difficult, we lose some of the energy and pithiness of the original contrast.
The comma is occasionally desirable when the rule calls for a semicolon. He was not twenty, he was twenty-one uses the comma to emphasize the contrast between a negative statement and a parallel positive one. She was twenty, he was twenty-one uses the comma not to emphasize contrast but to emphasize the slightness of contrast. The problem was simple, the solution was simple uses the comma to emphasize the absence of contrast. In all the examples of exceptions given here, the comma is not only justifiable but preferable.
Emphatic conjunctions such as however and therefore are not really conjunctions – they are adverbs. When they introduce clauses, they are classed as conjunctions or so-called conjunctive adverbs, but they don’t lose their adverbial function and they don’t gain all the powers of a true conjunction – that is, a coordinating conjunction such as and that connects elements of equal grammatical value. Most conjunctive adverbs – however is an exception – can be preceded by a true conjunction, making the comma correct: The problem is difficult, and therefore we couldn’t solve it. (The semicolon would also be correct, if a stronger separation is wanted.) We can’t double up true conjunctions, such as and and but, but we can pair a true conjunction and a conjunctive adverb, which suggests that conjunctive adverbs aren’t very conjunctive.
Some stylebooks, including The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, prescribe a comma rather than a semicolon before and in a series that otherwise uses semicolons: The committee included Smith, the treasurer; Jones, the production supervisor; Brown, the security officer, and Green, the legal counsel. It is true that the semicolon is not needed before and to prevent ambiguity, but the switch from semicolon to comma is pointless and jarring. I recommend using semicolons all the way through, just as I recommend using the final serial comma, which newspapers in general do not use.
The specific function of the colon is to introduce whatever follows: a list, a statement, an example, or anything else that the earlier part of the sentence has led the reader to expect. The use of the colon in the preceding sentence is typical. This is not the only common function of the colon: many writers also use it instead of the semicolon or the dash to link independent clauses when the second clause restates, explains, or expands on the first clause. The colon in the preceding sentence is an example.
Do not capitalize a normally lowercase word after a colon unless what follows the colon is a grammatically complete sentence and the colon is being used primarily to introduce rather than to link. Three people stood before us: the chairman, the treasurer, and the security officer has a lowercase word after the colon. The words following the colon do not form a grammatically complete sentence; standing alone, they would be a fragment. The chairman offered us the following choice: We could jail the treasurer or fine the security officer has a capitalized word after the colon. The words following the colon are a grammatically complete sentence and the colon clearly introduces that sentence.
The colon is a very strong mark and should be used with restraint. The forbidden activities included: smoking, drinking... should not have the colon. There should be no punctuation separating the verb included from its object. Mild beer was permitted in: ones own quarters, the back kitchen... should not have the colon. There should be no punctuation separating the preposition in from its object.
Don’t overuse the dash; consider using other marks of punctuation. It was obvious – could there be any question? – that he had a serious problem could be punctuated with parentheses instead of dashes, but not with commas; commas cannot enclose a grammatically complete sentence as parentheses and dashes can, and in any case a comma should not be used with a question mark. Since the intrusion of a complete sentence, and a question at that, in the middle of another sentence must represent a sharp break in thought, dashes are usually better than parentheses. I felt I had to speak to him – he was setting a bad example for the other salesmen could be punctuated with a semicolon or even a colon instead of a dash, since either can be employed to link independent clauses. However, note that in the example the dash is not just linking the clauses but taking the place of an understood word, because or for, that would make the second clause dependent on the first in grammar as it is in thought. This use of the dash is correct but can make sentences seem not just casual and informal but lazy and loose. I felt I had to speak to him, because he was setting a bad example for the other salesmen is a tighter sentence. It is by no means always poor to connect independent clauses with a dash. I called him into my office before lunch – he had just reappeared is quite all right, at least in the informal account in progress. The dash is not taking the place of a subordinating word; the clauses are truly independent. The dash is probably better for this sentence than the semicolon, which doesn’t have the added-on, parenthetical effect of the dash.
“If you don’t like the way I sell it,” and now his face was flushed, but with anger, not drink or shame, “I’ll tear up this million-dollar policy.” This punctuation tends to even out the tone of the sentence whereas dashes make the interruption quite emphatic; “If you don’t like the way I sell it” – now his face was flushed, but with anger, not drink or shame – “I’ll tear up this million-dollar policy.” A writer may prefer one effect or the other.
A worthwhile general principle is to avoid using more than two dashes in a sentence. It is also wise to avoid using too many sentences with dashes in the same paragraph.
In modern practice, the dash is not used with the comma, the semicolon, the colon, or points of ellipsis. This sometimes puts it at a disadvantage. For example, He was with his new boss, whom I know – she’s my ex-wife – and they pretended not to see me has a comma after boss that would normally be balanced by a later comma, setting off the parenthetical subordinate clause beginning with whom, but that subordinate clause has its own subordinate clause, set off with dashes, and the second comma has been supplanted by the second dash. The punctuation in the example is correct, but He was with his new boss, whom I know (she’s my ex-wife), and they pretended not to see me, with parentheses instead of dashes, is perhaps better, with both subordinate clauses properly set off. One could, however, use dashes in place of the commas and a semicolon instead of the original dash: He was with his new boss - whom I know; she’s my ex-wife - and they pretended not to see me. The second dash is doing double duty again, because normally one would put a comma between the independent clauses He was with his new boss and and they pretended not to see me, but the dash can do double duty and in any case the comma could be omitted between the two short clauses.
Parentheses have the obvious function of isolating some words from other words within a sentence, or some sentences from other sentences within a paragraph. They usually have the effect of making the material they enclose seem less important than the rest of the sentence or paragraph; they often imply that what they contain is incidental or digressive and could almost be skipped by the reader.
Brackets are sometimes used within parentheses to enclose parenthetical material within parenthetical material. Usually it is better to use a pair of commas or a pair of dashes within parentheses rather than brackets.
Parentheses always come in pairs, but a single dash (like a single comma) is often employed to make the end of a sentence parenthetical.
Brackets are the only mark of punctuation that indicate that the enclosed material is not part of the quotation.
The question mark can be used within parentheses to express doubt about an immediately preceding phrase or fact: Chaucer’s dates are 1340(?)-1400. This use within parentheses is overdone by amateurish writers, as in The beds in the Grand Hotel (?) had no mattresses, in which the question mark unnecessarily and annoyingly calls attention to the irony. Another habit of the amateur is using multiple question marks: What, no mattresses???
You thought I might not like zucchini? is a statement, but the question mark is nevertheless appropriate to show a rising tone that expresses incredulity or surprise.
Often an instruction or command is phrased as a question, but no question mark is used: Would you attend to this immediately. The intent is not to ask but to order, and the absence of the question mark can be “heard”; the voice does not rise if the words are spoken as an order.
Combining the question mark with the exclamation point – Why me!? – is usually frowned on as childish.
As Johnson said, “Language is the dress of thought” may look at a glance like another simple direct quotation. However, the tricky word as complicates it considerably. Johnson said is a straightforward attribution but As Johnson said is not. It could just as easily introduce a paraphrase As Johnson said, words are the clothes that thoughts wear. The quotation marks could be omitted in the original wording, because As Johnson said makes no promise that what follows will be a direct quotation. As Johnson said, language is the dress of thought. Note that language now is not capitalized. In fact, there is a good argument for not capitalizing it even when the quotation marks are present, because As has made the quoted words part of the writer’s sentence (just as that does when the quoted words are introduced by Johnson said that, and we don’t expect ordinarily lowercase words to be capitalized in the middle of sentences. The writer can decide whether the quotation should be perceived as a complete utterance as well as part of the sentence including it and can capitalize or not capitalize accordingly, but could avoid this often troublesome decision by avoiding as.
Thoughts can be treated like other quotations and enclosed in quotation marks. They can also be italicized, without quotation marks. Both of these conventions are common. It is more common to dispense with both quotation marks and italics. Johnson thought, Now why did I say that?; Now why did I say that? he brooded. I recommend this third convention, although one has to be careful to keep thoughts and narrative from mingling, usually by paragraphing appropriately and inserting enough attributions to keep the reader straight. Using quotation marks is likely to be confusing when there is ordinary dialogue nearby. Using italics gives an unintended intensity to all thoughts and makes italics unavailable to show intended intensity.
When a direct quotation runs more than one paragraph, no closing quotation mark is used at the end of the first paragraph, but an opening quotation mark is used at the beginning of the second paragraph. This pattern continues; the closing quotation mark appears only when the quotation finally ends.
In nonfiction, long quotations of written material can all be presented without quotation marks by indenting them a few spaces from the left margin of the regular text.
If there are passages of dialogue in nonfiction, they usually should be paragraphed in fiction style, with a new paragraph for each speaker. It is much easier for a reader to follow an exchange of words when there are paragraph breaks.
I told the judge yes, you said maybe, and the policeman said no. The words yes, maybe, and no are presumably direct quotations, but they do not need to be enclosed in quotation marks. These short words of agreement, indecision, or disagreement can function as part of the sentence without any surrounding punctuation, though they can also, of course, be treated as regular quotations: You said, “Maybe.”
He keeps using the word ‘fail-safe”; I’m not sure what it means has the semicolon after the closing quotation mark. He gave me a definition of ‘fail-safe”: a system of safeguards that hasn’t failed yet has the colon after the closing quotation mark.
It concluded “This is worse than ‘blind justice.’... It is a callous averting of our eyes.” The closing single quotation mark follows the period here, to indicate that in the full text the sentence ends; the points of ellipsis follow the single quotation mark to indicate an omission before the next sentence.
The word “grammar” has different meanings in different contexts and to different people. This is the conventional American way of setting off words under discussion.
Once a convention has been decided on, the writer should stick to it throughout the written work, departing from it only when it doesn’t work.
This writer uses too many buts and howevers and maybes and ifs is best left alone. The whimsical plurals make it clear enough that the words are not playing their typical roles but are being discussed.
William “Bull” Halsey retired in 1947 shows the standard method of giving both a first name and a nickname.
After the “bellboy” – actually a ragged urchin of no distinguishable sex – left the room, I inspected the “bathroom” – a hole in the floor bracketed by crude concrete footprints. Raised-eyebrow quotation marks can be the most irritating of all mannerisms in written English. In the example, the supercilious writer just steps on the intended jokes; each pair of quotation marks telegraphs the bad news that some pedestrian irony is coming up. Nevertheless, raised-eyebrow quotation marks are not always foolish, and they can be useful to indicate that a word is being used in some special way or with some reservation. I have often in this book written sentences such as The comma in this construction can be “heard.” The quotation marks indicate that heard is not being used in its literal sense. We must each judge for ourselves when raised-eyebrow quotation marks are genuinely useful, when they are pointless, and when they are foolish; my advice is to be a harsh judge.
Points of ellipsis at the end of dialogue may be taken to indicate a pause while the speaker waits for an answer.
Since there is such disagreement among the authorities about words ending in s or z sounds, each writer is entitled to make his or her own decision about certain possessives, but each should try to have a consistent policy and avoid inconsistencies such as Charles’s garage is bigger than Miles’ house.
A generation or so ago, many authorities advised against using the possessive case with any word that does not denote an animate thing. Thus one could write (or say) the dog’s dish but not the dish’s contents; it would have to be the contents of the dish. The distinction is no longer made except by very fastidious writers.
The boss’s office and the bosses’ salaries show the use of the apostrophe plus s that I advise for singular words ending in s and of the apostrophe alone for plural words, which are usually formed by es when the singular ends in s. There are very few common nouns in English that end in a single s in the singular; those that do exist are apt to be direct borrowings from other languages, such as pus from Latin and catalysis from Greek. Many of these words have plurals that are nonstandard but do end in s and they usually form the possessive plural in the standard way – catalyses is the plural, and catalyses’ is the possessive plural. There are quite a few common nouns that end in x, such as box, and some that end in zz such as buzz, and these words follow the same pattern as boss for the possessive: box’s, boxes’, buzz’s, buzzes’.
The children’s room, the people’s choice and women’s rights are examples of an important exception regarding the possessive form of plural words.
Other venerable English words, such as deer, some evident borrowings from other languages, such as species, and many proper nouns, such as Chinese, are the same in the singular and the plural, and the possessive forms are also the same in the singular and plural: this deer’s huge antlers, and these deer’s wintering grounds, this species’ habitat, these species’ habitats.
Errors are common when the name ends in s. Curtis’s house is correct, meaning a house owned or occupied by someone named Curtis; so is Curtis’ house if the writer prefers not to add an s in such cases. Problems start when the Curtis family is involved. More often than not one sees the Curtis’s house, which is wrong. The plural of the surname Curtis is Curtises, so it must be the Curtises’ house. Similarly Jones, Jones’s house, the Joneses’ house; Mr. Cross, Mr. Cross’s house, the Crosses’ house. I think errors are usually the result of a hazy understanding of how to make names plural.
Des Moines, Los Angeles, and Three Rivers are plural in form but singular in meaning. So, of course, is the United States. Someone may form the possessive Des Moines’s, Los Angeles’s and even Three Rivers’s and the United States’s. These are wrong; one must observe the plural form rather than the singular meaning and omit the final s – which, after all, is a common way of forming the possessive of any word ending in s.
Names from the Bible and from classical history and legend that end in s often take only the apostrophe to form the possessive: Moses’, Jesus’, Aristophanes’, Hercules’. Adding the s is not wrong, but most handbooks of punctuation advise omitting it, and in many cases when it is added it looks odd, especially with long names: Aristophanes’s.
The problem with hyphens – and it can be quite a problem – is determining when they are needed in compound words. The only way to be sure about a given compound is to check the dictionary – and dictionaries vary on the spelling of some compounds, so it’s best to stick to a single well-known dictionary (such as the Webster’s) in its most recent edition.
So-called temporary compounds are words that normally stand alone but are compounded when they play certain roles within a sentence, usually an adjectival role. There are countless thousands of possible temporary compounds, and therefore one must understand the principles of hyphenation to know when to hyphenate them. The list here includes some items that themselves can function as base words, but in compounds they can be considered prefixes.
ante, hypo, post, anti, in, pre, bi, infra, pseudo, by, inter, re, circum, intra, semi, co, macro, sub, counter, mal, super, de, micro, supra, dis, mid, trans, down, multi, tri, electro, non, ultra, extra, on, un, fore, out, under, hydro, over, uni, hyper, pan, up
When using any of these prefixes to form an unfamiliar compound not found in the dictionary, follow the principle of separating vowels that are pronounced separately. Certain vowel combinations, such as doubled vowels, are particularly likely to require the hyphen. For example, except in highly technical material containing rare compounds, one would never see words with a doubled i; a solid compound such as antiinflationary would be very difficult to read.
Some words with prefixes are hyphenated to prevent them from being identical with other words of different meaning: I’ll re-cover the sofa when I recover from the flu.
When any of the prefixes on the list is combined with a capitalized word – that is, a proper noun or a word formed from a proper noun – the hyphen is standard: anti-American, pre-Christian, sub-Saharan. But sometimes the capitalized word is lowercased in such compounds; almost all modern dictionaries list transatlantic and unchristian, for example. Again, one must consult the dictionary.
Hyphenate almost all compounds that begin with all, self, and ex when it means former, most that begin with vice, wide, and half, and all that begin with the kinship term great. This rule is quite reliable for the first three prefixes it lists: all-important, self-confident, ex-wife. Still there are exceptions: sound the all clear, selfsame. More often than not it holds for the next three: vice-chancellor, wide-ranging, half-truth. Permanent compounds like these must be checked in the dictionary; the more common they are, the more likely it is that they do not conform (see widespread). Those that are not in the dictionary can be hyphenated.
Compounds formed with half are especially unpredictable: half-dollar but half crown; half title but halftone. Many are listed in most dictionaries; those that are not, such as half-smile, can be hyphenated, except that in some cases half is an adverb – The fault is half mine; He was half dead. Also, when half is a kinship term it does not take a hyphen: half brother.
The word great usually forms open compounds, such as great ape and great circle, and sometimes combines solidly as in greatcoat and greathearted. But as a kinship term it is always hyphenated: great-aunt, great-grandfather.
Don’t hyphenate most compounds ending in down, fold, less, like, over, wide and wise; connect them solidly to the base word. Do hyphenate most compounds ending in designate, elect, and free. Shakedown, manifold, conscienceless, workmanlike, pushover, countrywide, and crosswise are typical examples of compounds with suffixes that connect solidly. Hyphens are used to avoid undesirable combinations of letters, as in once-over, or impossible combinations, as in thrill-less and bell-like. They are also used when the base word is a proper noun, as in France-wide, and when the compound is multiple, as in income-tax-like and twenty-two-fold. They can be used in any unfamiliar compound that the writer believes will be difficult to read as a solid word – for example, in this book I have used period-like to describe the points used in abbreviations and in ellipsis.
It is completely standard in English for a noun to be modified by another noun, by a gerund (which is really a special type of noun), or by an adjective. In compounds such as dog dish, living room, and electric motor, a hyphen would be entirely superfluous, because no signal is required to indicate that in each compound the first word modifies the second. The relationship is fundamental to the language, and the rule is that such compounds are open – that is, spelled as separate words.
A great many two-noun compounds have solidified in English. Merriam-Webster’s desk-size dictionary lists airboat, airbrush, airburst, aircraft, airdrop, airflow, and other solid compounds that combine the noun air with another noun. But it also lists air base, air brake, air gun, air lock, and other open compounds that would seem to be just as good candidates for solidification.
The same has happened with adjective + noun compounds, so that now the same dictionary lists hardball, hardhead, and hardwood but also hard core, hard hat, and hard sell.
There is no pattern in the solidification of noun + noun and adjective + noun compounds. We must use the dictionary.
Since compound nouns can be listed differently in different dictionaries, only editors and the few professional writers who are sticklers for detail are likely to consider it important to follow the authority of a particular dictionary, and even they will flout the dictionary occasionally. Nevertheless, I advise taking some care with compound nouns and at least treating a given compound consistently; those who never bother looking words up are likely to write hardhat on one page and hard hat on the next, a kind of inconsistency that readers will perceive, consciously or not, as sloppy.
Compounds in which a modifier follows rather than precedes a noun are often hyphenated: court-martial, governor-general. (Note that major general and similar compounds in which general is a noun are not hyphenated.) The hyphenation is quite helpful, since noun + modifier compounds are not standard in English.
In compounds such as city-state, actor-director, and secretary-treasurer, neither word is modifying or acting on the other in a standard way. In such a compound the nouns contribute their meanings to the compound equally; the compound is the sum of their meanings, and the hyphen essentially represents the word and. The commonest such hyphenated compounds are in the dictionary and a writer can apply the same principle to invented compounds, such as poet-thief. Note that the apparently similar gentleman thief does not have the same claim to the hyphen; gentleman is functioning as an adjective, modifying thief, and the basic rule for such compounds is to leave them open.
Sometimes the diagonal [slash] is used instead of the hyphen: secretary/treasurer. The diagonal may give a slightly clearer signal that the nouns are equal in significance, because the hyphen, a joining mark, so often signals that one element of a compound modifies or otherwise acts on the other, whereas the diagonal has a separating effect. The diagonal should be avoided if there are convenient alternatives.
Break-in, rip-off, and put-on are standard. Some such compounds of verb root + adverb have solidified – breakup, for example – but they should never be open.
A common practice with compound nouns that are not in the dictionary is to follow the basic rule and leave them as two separate words. This practice can cause annoying inconsistencies with similar compounds. For example, if one uses the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary one may be forced to write Childbearing may cause discomfort for many hours and a bit later Child rearing may cause discomfort for many years, because the compound child rearing does not occur in that dictionary. Not even an unabridged dictionary can include every compound that has a claim to solidification or hyphenation. It is a misuse of the dictionary to assume that by not listing a compound it silently prescribes not hyphenating it. I recommend making exceptions to one’s usual authority when such annoying inconsistencies occur.
Fly-by-night, hand-me-down, know-it-all, stick-in-the-mud, and good-for-nothing are fanciful terms, almost figures of speech, as multiword compound nouns often are. Many such compounds are shown hyphenated in the dictionary and any that are not can be hyphenated.
Unskilled writers sometimes make hyphenated compounds of phrases that are not true compounds at all: This is the view-from-the-top; Let’s consider the man-in-the-street. Such phrases may be clichés, but they are not compounds and should not be hyphenated. The error may result from mixed uses of the phrase; the writer sees it properly hyphenated as an adjective, as in Let's consider the man-in-the-street aspect, and, not entirely clear on the differences between nouns and adjectives anyway, concludes that it should always be hyphenated.
British and American hyphenation practices differ considerably.
Since the function of adverbs is to modify adjectives and verbs, and since participles are merely forms of verbs that can act as adjectives, the combination of adverb + adjective or adverb + participle is just a simple case of one word modifying another, and ordinarily no hyphen is needed to show the relationship. An appropriately-red bridal gown and a completely-confused groom are errors in American English; there should be no hyphens. (The British often do hyphenate such compounds, however.) Note that a scholarly-looking person is not an error. Scholarly, leisurely, and a few other adjectives end in ly, which is the standard ending for adverbs, but they are still adjectives, and the combination of adjective + participle, as in scholarly-looking, should be hyphenated.
An ill-clothed baby is not an error, even though ill is an adverb and the combination is adverb + participle. The reason for the hyphen is that ill can be misread as an adjective, meaning sick and directly modifying baby rather than the participle clothed. There are many adverbs that do not end in ly and can also be adjectives, among them half, well, better, best, fast, slow, little, and long. The eight listed and some others should routinely be followed by a hyphen when they are used in adverb + participle compounds that come before the modified word: half-asleep audience, well-dressed parent, better-clothed baby, best-written book, fast-moving traffic, slow-moving van, little-used car, long-awaited speech.
Some executives are hard-driving because their neuroses are deep-seated must have the hyphens, in my opinion, though some major modern authorities would prescribe dropping them. The hyphens are very clearly “heard,” and dropping them contradicts the fact that hard-driving and deep-seated are very closely bound compounds. (Deep-seated is so listed in Merriam-Webster dictionaries and could retain the hyphen on that ground, but hard-driving is not.)
More, most, and least can be either adverbs or adjectives. One must be alert to catch the ambiguities that do occur when such compounds precede the modified word. We need more comprehensive reports is truly ambiguous; it could mean either that we need more reports that are comprehensive or that we need reports that are more comprehensive. We need more-comprehensive reports would make the second meaning unmistakable, but the hyphen is not the happiest solution. The first meaning could be made unmistakable only by rephrasing; hyphens are a great help in clarifying English syntax, but they can’t always do the job.
Much can be either an adverb or an adjective. It commonly combines with either a participle or a comparative adjective, and is usually hyphenated when the compound precedes the modified word and sometimes hyphenated even when the compound follows: A much-loved baby; The baby was much-loved. It should not be hyphenated with a comparative: A much healthier baby.
Ever and never are special cases. They should be hyphenated in compounds before the modified word: ever-polite manner, ever-loving parent; never-simple rules, never-comprehensive reports. Often they should be hyphenated in compounds after the modified word as well, depending on whether they can be read as modifying the verb in the sentence. Thus His mother was ever-loving needs the hyphen, because in the common compound ever-loving the adverb ever clings to the participle; His mother was never loving should not have a hyphen, because never more naturally modifies the verb was. Note, however, that sometimes ever is used when always might be expected, and then the hyphen should not be used: His mother, though ever loving, never allowed him to drive her motorcycle. Some compounds with ever have solidified into single words: everblooming, everlasting.
When an adverb, such as very, modifies a normally hyphenated adjectival compound, such as well-grounded, the hyphen sometimes is dropped: a very well grounded argument. Other adverbs as well as very can have the same effect on compounds they modify: a too well grounded argument, a surprisingly well grounded argument, and so on. My own preference in doubtful cases is to keep the hyphen.
Ever and never are again special cases. They do not affect hyphenation: never well-grounded arguments.
A high-powered executive may be soft-shelled. An adjective + participle adjectival compound should be hyphenated whether it occurs before or after the word it modifies. The adjective may be comparative or superlative: The highest-powered executives are always softer-shelled than they look.
Is that heart-stopping freckle-faced girl the tot, mischief-loving and dimple-cheeked, who used to live next door? Noun + participle adjectival compounds should be hyphenated, both before and after the words they modify.
Many adjective + participle and noun + participle adjectival compounds have become one word: kindhearted, towheaded.
Burning-hot soup is a participle + adjective combination. The hyphen is usually optional if the compound follows the modified word: The soup was burning-hot or The soup was burning hot.
Stirred-up soup is a participle + adverb combination. The soup was stirred up may require no hyphen, because stirred up may not be an adjectival compound; it may be part of a passive verb followed by an adverb, as in The soup was stirred up by the cook. When such a compound must be read as adjectival, I advise hyphenating it: The soup was hot and stirred-up.
Ice-cold soup is a noun + adjective combination. The soup was ice cold is permissible, and prescribed by some handbooks, but I advise retaining the hyphen when the noun + adjective compound follows the word it modifies; She was razor-sharp; He was girl-crazy. Color descriptions are often noun + adjective compounds: navy-blue soup; The soup was navy-blue. Many handbooks advise never hyphenating compounds involving color, and I usually leave them unhyphenated if I find them that way in a manuscript.
A hard-science teacher means a teacher of one of the hard sciences, such as physics. A hard science teacher means, or is apt to be understood to mean, a science teacher who is hard on students.
A few decades ago it was the rule in book publishing, and for the most part elsewhere, to hyphenate virtually all adjective + noun and noun + noun adjectival compounds. Nowadays it is common to hyphenate such compounds only when confusion is considered a real hazard. A public school meeting could be either a school meeting that is public or a meeting about public schools. I would not now normally hyphenate adjectival uses of income tax, public relations, real estate, and many other compounds.
Compounds of national origin are always hyphenated when used as adjectives: an Italian-American family. There is some disagreement on whether they should be hyphenated when used as nouns. I advise hyphenating them: She is an Italian-American.
Proper nouns – that is, capitalized ones – and adjectives formed from them normally do not require hyphens when they are used in adjectival compounds, because their capitalization makes it evident that they are a unit: Department of Defense spokesman, Wall Street firm, North Atlantic Treaty Organization general meeting.
The century saw many large- and small-scale wars. The adjective large is part of a suspended compound; it has a hyphen after it to indicate that the rest of the compound is to come, and a space after the hyphen to keep large from linking with and. Suspended compounds can be useful to avoid tedious repetition of a word, but they can be tedious themselves: The article attacks the myth of the kitchen-, church-, and children-oriented woman and the fame-, achievement-, and money-oriented man is correctly punctuated and gets a lot into a few words but is somewhat annoying to read.
Adjectival compounds with multiple first elements do not always require such suspension. A conjunction of nouns such as kitchen and church can combine as a unit with the second element to form a single compound. A kitchen-and-church-oriented woman is smoother than A kitchen- and church-oriented woman. However, large- and small-scale wars requires suspension; large and small have to combine separately with scale, since they have opposite meanings.
It has to be a something-for-something deal requires hyphens for the modifying phrase, but It has to be a quid pro quo deal should have no hyphens. This holds true whether or not the writer chooses to italicize quid pro quo. By convention, the foreignness of the phrase is assumed to be enough to set it off as a unit. It isn’t always enough; sometimes foreign phrases can be momentarily misread. I don’t believe in absentia voting is permitted is confusing. Here the confusion could be eliminated by inserting that after believe.
Five hundred men modifies men with the adjective + noun compound five hundred, and normally such a compound would be hyphenated. But unless the number compound is complicated by another word or phrase, as in later examples, spelled-out numbers do not follow standard hyphenation rules when they modify a noun, no matter how many words it takes to spell them out: five hundred and thirty-six men.
Ten-dollar loss and two-hundred-million-dollar loss follow standard rules; the spelled-out numbers are like any other words used in compounds. But there is one exception. When a large round sum of money preceded by the dollar sign (or a foreign sign or abbreviation such as £ or DM) is partly in figures and partly spelled out, as in $200 million, it conventionally does not get a hyphen as an adjective: $200 million loss.
Adjectival compounds of figures + percent are conventionally not hyphenated unless they are part of larger compounds: 23 percent increase, 23-percent-a-year increase. Other adjectival compounds of figures and a word should follow the standard rules for hyphenation: 30-minute wait, 16-inch gun, 125-acre farm, and so on.
Fractions should always be hyphenated when they are adjectives or adverbs, as in They got a one-third share and The money is three-quarters gone. Opinions differ on whether they should be hyphenated when they are nouns, as in They got one-third of the money. By standard rules of hyphenation, there is no reason to hyphenate them.
A ten-year-old girl; a ten-year-old; The girl was ten years old. In the first example, ten-year-old is an adjectival compound preceding the word it modifies, and it is hyphenated throughout. Failure to hyphenate the compound throughout is a frequent error: a ten-year old girl.
It was four o’clock; I had a four-o’clock appointment. Adjectival compounds with o’clock are hyphenated.
Probably the most common use of the diagonal in general writing is in the word and/or. It has a definite advantage over the hyphen in some compound nouns in which one or both elements of the compound are already compounds: treasurer/director of sales, senior vice president/director of sales. As a mark of punctuation, the diagonal is not as firmly established in the language as the hyphen. There is something nonliterary about it. I advise not using the diagonal when the hyphen will do.
The diagonal can also indicate per or divided by, as in 50 miles/hour and price/earnings ratio. Uses such as the first example would be appropriate only in compact technical proses.
The diagonal has some special uses that go beyond punctuation. For example, it is used to indicate line breaks in poetry that is run in with prose: The bat that flits at close of eve / Has left the brain that won’t believe.
Style is basically a matter of consistency. Poor style can make writing that is otherwise acceptable look shabby and amateurish.
Good style doesn’t call attention to itself but unobtrusively serves the interests of the writer’s meaning and the reader’s comprehension.
Style is less a matter of right and wrong than a matter of good judgment and poor judgment.
When numbers occur infrequently, spell out numbers from 1 to 100 and round numbers beyond 100 (a round number can be considered one that can be spelled out in no more than two words: two hundred; fifty million). This is the basic rule for general writing. Very large numbers are often expressed with a combination of figures and a spelled-out word: 20 million people; $168 billion. Decimals can be used: 2.5 billion; $3.2 billion. This style is convenient, compact, and easy to read.
Years, dates, days of the month, page numbers, street address numbers, and sometimes the numbers of streets themselves, route numbers, percentages, and similar familiar uses of numbers are customarily exceptions to the rule. A writer has to decide which to spell out and which to leave as figures. For example, John said, “It was in June 1990 – the twentieth or twenty-first, I think” uses figures for the year but spells out the days of the month, which is a reasonable compromise. When numbers both below 100 and above 100 are used close together to enumerate the same things or very similar things, the numbers are apt to be comprehended more easily if they are either all in figures or all spelled out: There were 70 women and 108 men at the meeting. Usually it is better to make all the numbers figures rather than spell them all out. This principle applies always within the same sentence, usually within the same paragraph, and often within a passage of several paragraphs dealing with the same subject. However, the principle should not be followed blindly.
A writer should try to avoid too complex a style; the simpler the style, the easier it will be to follow and the less obvious it will be to the reader.
Most books, stories, articles, and other written works have a natural leaning toward either figures or spelled-out numbers for specific uses, such as for time of day. The direction of the leaning isn’t always determined by the type of writing – a disaster novel that employs minute-by-minute fictitious reportage to heighten dramatic effect will probably require figures for times of day.
Abbreviations, like other matters of style, should be handled consistently. If a somewhat unfamiliar abbreviation occurs throughout a passage, it is often a good idea to spell the term out the first time it is used, with the abbreviation following in parentheses, and then use the abbreviation thereafter: The silicon chip measured a mere 4 square millimeters (mm), later reduced to 2.5 mm. Most dictionaries give proper forms for abbreviations.
A generic term is merely one that is not the name of a specific thing and not a trademarked name but instead the name of a general class of things. Thus river is a generic term, appropriate to refer to any river in the world. But Mississippi River is not a generic term; the term river has become part of a specific geographical designation and thus part of a proper noun phrase, and so it is capitalized.
Specific terms often become generic terms in time. Thus sherry is lowercased in most dictionaries. Trademarked terms sometimes become generic terms – usually to the distress of those who own the trademark – and they can be special problems for the writer, because only the most common trademarks are found in dictionaries. The term kleenex is often used for any face tissue, though the manufacturers of Kleenex retain the trademark and attempt to protect it. Common sense may be more important than correctness in some cases. It always bothers me to see Ping-Pong and Jell-O in figurative contexts such as The Ping-Pong of international diplomacy reduced the ambassador to Jell-O – but the words are trademarks. When I find a figuratively used trademark lowercased in a book I am editing, I am apt to pretend I don’t know it should be capitalized, though I can’t conscientiously recommend this course.
Names of governmental and judicial bodies such as Senate, House, Finance Committee, State Department, Supreme Court, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Juvenile Court are usually capitalized when they refer to specific bodies.
Some phrases are so strongly generic that they should not be capitalized standing alone even if they are the formal name or part of the formal name of a specific office, organization, or government body: police department, criminal court, post office, customhouse.
Titles such as president, prime minister, king, senator, judge, governor, mayor, general, pope, archbishop, chairman, and professor are all capitalized when they occur before a name – President Bush, Professor Waggoner, and so on – but are all also generic terms, and there is no need to capitalize them when they stand alone.
Capitalize titles that are used throughout a work as a substitute for a person’s name. This modification makes sense when a real person or fictitious character is referred to frequently as the Judge or the Major or the Senator.
Capitalize mother, grandma, and other kinship terms for preceding generations when they are used in direct address, but don’t capitalize brother, son, and other terms for the same or succeeding generations.
He traveled nine miles East is a very common error. Here the word east is merely a compass point or direction; there is no reason to capitalize it. He left the East in 1849 and followed the Cold Rush west, but found the West a disappointment and headed east again is correct.
Composition is the combination of sentences into larger structures, from paragraphs to books; it is the context within which sentences operate, and it can be ineffective or inappropriate even when each individual sentence is well made.
Spoken and written expression is in a sense unnatural. It takes an effort to achieve it – to focus the mind’s monologue on a specific task and keep it from wandering. Whatever spoken or written expression we intend, the mind’s monologue constantly expands, contradicts, digresses; it must be jerked back to the task by deliberate effort. This effort is the process of composition.
I recommend outlining a speech or written work early.
Avoid haughtiness; avoid chumminess.
Often the stronger the expression of the emotion is, the weaker or more diffuse the result is.
False humility is apt to be accompanied by an overall fulsomeness of diction.
Revision – derived from Latin revidere, “to look back,” though the English word means actual changing rather than mere review – is a reconsideration of both the broadest and the tiniest elements of a draft. It may result in no more than a word or punctuation change here and there, or it may involve massive reworking and successive drafts that take far longer than the initial composition. Each of us has different habits of composition and different standards to meet, our own as well as those of the occasion and consequently the process of revision differs, but “looking back” is always an essential part of it and should never be omitted. Don’t overlook looking back.
There is some danger in any faultfinding approach, because it can be endless. Faults can always be found; anyone who doubts it should read Robert Graves and Alan Hodge’s "The Reader" over. If the expression of great writers can be picked away at, most of the rest of us cannot expect to grasp the perfection we should nevertheless reach for.
Revision can be excessive and destructive. Experienced writers are familiar with the depression that afflicts them at various stages of composition and especially toward the end, and they know enough to avoid revising their work while their mood is negative and hypercritical. Revision can be pointless if done in the opposite mood, which is also common – a mood of elation and exultation, even of joy. If we revise in this mood we will probably do our work no damage – every word is magnificently right! – but will do it no good either; we are still too absorbed in it to see the flaws our readers will. If we get too excited by our rereading, we may well damage it, by adding new bright thoughts that it inspires, thoughts that readers will consider digressive and scattered. Revision can be almost as absorbing and intense an activity as composition, but it is a different kind of intensity – intellectual and cool-headed, even somewhat impersonal. Try to do it when you can achieve that mood. If you can’t get in the mood, you really need an editor – a professional whose primary skill is revising the words of others,
Revision can be immobilizing to a writer, even a cool-headed one, who just will not stop. There is a point of diminishing returns even in the most carefully wrought work. Don’t be obsessed with revision; go on to something else.
We know what we mean; we know why one clause or sentence follows from another and leads to the next. The listener or reader doesn’t know unless the connection is obvious or explicit.
The speaker or writer usually knows more about the subject at hand than the listener or reader. Obscurity is annoying, and a major one may make some listeners or readers miss the entire point.
The listener’s or reader’s memory is shorter than the speaker’s or writer’s. Excessive repetition can be tiresome, but when clarity is important, too much repetition is better than too little. Heavy repetition can be made a virtue; repetition of key words or key points is a standard device of diction and composition to fix them in the listener’s or reader’s mind.
In reviewing a draft for bent links, we must test each one with suspicious questions. Does this sentence really follow necessarily from that one? Is this conclusion really the most reasonable one, or are there other equally reasonable conclusions? Has some information that would make the conclusion seem less reasonable been conveniently left out?
Dangling links are digressions. They are not necessarily bad. Not every chain of thought has to stretch straight and tense to its conclusion; especially in a speech, there should be occasional times when the logical tension is relaxed and the listener can catch up. However, we must make it clear just when we are dropping a dangling link and where we are hitching back to the main chain. Too many dangling links and long chains of dangling links begin to weigh down the main chain of thought. Part of revision is reconsidering the desirability of such digressions.
Monotony in writing is prevented by varying sentence structure and by avoiding excessive use of either abstract or figurative diction.
The basic types of sentence structure are the simple sentence, the compound sentence, and the complex sentence; sentences containing parenthetical or defining subordinate phrases and clauses; and sentences that begin with the main clause and those that begin with subordinate constructions. To these we can add two more types: short sentences and long ones. Above the level of first-grade readers, a written work should be composed of a variety of types.
If in revising you find successions of abstract sentences, try to replace some of them with concrete ones.
Figures of speech can add variety to writing. They can, however, be distracting if misused and monotonous if overused.
The most common figures are the simile, such as Love is like a blooming flower, in which love is said to be like a flower; and the metaphor, such as The boldest flower in life’s garden is love, in which love is actually taken to be a flower and life to be a garden. His campaign has been like a becalmed ship is a fair enough simile, and the writer might go on to sharpen the comparison, with campaign workers idly doodling just as sailors carve scrimshaw. However, continuing this simile could quickly become tiresome.
In a written work of book length, one will almost always find inconsistencies of capitalization and other matters. Periodicals and publishing houses do try to catch these details, along with errors of grammar and punctuation, but they are never perfect at it and are more and more frequently unable to do it well, either because they cannot spend the time or because their staff members are not adequately trained. It helps to keep a list of certain decisions that have been made along the way.
SELF-EDITING
It's a matter of showing or telling.
What, exactly, constitutes a scene? For one thing it takes place in real time. Your readers are seeing events as they unfold.
In scenes, events are seen as they happen rather than described after the fact.
It's a good idea to give your readers only enough detail to help them picture your settings for themselves.
Even in dialogue scenes it's a good idea to include a little physical action from time to time – what we call "beats" – to remind your readers of where your characters are and what they're doing.
Since scenes are usually harder to write than summaries, most authors rely too heavily on narrative summary to tell their stories. A century or so ago this sort of writing would have been fine. It was the norm, in fact; Henry James wrote at least one entire novel largely composed of narrative summary. But thanks to the influence of movies and television, readers today have become accustomed to seeing a story as a series of immediate scenes. You want to draw your readers into the world you've created, and you can't do this effectively if you tell your readers about your world secondhand. You have to actually take them there.
You want to engage your readers in your plot early on.
Showing your story to your readers through scenes will give your writing immediacy. It will also give your writing transparency. One of the easiest ways to look like an amateur is to use mechanics that call attention to themselves and away from the story. You want your readers to be so wrapped up in your story that they are not even aware the author exists. Narrative summary can sometimes seem as if you were breaking into the story to give your readers a lecture. And there is no quicker way to turn readers off than to lecture them.
You'd be surprised at how much exposition can be converted into scenes. Even though immediate scenes are almost always more engaging than narrative summary, be careful when self-editing not to convert all your narrative summary into scenes. Narrative summary serves several good purposes in fiction, the main one being to vary the rhythm of your writing. Every once in a while you will want to slow things down, to give your readers a chance to catch their breath, and narration can be a good way to do this.
Narrative summary can also be useful when you have a lot of repetitive actions. And then, some plot developments are simply not important enough to justify scenes.
Authors usually indulge in small-scale telling to put across character traits or emotions. After all, the primary aim of fiction is to get your readers so involved in the lives of your characters that they feel what your characters feel, and they can't do that unless you make your characters' feelings clear. So you tell them. Far better to show why your characters feel the way they do. Instead of saying "Amanda took one look at the hotel room and recoiled in disgust," describe the room in such a way that the readers feel the disgust for themselves. It's more work this way, of course.
It is nearly always best to resist the urge to explain. This tendency to describe a character's emotions may reflect a lack of confidence on the part of the author. And more often than not, authors tell their readers things already shown by dialogue and action – it's as if they are repeating themselves to make sure their readers get the point. So when you come across an explanation of a character's emotion, simply cut the explanation. If the emotion is still shown, then the explanation wasn't needed. If the emotion isn't shown, then rewrite the passage so that it is.
There are ways you can show rather than tell.
Bear in mind that "show, don't tell" is not a hard and fast rule – in fact, none of the self-editing principles in this book should be treated as rules. There are going to be times when telling will create more engagement than showing. But in good fiction this sort of telling is the exception, and a rare exception at that. Because when you show your story rather than tell it, you treat your readers with respect. And that respect makes it easier for you to draw them into the world you've created.
Are you describing your character's feelings? Have you told us they're angry? irritated? morose? discouraged? puzzled? excited? happy? elated? suicidal? Keep an eye out for any places where you mentioned an emotion outside of dialogue. Chances are you're telling what you should show.
The culprit: there's a lot of narrative summary. . .
A lot of writers seem to feel they have to give their readers a clear understanding of a new character before they can get on with their story. They'd never bring a character on stage without a short personality summary. Or else they introduce their characters with flashbacks to the childhood scenes that made them who they are – in effect, psychoanalyzing the characters for their readers.
It's often a good idea to include enough physical description to help your readers picture a new character, a few specific details that capture the look of a character ("A good-looking man in his 50's," for instance, is too vague to be interesting). But when it comes to your characters' personalities, it's much more effective to have these emerge from character action, reaction, and dialogue than from description. Your readers will find your story more engaging if they can meet your characters the way they meet people in real life: a little at a time, with all of the attendant pleasure of gradual discovery. Another reason to avoid thumbnail character sketches is that the personality traits you tell us about when you introduce a character will (we would hope) eventually be shown by the way the character acts in the story. If your characters actually act the way your summaries say they will, then the summaries aren't needed. If they don't, then the summaries are misleading. Either way, your fiction is likely to be much more effective without the character summaries. Also, when you summarize your characters, you risk overdefining them to the point that they're boxed in by the characterization with no room to grow. When you define your characters, you may be setting boundary lines. Allow your readers to get to know your characters gradually. Finally, sketching out your characters for your readers is just plain obtrusive. It's a form of telling me that is almost certain to make your readers aware that you the author are hard at work. Some authors take a more subtle approach than simply describing a new character's personality – they describe each new character's history. Delving into a character's past can be a good way for you to understand the character in the present. But though it may have been helpful for you to write a character's history, it may not be necessary for your readers to read it. So if you find your story to heavily burdened with the past, consider letting some of the past go. The characterization you draw from the flashback may not be needed.
You can have one character characterized by another character instead of by the author. Another unobtrusive way to develop a character is to write not about the character directly but about other matters in that character's voice. This amounts to your giving us your character's views of the world rather than your views of your character. And finally, you can develop your character through dialogue and beats. If you want to learn who someone really is, watch what they say and do. And if you want your readers to get a feel for who your characters really are, then do it through dialogue and action. Background, backstory (what happened before the story begins), the information your readers need in order to follow and appreciate your plot, should all be brought out as unobtrusively as possible. A good rule of thumb is to give your readers only as much background information, or history, or characterization, as they need at any given time.
Blocks of what is essentially nonfiction can usually be converted into immediate scenes. But just because exposition takes place in a scene doesn't necessarily mean it's unobtrusive. So be on the lookout for places where your dialogue is actually exposition in disguise. The same holds true for interior monologue.
Beware, your dialogues or monologues may exist only to put the information across.
Experienced novelist often begin a scene or chapter with a description of the setting for the scene about to come. If this exposition is skillful enough, the reader is likely to feel put on, perhaps even in, the scene.
By never explaining her situations, by trusting her readers to keep up with her, C. J. Cherryh, a novelist who writes science fiction and fantasy, pays her readers the compliment of assuming them to be intelligent.
Although some writing books distinguish as many as 26 different types of point of view, there are really only three basic approaches: first person, third person, and omniscient. The first person point of view has a number of advantages, the main one being that it gives your readers a great deal of intimacy with your viewpoint character. When you are writing from the "I" perspective, your main character quite literally invites your readers into his or her head and shows them the world through his or her eyes. Of course, in order to write from the first person point of view, you have to be able to create a character strong enough and interesting enough to keep your readers going for an entire novel. And what you gain in intimacy with the first person, you lose in perspective. When you write your entire novel from one point of view, your readers really only get to know one character directly. Everyone else is filtered through your viewpoint character. One way around this is to write in the first person from several different viewpoints with different scenes done from inside the head of different characters, a technique that can be highly effective in the hands of an experienced novelist. The omniscient point of view could almost be considered the opposite of the first person. Instead of being written from inside the head of one of your characters, a scene in the omniscient point of view is not written from inside anyone's head. You may think of omniscient narration as a 19th century technique. The omniscient point of view makes it easy to introduce information that your readers may need to know, but you may find it hard to work into a scene. All narrative summary is written in the omniscient point of view, almost by definition. But what you gain in perspective you may lose in intimacy. The third person point of view is a compromise between the first person and omniscient, providing you with a mixture of perspective and intimacy. With the third person point of view, you can move from character to character more easily than with the first person. This allows your readers to see your story from different perspectives. The third person point of view is the one most authors choose. And the problem you are most likely to have with the third person is keeping the point of view consistent throughout each of your scenes. You have to decide which character you are going to use to view the scene and then describe only what that character would see and hear. All your descriptions, all your observations, all your interior monologue will belong to the same viewpoint character.
The transitions from one point of view to the other, if too numerous, can make readers lose their involvement in the story.
Maintaining a truly omniscient point of view throughout an entire novel is, to say the least, tricky. Most authors eventually start dipping into the heads of various characters over the course of a scene – writing from the third person point of view but with different viewpoint characters.
The easiest way to show how someone feels is through interior monologue. So when you have several characters in a scene, there is an understandable temptation to simply write interior monologues for all of them. And it's a temptation we hope you'll resist. For one thing, shifting the point of view back and forth is likely to do more damage to the flow of the scene than the various viewpoints are worth. (As we said, your readers adjust to being in someone's head – they assume that they are seeing the scene through that character's eyes. So when you shift to another character, you throw them off their stride.) For another, using interior monologue to show your character's reactions is just one step away from telling. It is far more effective to stick with a single point of view and show us how your other characters feel through their dialogue and actions. Sometimes an author will jump from character to character as a way of working in more information than one character could possibly take in. This can create much confusion.
How do you change the point of view without jerking your readers around? It's quite simple: end the current scene, insert a line space, and start a new scene from the new point of view you need.
When you make the point of view clear at the beginning of a scene you get your readers involved early – and you're seen off to a quick, sharp start. The only exception – and just about the only time it's effective to mix points of view in a scene – is to start out in omniscient narration and then ease into a specific third person point of view. In effect, you can perform the literary equivalent of a camera moving from a long shot to gradually close the distance from the actor.
Point of view can also be understood in a more subtle stylistic sense. You describe only what your viewpoint character would see and only in terms your viewpoint character would use. When you do it right, the third person point of view can become almost as intimate as the first, and the first person can become mesmerizing.
Writing in a character's voice puts your readers intimately in touch with your characters. Of course, there are times when you don't want your readers to get too intimate with your characters. If your main character is a psychotic killer, you may want to write his scenes in the third person using a more neutral, distant voice. After all, you want to engage your readers, not drive them to distraction. But more often than not you want your readers to be drawn in by a character, to share his or her concerns, to see if only for an instant the world the way he or she sees it. Placing your readers firmly in one character's head and staying there can be a remarkably effective way to accomplish this.
Mr. [Robert] Ludlum ... hates the "he said" locution and avoids it as much as possible. Characters ... seldom "say" anything. Instead, they cry, interject, interrupt, muse, state, counter, conclude, mumble, whisper, intone, roar, exclaim, fume, explode, mutter ... The book may sell in the billions, but it's still junk.
- Newgate Callender, in The New York Times book Review.
Several editors we know have answered that question the same way: "The first thing I do is find a scene with some dialogue. If the dialogue doesn't work, the manuscript gets bounced. If it's good, I start reading."
Your characters come alive – or fail to – when they speak, and it's no easy matter to put just the right words in their mouths.
Imagine you're at a play. It's the middle of the first act, you're getting to know the characters, and you're getting really involved in the drama their acting out. Suddenly the playwright runs out on the stage and yells, "Do you see what's happening here? Do you see how her coldness is behind his infidelity? Have you noticed the way his womanizing has undermined her self-confidence? Do you get it?" You get it, of course, and you feel patronized. You're an intelligent theatergoer, and what's happening on the stage is clear enough. You don't need the author to explain it to you. That is exactly what happens when you explain your dialogue to your readers. Consider the following: "You can't be serious," she said in astonishment. If you're like most novelist or short-story authors, you write sentences like these almost without thinking. What could be easier than to simply tell the readers how a character feels? If she is astonished, you just say so – it saves all sorts of time and trouble. It's also lazy writing. When your dialogue is well written, describing your character's emotions to your readers is just as patronizing as a playwright running onto the stage and yelling at the audience. "You can't be serious" conveys astonishment – no explanation is needed. And when you explain dialogue that needs no explanation, you're writing down to your readers, a surefire way to turn them off. The theatergoer might or might not walk out of a theater when the playwright runs on stage; the reader who feels patronized will almost certainly close the book. Once again, resist the urge to explain. And if your dialogue isn't well written – if it needs the explanations to convey the emotions - then the explanations really won't help. Say you'd written: "I find that difficult to accept," she said in astonishment. Here the explanation does let your readers know that your character is astonished. But you don't want them to know the fact, you want them to feel the emotion. You want your readers to be as astonished as she is, and the only way to do that is to have her say something your readers can imagine themselves saying when they're astonished. "I find that difficult to accept," doesn't quite do it. And if you tell your readers she is astonished when your dialogue doesn't show astonishment, then you've created an uncomfortable tension between your dialogue and your explanation. Your dialogue says one thing; your explanation something slightly different. True, your readers probably won't notice – the truth is, only editors and reviewers really notice these things. But your readers will be aware, perhaps subconsciously, that something is wrong. And that awareness will undermine their involvement in your book.
If you tell your readers your character is astonished, all they will know is that she is astonished. But if you show how she is astonished through her dialogue or through a beat, then your readers will know a little more about her. (She dropped the whisk, splattering meringue up the cupboard door. "You can't be serious.") "You can't be serious" also has a formality and a coldness about it – compare to, say, " you've got to be kidding," or "you pulling my chain, dude?" A character likely to say "you can't be serious" is also likely to be prim, or proper, maybe a little uptight. And if all her dialogue conveys primness, then your readers will get to know her character without your ever having to describe her as "prim."
Think of it this way: every time you insert an explanation into dialogue, you're cheating your readers of a little bit of one of your characters. Do it often enough, and none of your characters ever comes to life on the page. Also, while most of your explanations will probably involve your character's emotions, be on the lookout for those that explain the content of the dialogue. Again, if the dialogue already makes it clear, then you don't have to repeat. Dialogue explanations often take the form of -ly adverbs, as in: "I'm afraid it's not going very well," he said grimly. "Keep scrubbing until you're finished," she said harshly. "I don't know, I can't seem to work up steam to do anything at all," he said listlessly. Perhaps it's a lack of confidence on the writer's part, perhaps it's simply laziness, or perhaps it's a misguided attempt to break up the monotony of using "said" all the time, but all too many fiction writers tend to pepper their dialogue with -lys. Which is a good reason to cut virtually every one you write. Ly adverbs almost always catch the author in the act of explaining dialogue – smuggling emotions into speaker attributions that belong in the dialogue itself. Again, if your dialogue doesn't need the props, putting the props in will make it seem weak even though it isn't.
Unless your dialogue consists entirely of one character talking to himself or herself, you will need to include speakers attributions so your readers know who is saying what. Don't use speaker attributions as a way of slipping in explanations of your dialogue ("he growled," "she snapped"). As with all other types of explanations, either they're unnecessary ("I'm sorry," he apologized) or they are necessary but shouldn't be ("Do you consider that amusing?" she whined). What this amounts to is your using the verb "said" almost without exception. ("I feel terrible about it," he said. "You always keep me waiting, you never call," she said.) Some authors get a little nervous when they see a long string of "saids" spreading over the pages – they hear the voices of their creative writing teachers telling them to strive for variety and originality in their verbs. So they write: "give it to me," she demanded. "Here it is," he offered. "Is it loaded?" she inquired. Or, even worse: "I hate to admit that," he grimaced. "Come closer," she smiled. "So you've changed your mind," he chuckled. To use verbs like these last three for speaker attributions is to brand yourself an amateur – and to stick your character with an action that is physically impossible: no one outside of hack fiction has ever been able to grimace or smile or chuckle a sentence. We're all in favor of choosing exactly the right verb for the action, but when you're writing speaker attributions the right verb is nearly always "said." The reason those well-intentioned attempts at variety don't work is that verbs other than " said " tend to draw attention away from the dialogue. "Said," on the other hand, isn't even read the way other verbs are read. It is, and should be, an almost purely mechanical device – more like a punctuation mark than a verb. It's absolutely transparent, and so is graceful and elegant. Which, actually, is another reason to avoid explanations and adverbs. Even when you use them with "said" (we said sternly) they tend to entangle your readers in your technique rather than leaving them free to concentrate on your dialogue.
Place the character's name or pronoun first in a speaker attribution ("David said"). Reversing the two ("said Dave"), though often done, is less professional.
Decide how you are going to refer to a character and stick with it for at least the length of the scene. Don't use "Hubert said" on one page, "Mr. Winchester said," on the next, and "the old man said" on the third – if you do, your readers will have to stop reading long enough to figure out that the old man is Hubert. (This doesn't mean you have to stick with a single form of address for an entire novel, of course.)
If it's clear from the dialogue who is speaking – if two characters are bantering back and forth, for instance – you can dispense with speaker attributions altogether. But don't pingpong direct address in an attempt to get rid of speaker attributions. This technique may serve you well once or twice, but it gets old very quickly. If you are still troubled by the number of "saids" in your dialogue, you can replace some of them with beats: "I never thought of that before." Roger walked over to the fridge and helped himself to a soda. "But I suppose a good coat of shellac really would work just as well, would it not?" Remember, so long as your readers can tell who is speaking your speaker attributions have done just what they need to do.
If you substitute the occasional speaker attribution with a beat, you can break the monotony of the "saids" before it begins to call attention to itself. Don't get carried away with the technique – it's best to replace only a few of your speaker attributions with beats. A beat after every line of dialogue is even more distracting than too many speaker attributions. What you want is a comfortable balance.
Use dashes rather than ellipses to show an interruption. Ellipses are used, in fiction at least, to show a character trailing off or to show that there are gaps in the dialogue (as when you're showing one side of a telephone conversation). And start a new paragraph whenever you have a new speaker. It will help your readers keep track of who's saying what. Just keep in mind that good dialogue looks even better when you set it apart with its own paragraph.
Writing dialogue that lets your characters sound like who they really are is one of the most creative and challenging acts you can commit as an author.
There are some mechanical techniques you can use when self-editing that will cure one of the most common reasons for flat voiceless dialogue: formality. The dialogue you're trying to create has to be much more compressed, much more focused than real speech. In effect, dialogue is something artificial that sounds like real speech when you read it. But most authors go overboard, creating dialogue so artificial that it becomes stilted and formal – again, it doesn't sound like anything anyone in their right mind, on this planet, in this century, would actually say. The simplest way to make your dialogue less formal is to use more contractions. "I would not do that if I were you" sounds made up, where "I wouldn't do that if I were you" sounds like something a person would actually say. You use contractions, and so should your characters. And if you want to convey that the character is stiff – that he's a pompous, or his first language isn't English, or she's prissy – then dispensing with the contractions is an elegant way to go. Another helpful technique is to use sentence fragments. Example: "doesn't matter whether she is or not, she's not going to marry him." The writer has used another technique (in addition to the sentence fragment) to good effect: the two sentences are strung together with a comma instead of the (grammatically correct) period. If not overused, this technique captures remarkably well the rhythms of real speech. If your dialogue seems formal, check also to make sure you aren't trying to shoehorn information into your dialogue that doesn't belong there.
You don't want your characters to speak more fully-formed thoughts than they normally would, just so you can get some information to your readers. This doesn't mean you should never use dialogue for exposition, of course – dialogue can be an excellent means of putting facts across to your readers. Just make sure that your characters have a reason for saying the lines that you give them, and that the lines themselves are in character. Another way to make your dialogue more natural is to weed out fancy polysyllabic words unless your use of them is right for the character. "Have you considered the consequences?" Sounds like something you read in a book. "Have you thought about what might happen?" Sounds like something somebody might actually say. So have your characters "think" rather than "conclude"; "give up" rather than "surrender"; and "get" rather than "retrieve." What you're going for is short words packed full of consonance rather than longer, vowel-heavy words.
Have your characters misunderstand one another once in a while. Have them answer the unspoken question rather than the one asked out loud. Have them talk at cross-purposes. Have them hedge. Disagree. Lie. It will go a long way toward making them sound human. Again, good dialogue isn't an exact transcription of the way people talk but is more of an artifact, a literary device that mimics real speech.
Bring your ear into play when you're editing yourself. After all, we're used to hearing relaxed, normal speech in real life. Much of the stiffness in a passage of dialogue that doesn't show up when you read your work silently will spring right out at you when you read out loud. You may find yourself making subtle little changes as you read. If so, pay attention to these changes – your ear is telling you how your dialogue should sound. The eye can be fooled but your ear knows. In addition to helping you overcome stiffness, reading a passage aloud can help you find the rhythm of your dialogue. When and where to place your stage directions, when to insert a beat, when to let the dialogue push ahead – all of this becomes clear when you hear your dialogue being spoken. However you decide to do it, reading your dialogue aloud will almost always lead you to changes that make it sound more natural.
Reading dialogue aloud can also help you distinguish between one character's way of speaking and another's. As you read the first character's lines aloud, you may get a sense of his or her particular speech rhythms, vocabulary, conversational style, speech mannerisms, and so forth. Then read the next character's lines aloud, and if the speech style is the same you know you've got some rethinking to do.
Everything we've just said about dialogue applies to narration and description as well. A passage may look perfectly fine, but if you read it aloud, you may find yourself tripping over the wording from time to time.
Few authors today would write dialogue as hard to follow as Twain's. But beginning novelists even today are often tempted to write dialect. It's the easy way out. And like most easy ways, it's not the best way.
The occasional dropped g or common phonetic spelling such as "gonna" or "lemme" won't get you into trouble with your readers, but it doesn't take much to make too much. So how do you get a character's geographical or educational or social background across? The best way is through word choice, cadence, and grammar.
Fiction has become more like movies and television over the past few decades as authors rely on immediate scenes from specific points of view to put their stories across. But fiction has a reliable, powerful advantage over film: it's much easier to place a reader than a moviegoer in someone else's head. On the page, readers can move easily from the description of a character's actions to this characters' thoughts and back again without ever being aware that anything out of the ordinary is happening.
One of the great gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts: in other words, interior monologue. There is, arguably, no easier way to explore a character or express a reaction to events than through interior monologue. After all, you can let your readers in on exactly what your characters really think without having to filter that thought through dialogue and action. And, as you might expect, interior monologue is so powerful and easy to write (though not easy to write well) that many fiction writers tend to abuse it.
Constant interruptions are just as annoying on the page as they are in life.
Some monologues may express thoughts that are already clear from the dialogue itself. And many of them may be dialogue explanations in disguise. But even if all of them are legitimate, insightful passages of interior monologue, there may be too many of them for reading comfort. The interior monologue, instead of adding to the characterization and the flow of the scene, gets in the way. Interior monologue is best served up a little at a time, especially in a dialogue scene, as a support for dialogue rather than a substitute for it. The Sterling virtue of interior monologue mechanics, once again, is unobtrusiveness. First: never, ever, use quotes with your interior monologue. It is not merely poor style; it is, by today's standards, ungrammatical. Thoughts are thought, not spoken. Also, don't have your characters mumble to themselves or speak softly under their breath. This technique is contrived and usually unnecessary.
Remember, the purpose of speaker attributions is to let your readers know who is speaking when. Since each scene you write will be from a single point of view (and it will, won't it?), you usually won't need to attribute your interior monologue. Your readers will know immediately who the thoughts belong to.
You can easily get rid of the "he wondered" locution by converting a short passage of interior monologue into a question. Instead of "He wondered why he always ended up killing them," you would have "Why did he always end up killing them?"
If your viewpoint character has a strong, distinctive voice, you will eventually see the line between interior monologue and description blur slightly. After all, your readers will know they're seeing the world through your character's eyes (from the narrative voice), and it's not a big jump from a character's eyes to a character's mind.
When you write in a more neutral, authorial voice, the distinction between description and interior monologue becomes sharper. You can still make the shift from straightforward description to interior monologue by giving the monologue its own paragraph. You can also use italics to set off interior monologue. Since long passages in italics are a pain to read, you can only use this technique effectively for passages no longer than a sentence or two. Also, since generations of hacks have used italics to punch up otherwise weak dialogue, frequent italics have come to signal weak writing. So you should never resort to them unless they are the only practical choice.
Unless you really need italics they're just plain irritating. Italics are a particularly good way to signal interior monologue when it is desirable for some reason to disclose a character's thought in the middle of an action scene.
When you're self-editing, be on the lookout for long passages of interior monologue. As we've suggested, they usually mean you are telling the readers things you should be showing. In general, consider the possibility that any passage or interior monologue more than a page long may need cutting, breaking up, or conversion to a scene. There are many exceptions, of course.
There may be times when you want to show your characters in some unusual state of mind – descending into madness or drunkenness, or having an epiphany, or even a dream. Keeping your readers in the claustrophobic mind of a paranoid, for instance, could be a terrific way to turn up the tension at a key point in your plot.
Check to see whether some of your interior monologue is actually dialogue descriptions in disguise.
Mechanical problems: explanatory speaker attributions ("I pointed out," "I snapped"), dialogue descriptions ("My frustration was mounting"), and -ly adverbs ("I said sarcastically").
What really improves the flow of a scene in an edited version is that the dialogue is interrupted less often. It contains fewer beats. Beats are the little bits of action interspersed through a scene, such as a character walking to a window or removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes – the literary equivalent of what is known in the theater as stage business. Beats enable your readers to picture the action in a scene, allow you to vary the rhythm of the dialogue, and help reveal your character's personalities. In effect, they remind your readers of who your characters are and what they're doing. If good beats come easily to you, be careful not to get carried away with the use of them. You don't want to interrupt your dialogue so often – with beats or interior monologue – that the flow of the scene is damaged. Earlier, we suggested that you resist the temptation to use interior monologue to track your character's emotions, which turns the interior monologue into a running commentary on the dialogue. The same thing often happens with beats. The fact that the beats themselves are interesting and well written doesn't keep the constant interruptions from irritating the reader. Some authors may overuse beats because they lack confidence in the ability of their dialogue to carry the story.
When you describe every bit of action down to the last detail, you give your readers a clear picture of what's going on, but the chances are good that you'll alienate them in the process. Describing your action too precisely can be as condescending as describing your character's emotions. Far better to give your readers some hints and then allow them to fill in the blanks for themselves. Besides, when you interrupt dialogue too often, you keep your scenes from building. Eventually, your story will stutter to a halt. On the other hand, page after page of uninterrupted dialogue can become disembodied and disorienting after a while, even if the dialogue itself is excellent.
What's needed is a few beats to anchor dialogue in reality. As with narration/immediate scene, the idea is to strike the right balance between dialogue and beats. How do you know when and how often to include a beat? Well, as we said, beats allow your readers to picture your dialogue taking place. As with other forms of description, you want to give your readers enough detail to allow them to picture the action and yet enough leeway for their imaginations to work. You want to define the action without overdefining it. You can also use beats to vary the rhythm of your dialogue. Uninterrupted dialogue not only becomes disembodied after a while, it becomes exhausting. Like a piece of good music, good dialogue has an ebb and flow to it.
You can get away with more beats than usual when your characters are doing something few people are familiar with.
The best way to fine tune the rhythm of your dialogue, of course, is to read it aloud.
Beats also serve to help define your characters. Any good actor knows the importance of body language in projecting a character and the same holds true in fiction.
New York Times review complimented a new mystery on the quality of its characterization and demonstrated that quality by quoting a beat: "He blew his nose on the sheet." That little bit of action tells as much or more about that character than an entire page of narration on his slovenliness or even a description of his bedroom. Beats can be a powerful and efficient way to convey your characters. They can also be pointless, distracting, clichéd – or repetitive. You want to write beats the are as fresh, as unique, as your characters. No two people cross a room in the same way, and there are as many ways of showing, say, uneasiness as there are situations to make a character uneasy. So where do you find good beats? Well, as Casey Stengel once said, you can see an awful lot just by looking. Watch people. You can also see an awful lot just by reading. Start paying attention to beats as you read – the ones that make you wish you'd written them and the ones that distract or irritate.
A beat can also provide breathing space in an emotionally tense scene.
Garrison Keillor said of his first novel, "My characters smoked cigarettes the way some people use semicolons." Do your beats help illuminate your characters? Or are they empty ("Yeah, well." He peered through the back window)? Too long ("Here, listen." I pulled out the key, hopped in the front seat, inserted the key, drew the choke, popped it into neutral, and hit the starter. The engine ground a few times, caught, and then sputtered and died. I pumped the gas once or twice and tried again. This time it caught and began to purr.)?
Another editing technique can produce a dramatic effect: breaking up a very long paragraph into more manageable chunks. Be on the lookout for paragraphs that run more than, say, a half-page in length. Whether it's because readers feel lectured to, or because they feel crowded, or simply because some white space on the page is visually inviting, lengthy unbroken chunks of written material are off-putting. The simple, purely mechanical change of paragraphing more frequently can make your writing much more engaging. Paragraphing frequently can also add tension to a scene. Frequent paragraphs give dialogue snap and momentum. Many authors who write thrillers seem to use this technique instinctively. Not that you're going to want to maintain this sort of pace for very long. A novel that is literally a page-turner beginning to end is more likely to leave its readers feeling wary.
When you want to create a more relaxed mood, or give your readers a chance to breathe (or reflect), or simply lull them into complacency before you spring something on them, try paragraphing a little less frequently than usual.
Be on the lookout for places where your characters make little speeches to one another. In formal dialogue, characters often string together four or five complete, well-formed sentences. In real life, few of us get that far without interruption. So break your dialogue up, write in more give-and-take between your characters; have your characters interrupt one another – and themselves. Let them mix it up a little, or a lot. But sometimes it's appropriate for the character to make a speech, in which case a long paragraph may be effective.
An author may use both short and long paragraphs for effect in the same scene.
Up until now, we've talked about breaking your writing up on the level of paragraphs. But it's also a good idea to break your writing up on a larger scale. If you have a single scene that runs 15 or 20 pages (or more), it may be more effective broken up into two scenes. The same holds true for chapters that run on for, say, 25 or more pages. These figures are a little arbitrary, of course.
By varying the rhythm of what you offer the reader, you make it more engaging.
If one of your scenes seems to drag, try paragraphing a little more often.
Do you have scenes with no longer paragraphs? Remember, what you're after is the right balance.
A problem peculiar to the writing of both novices and professionals: unintentional repetition. Most authors already know to edit out places where they have literally repeated a word or phrase. But the repetition of an effect can be just as problematic. Whether it's two sentences that convey the same information, two paragraphs that establish the same personality trait, or two characters who fill the same role in the plot, repetition can dissipate your writing and rob it of its power. More often than not the problem shows up in the fiction of novices. The reason is a lack of confidence on the author's part. After all, it takes quite a bit of experience and insights to judge exactly what the effect your writing will have on your readers. So when you have a character point or plot development that is critical to the story, you want to make sure the readers get it and so you may drive it home in several different ways. But chances are good that you've underestimated your reader's intelligence, or your own writing ability, or both. As a result, you wind up telling your readers things they already know, which is almost as condescending (and off-pudding) as describing emotions that have already been shown in the dialogue. Besides the condescension involved, repeating an effect simply doesn't work. In fact, repetition is likely to weaken rather than intensify the power of that effect. Example: "He feasted on the sight of her taking big bites of the veal, washing them down with long, long swallows of wine. By the time the second course had been served, she was pronouncing her words very, very carefully. And when she excused herself to go to the ladies' room, she kept bumping into the tables to the right and the left of her." Notice that the author conveys the heroine's inebriation in two ways – the careful pronunciation and the staggering. But the staggering (which is a cliché) tends to undermine the careful pronunciation (which is fresher and more effective). The formula is: 1 + 1 = 1/2. Take another example: "She wears long and dangling gold earrings, or rhinestone baubles that twinkle too much to pass for the real thing. And she shows too much bust. Now when you weigh almost two-hundred pounds, any bust is too much in my opinion, but Rita doesn't see it that way. I guess it goes with her tiger-striped dresses and red hair." The author conveys Rita's habit of gaudy dress three times, and although each instance reads delightfully, the cumulative effect is still to weaken the whole.
One form of repetition that we've seen more often in recent years is the use of brand names to help characterization. You don't want to sound as though you use a Sharper Image catalog for a thesaurus.
Interior monologue is also prone to needless repetition, possibly because our thoughts tend to run in circles when we're upset. And sometimes you can capture a character's mood by showing his or her thoughts chasing their tails. But more often than not, repetition in interior monologue is like rambling, repetitive dialogue – authentic, but tedious.
Keep an eye out for unconscious repetition on the smallest scale – especially repetitions in which the repeated word isn't used in the same sense as the original word.
A fringe benefit of getting rid of unnecessary repetitions is that it frees up the power of intentional repetitions, or repetitions for effect. You may want to repeat an effect because your plot point or character attribute its so subtle or powerful that it pays to approach it from two different directions. Or you may use different approaches to the same point to introduce new insights, a literary version of the cinematic Rashomon technique. And your repetition for effect will be that much stronger once the needless repetitions are removed.
Up until now, we've been talking about small-scale repetition – repeating an effect two or more times within a scene or chapter. But as you revise, be on the lookout for unwarranted repetition on the larger scale as well. When you write two or more chapters that accomplish the same thing, or when you have two or more characters who fill the same role in the story, you dissipate your writing just as much as when you have two sentences or paragraphs that accomplish the same thing. On all scales, it's better to do it once and do it well than to do it twice.
While you're looking at the big picture, bear in mind that there are some effects that will work no more than once in an entire novel. Having your hero become sick to his stomach can be a good way to show he is upset, for instance. Once is enough. More is too much.
A way in which authors indulge in large-scale overkill is in the creation of characters. When you're trying to create a distinctive or eccentric character, it's not hard to go over the line into stereotype or cartoon. Again, when you overdo some aspect of your novel for effect, the effect you're likely to get may be just the opposite of the one you intended. This is particularly true in the creation of heavies. Far too often, fictional antagonists are so morally evil, so rapacious or sadistic or vain, that they actually cease to be frightening. Cartoons, even evil cartoons, aren't nearly as frightening as real human beings.
Then there is repetition on the largest scale, from book to book.
In how many different ways are you accomplishing your creative ends? If more than one way, try reading the passage without the weakest approach and see if it isn't more effective.
Keep on the lookout for unintentional word repeats. Remember, the more striking a word or phrase is, the more jarring it will be if you repeat it.
Proportion problems arise for the same reason as do problems with repetition – it's hard to judge the effect your writing will have on your readers while you are writing it, so you tend to go overboard. This sort of proportion problem has exactly the same effect on readers as does repetition. When you fill in all the details and leave nothing to your reader's imaginations, you are patronizing them. For example, fiction writers should leave more of the mundane, bridging action up to the reader's imaginations. Instead of writing: "The phone rang. Geraldine walked across the room and picked it up. 'Hello,' she said," an author can simply write: "The phone rang. 'Hello,' Geraldine said."
Be wary of flashbacks. Even when they don't make your plot difficult to follow, flashbacks can rob your story of its drive. When events unfold from beginning to end, they start to pick up a momentum that, properly handled, can make your conclusion seem inevitable. But once you start to play with the timeline, you're likely to introduce a sense of aimlessness into your story. Of course, sometimes a flashback is the only way to develop your plot, and some authors write flashbacks so powerfully and well that they achieve power and momentum within themselves. But the best approach is to violate chronology only when you have an excellent reason for doing so. Spend the largest proportion of your time in the present.
Sometimes the proportion problems arise when an author is writing about his or her pet interests or hobbies. The chapter on Cetology in Moby Dick may well be the least-read chapter in Great American literature.
However your proportion problems may arise, the most serious effect they can have on your writing is to mislead the reader. When you spend a great deal of time on one character or plot element for whatever reason, your readers naturally assume that element to be important. So if the character you spend time on turns out to be insignificant or the plot element you set up in such detail never comes into play, readers are going to feel cheated.
How do you go about spotting and solving proportion problems? The best way is to approach your work as if you were reading it for the first time. This isn't easy to do, of course – which is why editors come in so handy – but you may gain enough objectivity to do it if you walk away from your writing for a few days or weeks. As you read, ask yourself what interests you the most, what really comes to life, what involves and intrigues, what moves or fascinates or disturbs or pleases you? Once you've figured out what you like, take a look at what's left: Is it really needed? Does it add? (it may not be needed, yet add nonetheless.) Should it be shorter? Longer? This simple process can be surprisingly effective.
The technique may not work when your proportions are off, because you're writing about your pet interests. But again, putting some distance between yourself and your manuscript can help you recognize when you're lending your story authenticity and when you're belaboring your favorite topic or showing off your research. Bear in mind that your readers may not find these topics nearly as interesting as you do. You may have to cut (or rework) those passages that betray your passions in a bad way.
Be forewarned: don't ruthlessly delete everything that doesn't advance your plot. That would result in a novel with no texture. All we're suggesting is that you attribute to your readers the same responsive capability you yourself possess. If instead of patronizing your readers you assume them to be intelligent and perceptive, they're likely to return the compliment.
If you have some plot development that you want to come as a surprise, spend less time on it before you spring it on your readers. Or perhaps you could spend as much or more space on similar plot elements to mask the really important one. Agatha Christie used this technique. As you come to understand how proportion affects the way your readers see your story, you'll not only be able to correct the proportion when it's out of whack, you'll also be able to use proportion to control your readers' response to your work. The technique is subtle but powerful, for it enables you to manipulate your readers without their knowing they are being manipulated. So when you're self-editing for proportion, don't be too quick to decide that a tangent belongs on the cutting room floor. Read with the sharpest possible awareness of your own response as a reader – and your author's knowledge of where a side trip is leading two hundred pages down the road – and you're likely to make the right decisions about balancing your story elements.
One easy way to make your writing seem more sophisticated is to avoid two stylistic constructions that are common to hack writers, namely: "Putting off her gloves, she turned to face him." or "As she pulled off her gloves, she turned to face him." Both the as construction and the -ing construction used above are grammatically correct and express the action clearly and unambiguously. But notice that both of these constructions take a bit of action and tuck it away into a dependent clause. This makes the action seem incidental, unimportant. And so if you use these constructions often, you weaken your writing. Another reason to avoid the as and -ing constructions is that they sometimes give rise to physical impossibilities. Example: "Disappearing into my tent, I changed into fresh jeans." We're not suggesting that you avoid these phrases altogether. There are going to be times when you want to write about actions that are actually simultaneous, or when an action is genuinely incidental and deserves no more than a dependent clause. But do avoid the hack's favorite constructions unless you have a good reason for using them. Learn to spot these constructions and, if you see more than one or two on the page, start hunting around for alternatives. For instance, "Pulling off her gloves, she turned to face him" could easily be changed to "She pulled off her gloves and turned to face him." The participle construction has a particularly amateurish flavor when placed at the beginning of a sentence.
Another way to keep from looking like an amateur is to avoid the use of clichés. So if you come across lifeless passages, you may need to self-edit for the purpose of weeding out any clichés. Watch for clichés on the larger scale, too, particularly in the creation of minor characters. Don't outfit your accountants in Coke-bottle glasses, or make your clergyman mild and soft-spoken, or let your New York cabbies drive like maniacs. When you fall into characterization clichés like these, the result is a cartoon rather than a character. One caveat: in narration, there may be times when you need to use a familiar, pet phrase – yes, a cliché – to summarize a complicated situation. But before going with the cliché, give some thought to the possibility of "turning" it, altering it slightly to render the phrasing less familiar.
We warned you to watch out for -ly adverbs when you're writing dialogue. But even when you're not writing dialogue, be on the lookout for -ly adverbs, for the sake of sophistication. Chances are, as you bang out your first draft you use the first verbs that come to mind – verbs that are commonplace and comfortable. "Set," for instance, as in: "She set the cup and saucer on the kitchen table." Then, since "set" doesn't really convey what you want, you find the extra nuance you need in an adjective, tack on a -ly to make an adverb, and stick it to the verb. "Angrily she set the cup and saucer on the kitchen table." This approach may be all right for a first draft. But when you self-edit, you can root out these verb/adverb combinations like the weeds they are. The weak verbs that came to mind so readily can then be jettisoned in favor of stronger, more specific verbs – verbs that can say exactly what you want to say without help. "She slammed the cup and saucer onto the kitchen table." When you use two words (a weak verb and an adverb) to do the work of one (a strong verb) you dilute your writing and rob it of its potential power. There are exceptions, of course, as there are to every principle in this book. You might be compelled to write: "She tightened the last nut – slowly, lovingly" (regarding the restoration of an old sports car that one loves and has been working on for many years). It's not terrific writing but it's an understandable solution – there probably isn't a single verb in the English language that can convey this particular way of tightening a nut. But even where the adverbs aren't the product of lazy writing, they can still look like lazy writing, just because -ly adverbs have been used so often by so many hacks in the past. It might be better to rewrite the description of the car in a way that shows the character's love for it.
A simple departure from conventional comma usage can also lend a modern, sophisticated touch to your fiction – especially your dialogue. All you have to do is string together short sentences with commas instead of separating them with periods, as in this example: "I tried to tell him, I couldn't get his attention." This comma usage, if not overdone, conveys remarkably well the way speech actually falls on the ear. Most of us don't come to a full stop after every sentence when we're talking, nor do your characters have to. And this special effect needn't be reserved exclusively for dialogue passages.
The only time you need to use quotes is to show you are referring to the word itself.
There are stylistic devices that make a writer look insecure, the most notable offenders being exclamation points and italics. Exclamation points should be reserved for moments when a character is physically shouting (or experiencing the mental equivalent). When you use them frequently, you begin to look as if you were trying desperately to infuse your dialogue or narration with an excitement it lacks. And frequent italics are the typographical equivalent of an elbow in the ribs and a frantic, "Did you get it? Did you?" The dialogue and description must convey all the emotion needed.
There is another stylistic device whose overuse will brand you as an amateur: flowery, poetic figures of speech, much beloved by beginning writers and used very sparingly by the pros. If you're a poet, and most of your imagery is fresh and strong, reining yourself in may be more difficult than you might think. "As a matter of fact, Lucy, it may be that Rose is pregnant. His eyes were a dark, dark blue, stolen jewels in a setting of bone." The metaphor isn't bad. Yet the problem isn't the unworkability of the metaphor but its presence in the scene in the first place. This scene is the moment on which the plot of the entire novel turns. Just when its most important that we focus on events, we're pulled aside to notice the author's poetic gift. The focus should be on the confrontation/revelation, not the figure of speech. Are there any metaphors or flowery phrases you're particularly proud of? Do they come at key times during your plot? If so, think about getting rid of them.
The subtler stylistic approach will nearly always be the more professional-looking choice. The subtle approach engages your readers' imagination and so is likely to be far more effective. A line space may be a far more erotic place for two characters to make love than a bed.
Profanity has been so overused in past years that nowadays it's just a sign of a small vocabulary. Of course, if profanity is appropriate to your character, then have your character swear. But if you include a lot of profanity for the sake of sophistication or shock value, it's likely to do nothing more than turn your readers off.
We often work with authors through four drafts before we see the novel published, although the first draft we see may not be the first one that the author wrote. And the goal of all this careful, conscious work is to produce a novel or short story collection that reads as though no hard labor were involved in producing it. Fred Astaire worked tirelessly to make dancing look like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. And that's what you're trying for – a level of effectiveness that can make what was hardest to achieve look easy.
A strong, distinctive, authoritative writing voice is something most fiction writers want – and something no editor or teacher can impart. We recently worked with a novelist whose fiction featured a lot of short, punchy sentences and partial sentences. Unfortunately, the voice was so distinctive that all of his characters sounded alike. And the tension stayed at such a high pitch for so long that the novel became exhausting to read.
When an amateur author tries deliberately for the sort of mature voice found in seasoned professionals, the result is likely to be literarily pretentious and largely unreadable. In fact, this sort of literary pretentiousness is another clear mark of an amateur.
In order to write with a mature voice, you have to mature first.
Style and voice are not interchangeable. The way to develop a voice is not by working on your style. Remember, your primary purpose as a writer of fiction is to engage your readers in your story, the best way you can. When your style starts to overshadow your story, it's defeating that purpose. Concentrate on your characters, concentrate on your story, and let your voice take care of itself.
Try rereading your work as if you were reading it for the first time. Whenever you come to a sentence or phrase that gives you a little jab of pleasure, highlight that passage. Absorb the rhythm or fullness or simplicity or freshness or whatever made it pleasurable to you. What you've been reading aloud will represent your voice at its most effective. And making you conscious of it in this mechanical way will strengthen it. Likewise go back and read consecutively all the passages you didn't like, and try to analyze what makes them different from the passages that you liked.
If flatness seems to be the problem, take a look at the surrounding sentences and see if they don't all have the same structure. Too many straight declarative sentences in a row, for instance, will flatten out anyone's writing. If the problem is abstraction or vagueness, rewrite for specificity. If the passage seems obvious, check for explanations – whether in dialogue, interior monologue, even narration – and cut or rewrite accordingly. And if the writing seems strained or forced or awkward, try reading the passage aloud – listening carefully for any little changes you're inclined to make while reading. More often than not, those changes will be in the direction of your natural voice. If you do this exercise often enough, you will develop a sensitivity to your own voice that will gently encourage the development of the confidence and distinction you want.
In Mary Gordon's novel "The Company of Women," every voice is distinct, because each one belongs to a character with a distinct personality and sensitivity. Every voice seems to arise spontaneously from the character rather than the author; nothing about the voices seems forced or unnatural. Why? We doubt very much that it's because Mary Gordon sat down beforehand and worked out six different styles of speech and thought for six different characters. What's far more likely is that she has listened to her characters, has come to know them so intimately that one of them can't speak in the same voice as another.
Be still the way Tolstoy is still, so that your characters can become gods and speak for themselves and come alive in their own way.
Very often the character's voice will develop as much or more in the revision process than in the first draft. It demands that you revise again and again until what you've written rings true. It invites you to listen to your own work. Do that job of listening carefully enough, lovingly enough, and you will start to hear your own writing voice.
WRITING WELL
Anybody who can think clearly can write clearly, about any subject at all.
The essence of writing is rewriting.
I don't know what still newer electronic marvels are waiting just around the corner ... but I do know ... writing ... will still require plain old hard work – clear thinking – and the plain old tools of the English language.
Professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.
Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading.
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what – these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.
Simplify, simplify.
If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't been careful enough.
Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds – the writer is always slightly behind.
Clutter is the laborious phrase that has pushed out the short word that means the same thing.
Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly.
The reader will notice if you are putting on airs ... : be yourself.
Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity. Therefore I urge people to write in the first person ...
Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.
Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it.
In terms of craft, there's no excuse for losing readers through sloppy workmanship.
Whatever your age, be yourself when you write.
You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive.
The growing acceptance of the split infinitive, or of the proposition at the end of a sentence, proves that formal syntax can't hold the fort forever against a speaker's more comfortable way of getting the same thing said – and shouldn't.
Our panel ... turned out to be liberal in accepting new words and phrases, but conservative in grammar.
We were motivated by our love of the language's beautiful precision.
"I choose always the grammatical form unless it sounds affected."
Good usage, to me, consists of using good words if they already exist – as they almost always do – to express myself clearly and simply to someone else.
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
Unity is the anchor of good writing.
Unity not only keeps the reader from straggling off in all directions; it satisfies the reader's subconscious need for order ...
One choice is unity of pronoun.... unity of tense is another choice.... I'm not saying you can't use more than one tense; the whole purpose of tenses is to enable a writer to deal with time in its various gradations.... But you must choose the tense in which you are principally going to address the reader, no matter how many glances you may take backward or forward along the way.... Another choice is unity of mood. You might want to talk to the reader in [a] casual voice.... or you might want to approach the reader with a certain formality.... Both tones are acceptable. In fact, any tone is acceptable. But don't mix two or three.
Enthusiasm is the force that keeps you going and keeps the reader in your grip.
Once you have your unities decided, there's no material you can't work into your frame.
Always look for ways to convey your information in a narrative form.
Are you summarizing because you think [readers are] too dumb to get the point? Still, you keep cranking. But the readers have another option. They quit.
If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
Surprise is one of the most refreshing elements in nonfiction writing.
Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style – in clarity and vigor – is the difference between life and death for a writer.... A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader's energy.
Short is generally better than long. Verbs are the most important of all your tools.... Many verbs carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean ... don't choose one that is dull or merely serviceable. ... try to avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work. Don't set up a business that you can start or launch.... Use precise verbs.
Most adverbs are unnecessary.... Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs. So are adjectives and other parts of speech ... Don't use adverbs unless they do necessary work.... Most adjectives are also unnecessary. Like adverbs, they are sprinkled into sentences by writers who don't stop to think that the concept is already in the noun. The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader. Again, and the rule is simple: make your adjectives do work that needs to be done.... Use [them] sparsely.
Don't hedge your prose with little timidities [like a bit, a little, sort of, kind of, rather, quite, very, too, pretty much, in a sense and dozens more. They dilute your style and your persuasiveness]. Good writing is lean and confident.
"Very" is a useful word to achieve emphasis, but far more often it's clutter.
If you find yourself hopelessly mired in a long sentence, it's probably because you're trying to make this sentence do more than it can reasonably do ... Among good writers it is the short sentence that predominates ...
Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but." If that's what you learned, unlearn it – there's no stronger word at the start.
Don't start a sentence with "however" – it stands there like a wet dishrag.
Get people doing things.... Don't get caught holding a bag full of abstract nouns. You'll sink to the bottom of the lake and never be seen again.
Don't overstate. Don't inflate an incident to make it more outlandish than it actually was. If the reader catches you in just one bogus statement that you're trying to pass off as true, everything you write thereafter will be suspect.
Your subconscious mind does more writing than you think.... A writer is always working.
Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it.
Keep your paragraphs short.... Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read.... But don't go berserk. A succession of tiny paragraphs is as annoying as a paragraph that's too long.
... "he or she" ... should be used sparingly.
Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. Most rewriting consists of reshaping and tightening and refining the raw material you wrote on your first try.
Avoid weak "there was" constructions.
There's nothing more interesting than the truth.... Trust your material.
People of every age will write better and with more enjoyment if they write about what they care about.
The reader plays a major role in the act of writing and must be given room to play it. Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining – by telling them something they already know or can surmise.
Look for the human element.
Your job is to distill the essence.
Finally, don't strain to find synonyms for "he said." Don't make your man assert, aver and expostulate just to avoid repeating "he said," and please – please! – don't write "he smiled" or "he grinned." I've never heard anybody smile. The reader's eye skips over "he said" anyway, so it's not worth a lot of fuss.
Strive for fresh words and images.
Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute: don't tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white. Find details that are significant. ... make sure they do useful work.
What brings a place alive is human activity: people doing the things that give a locale its character.
But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please. If you consciously write for a teacher or for an editor, you'll end up not writing for anybody. If you write for yourself, you'll reach the people you want to write for.
Make sure every component in your memoir is doing useful work.
Memoir isn't the summary of life; it's a window into a life ...
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
The crucial ingredient in memoir is, of course, people.
Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all.
A tenet of journalism is that "the reader knows nothing." As tenets go, it's not flattering, but a technical writer can never forget it.... It's the principle of leading readers who know nothing, step by step ...
Reduce the abstract principle to an image they can visualize.
We are suspicious of pretentiousness ... be natural.
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
There is a deep yearning for human contact and the resentment of bombast.
Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.
... use specific detail. This avoids dealing in generalities, which, being generalities, mean nothing.
What is crucial for you as a writer is to express your opinion firmly. Don't cancel its strength with last-minute evasions and escapes. Take your stand with conviction.
Control is vital to humor.
Humor is not a separate organism that can survive on its own frail metabolism. It's a special angle of vision granted to certain writers who already write good English. They are not writing about life that's essentially ludicrous; they are writing about life that's essentially serious, but their eye falls on areas where serious hopes are mocked by some ironic turn of fate...
I adopt the Young principle – stick to what you know ...
A humorist who deals with ordinary life never runs out of material ...
The effortless style is achieved by strenuous effort and constant refining.
The most pathetic thing about the breezy style is that it's harder to read than good English.
Nobody wants to be patronized.
... less is more ...
... clichés are the kiss of death ... [they] are everywhere in the air around us, familiar friends just waiting to be helpful, ready to express complex ideas for us in the shorthand form of metaphor.... Notice how incriminating they sound, convincing you of being satisfied to use the same old chestnuts instead of making an effort to replace them with fresh phrases of your own.
Freshness is crucial.
A writer with an ear for language will reach for fresh imagery and avoid phrases that are trite.
Writing that will endure tends to consist of words that are short and strong ...
After verbs, plain nouns are your strongest tools; they resonate with emotion.
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
One woman wanted to write about the house in Michigan where she grew up.... Should she write from the point of view of the girl who had been a pupil in the school, or as the woman she was today ... That question has troubled everyone who ever tried to write a memoir: whose truth is the "right" truth? The question doesn't have one right answer, but it has to be settled in advance. Readers won't put up with vacillating between two perspectives and tones.
Any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you'll be head of the game.
Writing is related to character. If your values are sound, your writing will be sound.
All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential ...
Every step should seem inevitable.
The point of the information is to get readers so interested that they will stick around for the whole trip.
Much of the trouble that writers get into comes from trying to make one sentence do too much work.
Banality is the enemy of good writing ...
... the merely serviceable is a drag.
If you look long enough you can usually find a proper name or metaphor that will bring those dull but necessary facts to life.
No writing decision is too small to be worth a large expenditure of time.
Fondness for material you've gone to a lot of trouble to gather isn't a good enough reason to include it if it's not central to the story you've chosen to tell. Self-discipline bordering on masochism is required. The only consolation for the loss of so much material is that it isn't totally lost; it remains in your writing as an intangible that the reader can sense. Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you've put in writing.
Break your material into manageable chunks.
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
Besides wanting to write as well as possible, I wanted to write as entertainingly as possible.
Any number of devices will do the job: humor, anecdote, paradox, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words. These seeming amusements in fact become your "style."
How to write a clear English sentence – that information has been around since the King James bible. We know that verbs have more vigor than nouns, that active verbs are better than passive verbs, that short words and sentences are easier to read than long ones, that concrete details are easier to process than vague abstractions.
Most nonfiction writers will do well to cling to the ropes of simplicity and clarity.
If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft.
Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best.
To defend what you've written is a sign that you're alive.
What a good editor brings to a piece of writing is an objective eye that the writer has long since lost, and there is no end of ways in which an editor can improve a manuscript: pruning, shaping, clarifying, tidying a hundred inconsistencies of tense and pronoun and location and tone, noticing all the sentences that could be read in two different ways, dividing awkward long sentences into short ones, putting the writer back on the main road if he has strayed down a site path, building bridges where the writer has lost the reader by not paying attention to his transitions, questioning matters of judgment and taste. For all these acts of salvation, editors can't be thanked fervently enough. Unfortunately, they can also do considerable harm.
A bad editor has a compulsion to tinker ...
If you allow your distinctiveness to be edited out, you will lose one of your main virtues. You will also lose your virtue.
Don't let editors use distance or their own disarray as an excuse for altering your work without your consent.
What you write is yours and nobody else's. Take your talent as far as you can and guard it with your life.
Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel. You will write only as well as you make yourself write.
ADDENDUM ON STYLE AND GRAMMAR
If a quotation contains a misspelling or grammatical error, you may insert sic (the Latin word for “thus”) in brackets to indicate that the mistake was made not by you, but by the original author.
- The sign read “No Purking [sic].”
Note that sic should be italicized.
An em dash (—) is a dash that, in traditional typefaces, is the same width as the letter m. In text, it is most commonly used to mark an abrupt change in a sentence’s construction or a sudden shift in an author’s train of thought.
The em dash is a special character in most word-processing programs. If your program does not have an em dash character, you can use two hyphens (--) to represent one.
Do not add a space before or after an em dash when inserting it between two words.
Incorrect: I suddenly had an idea -- an idea that would change everything.
Correct: I suddenly had an idea--an idea that would change everything.
Use an em dash before and after a phrase that represents a sudden shift in thought.
- I believe--or at least I want to believe--that he is innocent.
An em dash implies a longer pause than a comma; if the explanation is fairly long, it is usually the better choice.
Acceptable: Mr. Albert was a wonderful teacher, the type of teacher who truly cares about his students.
Better: Mr. Albert was a wonderful teacher--the type of teacher who truly cares about his students.
Use em dashes in place of commas to set off an explanatory phrase that includes a comma within it.
- Basic science courses--Chemistry, Physics, and Biology--are required for pre-med students.
[Note: This document makes wide use of the en dash in place of the em dash, which is consistent with the style
adopted by David Crystal in "Who Cares About English Usage." This choice is the product of a personal preference on my part. The modern trend
is on the side of the em dash.]
An en dash (–) is a short dash that, in traditional typefaces, measures the width of the letter n. It is shorter than an em dash (—) but longer than a hyphen (-).
Most word-processing programs feature the en dash in their menus of special characters. If yours does not, you can use a hyphen in its place.
Note that the word from should be omitted when an en dash is used.
Incorrect: The study covers the years from 1985-94.
Correct: The study covers the years 1985-94.
In text, express percentages as numerals followed by the word percent. Note that percent is written as one word, not two.
Incorrect: fifteen percent; 15 per cent
Correct: 15 percent
The number in a percentage is spelled out when it begins a sentence.
- Forty percent of the class was absent.
When used as a subject, percent usually takes a singular verb, as in the example above. If it is followed by a prepositional phrase with a plural object, however, it takes a plural verb.
- Nearly 15 percent of the votes were recorded.
Do not hyphenate a percentage used as an adjective.
- a 79 percent increase
To form the plural of an unpunctuated abbreviation, a number, or a letter used as a letter, you usually need to add an s. (Abbreviations of units of measure are exceptions: They are generally identical in their singular and plural forms.)
- RSVPs
- ps and qs
- 1980s
Use an apostrophe and an s, however, if an s alone could be confusing.
Confusing: ss
Better: s’s
Also use ’s to form the plural of an abbreviation that is punctuated with more than one period.
- Ph.D.’s
If a period only appears at the end of an abbreviation, you can usually make the abbreviation plural by inserting an s before the punctuation mark.
- depts.
- Vols.
The plurals of some one-letter abbreviations are traditionally formed by doubling the letter.
- pp. (pages)
- cc. (copies)
(a) Bob will come soon. When Bob comes, we will see him.
(b) Linda is going to leave soon. Before she leaves, she is going to finish her work.
In (a): When Bob comes is a time clause (i.e., an adverb clause). When + subject + verb = time clause. A time clause begins with such words as when, before, after, as soon as, until, while and includes a subject and a verb.
Will or be going to is NOT used in a time clause. The meaning of the clause is future, but the simple present tense is used.
The present progressive may be used to express future time when the idea of the sentence concerns a planned event or definite intention.
(a) My wife has an appointment with a doctor. She is seeing Dr. North next Tuesday.
(b) Sam has already made his plans. He is leaving at noon tomorrow.
Every other can give the idea of "alternate," as in Please write on every other line or I see her every other week.
A phrase is a group of words that does not contain a subject and a verb, whereas a clause is a group of words containing a subject and a verb. An independent clause (or main clause) is a complete sentence. It contains the main subject and verb of a sentence. A dependent clause (or subordinate clause) is not a complete sentence. It must be connected to an independent clause.
Sentences with subjunctive verbs generally stress importance or urgency. A subjunctive verb is used in that-clauses. Examples: the teacher demands that we be on time; I insisted that he pay me the money; It is important that they be told the truth.
Note the use of the verb lift in the too-clause: That box is too heavy for Bob to lift.
If-clauses (also called "adverb clauses of condition") present possible conditions. The main clause expresses results. Example: If it rains, the streets get wet. A present tense, not a future tense, is used in an if-clause even though the verb in the if-clause may refer to a future event or situation, as in If it rains tomorrow, I will take my umbrella.
In the event that is more formal than in case. The use of should in the adverb clause emphasizes the speaker's uncertainty that something will happen. Examples: I'll be at my uncle's house in case you (should) need to reach me; In the event that you (should) need to reach me, I'll be at my uncle's house.
The implied subject of the introductory phrase must be the stated subject of the following clause. Grammatically correct is: Having come so little distance in so much time, he finally faced that he had to consider changing tactics.
Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language. Example: He was not very often on time; He usually came late.
Less refers to quantity, fewer to number.
REFERENCES (sources from which the above passages have been extracted)
- "On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary Edition," William Zinsser.
- "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers," Renni Browne and Dave King.
- "Style Guide," in Microsoft Bookshelf 1999.
- "The Elements of Style, Third Edition," William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
- "The Handbook of Good English," Edward D. Johnson.
- "Thinking Like Your Editor," Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato.
- "Understanding and Using English Grammar, Third Edition" Betty Schrampfer Azar.
- "Who Cares About English Usage," David Crystal.
P.S.: If you cannot find in this document what you're looking for, I invite you to visit any of the following sites, which also deal with English grammar and style:
- http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
- http://www.bartleby.com/141/
- http://www.bartleby.com/64/
- http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/
- http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
- http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/english_grammar_style
- http://dictionary.reference.com/writing/
- http://www.refdesk.com/factgram.html
- http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/index.html
- http://www.grammarnow.com/
- http://englishplus.com/
- http://www.writerssupercenter.com/stylewriter/
- http://www.writersbookmall.com/writers_book_mall_-_writing_skills_(style_grammar_etc).htm
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