How to improve writing (no. 41)

Here (and why not?) is the evolution of a sentence from yesterday’s post on Palomino Blackwing non-users. My first effort:

There is a reference to “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office in Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011).

That’s one ungainly sentence. Notice the long chain of prepositional phrases: to boxes, of Blackwing pencils, from White’s office, in Martha White’s introduction. The sequence from White’s office in Martha White’s introduction is especially clumsy. (It must have been a small office.) Embedding the book title’s two prepositional phrases in yet another prepositional phrase adds a final awkward touch. What I think happened here: having taken a quick look at the book, I was concerned more with getting the data in one place — the quotation, the writer’s name, the book’s part and title, the date of publication — than with writing a good sentence.

I saw right away that I needed to rethink the sequence of elements in the sentence: it’s appropriate to put what’s most important at the end, right? So here’s an improvement:

In Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011), there is a reference to “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office.

Better, yes. And notice that the three references to Whites are better distributed in the sentence. But look at “There is a reference.” It should be easy to make the sentence shorter and livelier by cutting the verb to be and the nominalization reference and adding a transitive verb in the active voice:

Martha White’s introduction to In the Words of E. B. White (2011) mentions “boxes of Blackwing pencils” from White’s office.

Much better. Notice that dropping is and a reference means fewer prepositional phrases. Minus the two of the title, the sentence drops from five to three, and from twenty-five words to twenty.

This rewriting stuff, it really works.

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[This post is no. 41 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. This post is the first to improve my writing. Many guides to writing suggest replacing to be (when appropriate) with a transitive verb in the active voice. The advice appears in The Elements of Style, or “Strunk and White”: “Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.”]

How to improve writing (no. 69)

[Mark Trail , November 15, 2016.]

Two things to consider. One is the importance of choosing the right word: Mark means to say impending . Garner’s Modern English Usage explains the distinction: “What is pending is awaiting an outcome”; “what is impending is imminent (in the literal sense of the word, ‘hanging over one’s head’) and harmful.” Volcanic eruptions are always harmful.

The second thing to consider: writing that represents speech should resemble speech. (And here I remember the English teacher who took off points when my daughter used contractions in a story’s dialogue.) Writing that represents the speech of someone fleeing an erupting volcano should exhibit greater terseness, greater urgency. A possible revision:


[Mark Trail revised.]

Or better yet: just keep your mouth shut and run, Mark, as Abbey Powell is doing. Run, Mark, run.

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Please imagine the links in the form of a Venn diagram.

[I wrote a note to the teacher about the contractions but, as you might guess, I got nowhere. This post is no. 69 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 54)

[Mark Trail, March 9, 2015.]

It’s not the instincts that are “not far from Lost Forest”; it’s the beaver himself. And “leave the colony in order to go out” is cumbersome phrasing.


[Mark Trail revised, March 9, 2015.]

From forty syllables to thirty, from thirty-two words to twenty-three. Big savings. Fare forward, young family-man, and best of luck to you in the Trail world.

Mark Trail has provided material for two other “How to improve writing” posts, nos. 44 and 46.

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[This post is no. 54 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 46)

[Mark Trail, October 17, 2013. Click for a larger view.]

Given the tools available to me, I can’t do much to improve Mark Trail’s “cell phone,” which looks more like the battery from my old Sony Vaio. But I can improve writing. The last panel is the problem:


[Mark Trail, original.]

As Dusty Rhodes asks, what are you getting at, Mark? What’s on that phone of yours? The problem is the misplaced modifier “except us.” Garner’s Modern American Usage explains:

When modifying words are separated from the words they modify, readers have a hard time processing the information. Indeed, there likely to attach the modified language first to a nearby word or phrase.

Garner offers a grimly comic example: “Both died in an apartment Dr. Kevorkian was leasing after inhaling carbon monoxide,” a sentence suggesting that Kervorkian inhaled before he leased. Here’s what Mark Trail should have said:


[Mark Trail, revised.]

Between today’s strip and tomorrow’s, Dusty will probably figure things out.

This post marks the second time I’ve improved writing in a Mark Trail strip. Here’s the first. I rely on the free Mac app Seashore when I make such improvements.

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[This post is no. 46 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 43)

Here’s the work I did to improve two sentences in a recent post. The first draft:

If the most powerful and moneyed interests who now seek to reshape higher education have their way, what we call “college” will soon become a two-tier system, with the real thing reserved for a privileged few and credits and credentials — haphazardly assembled, vocationally themed — for everyone else. If this future weren’t already in itself appalling, the rhetoric of inevitability that accompanies it — get on board or risk being swept away — might alone be reason enough to object.

The work of revising, with additions in red, some deleted:

If the most powerful and moneyed interests who now seeking to reshape higher education have their way, what we call “college” will soon become a two-tier system, with the real thing reserved for a privileged few (MOOC stars have to teach somewhere, right?) and credits and credentials,  /  haphazardly assembled, vocationally themed,  /  for everyone else. If this future vision prospect weren’t already in itself appalling, the rhetoric of inevitability that accompanies sells it — get on board or risk being swept away — might would alone be reason enough to object.

Most of the changes are in the interest of concision, fewer words with no loss of meaning or detail (the noun clause “what we call ‘college,’” for instance, reduced to “‘college,’” with the quotation marks doing the work of the deleted words). I used a pair of commas to avoid the ungainly repetition of dashes. I hit on prospect as a better choice than the trite future or the loftier vision, and chose sells as a far better verb than accompanies. The aside about MOOC stars came to me while revising: and yes, I do think there’s shameless cynicism in trading on prestigious names to sell a feeble replacement for real-presence education. The aside is practical too: the interruption eliminates the slightly misleading and of “a privileged few and credits.” The revised sentences:

If powerful and moneyed interests now seeking to reshape higher education have their way, “college” will soon become a two-tier system, with the real thing for a privileged few (MOOC stars have to teach somewhere, right?) and credits and credentials, haphazardly assembled, vocationally themed, for everyone else. If this prospect weren’t in itself appalling, the rhetoric of inevitability that sells it — get on board or be swept away — would be reason enough to object.

The changes are all minor. But such changes, multiplied over sentences and paragraphs, add up. Are they worth the time and effort? They are.

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Draft, draft, draft, draft (John McPhee on revision)

[This post is no. 43 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. This post is one of two about my writing. Here’s the other.]

How to improve writing (no. 62)

From the bag holding a baguette:

We consider our breads a work of art that honors the traditions and techniques of European bakers. Each of our loaves are baked in small batches and hand crafted to ensure the highest quality crust, flavor and texture.

It’s good bread. But not good writing. The mix of plural and singular words in the first sentence — breads , work , honors — is confusing. The plural loaves would seem to explain the subject-verb disagreement in the second sentence, an instance of what Garner’s Modern American Usage calls “false attraction to noun intervening between subject and verb.” I see at least three more ways to improve that second sentence.

A possible revision, allowing the hype to stand:

We consider each of our breads a work of art that honors the traditions and techniques of European bakers. Each variety is handcrafted and baked in small batches to ensure the highest quality crust, flavor, and texture.

The three more ways: joining hand and crafted to make the usual compound word, placing the cart (the handcrafting) before the horse (the baking), and adding a serial comma. Another possible revision, eliminating much of the hype:

Our bread honors the traditions and techniques of European bakers. We bake each variety in small batches to ensure excellent crust, flavor, and texture.

I’m not sure what counts as a small batch though.

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[About hand and crafted : Merriam-Webster makes them a solid word. The Oxford English Dictionary joins them with a hyphen. The serial or Oxford comma is much debated, but as GMAU notes, “virtually all writing authorities” outside the world of journalism recommend using it. This post is no. 62 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 67)

Ford Madox Ford’s page-ninety test (and it is page ninety, not ninety-nine), can yield amazing results. The Ford practice: open a book to page ninety and consider the first full paragraph of any length. How’s the prose?

This past Sunday I applied the test to a book Elaine and I bought at a library sale. Was this book, about nature and music, worth our time? Here’s the first full paragraph on page ninety:

The first thing I noticed at each location was how much emphasis the other researchers on-site — each concentrating on a narrow topic — placed on the visual aspects of their study animals. For those whose scope of work involved sound at any level, the biophony — and in many cases even the individual species’ sounds — was completely overlooked. Yet I realized quickly just how varied and rich the natural soundscapes were.

The first two sentences are ponderous. Dashes are part of the problem: the first two separate placed from researchers ; the next two may have convinced the writer that sounds was not part of a compound subject. An error in subject-verb agreement results: biophony and sounds was overlooked. But were overlooked wouldn’t be much of an improvement: the passive-voice verb is a dull choice, especially if the writer wants to emphasize that other researchers missed something. Elsewhere, an overreliance on to be minimizes the writer’s agency: “The first thing I noticed . . . was.”

Reading the paragraph a third or fourth time, I noticed that an overabundance of prepositional phrases adds to the first sentence’s ponderousness: “at each location,” “on-site” (where else could the researchers be?), “on a narrow topic,” “on the visual aspects,” “of their study animals.” And I began to wonder what it might mean to describe an animal’s “visual aspects.” Do they have something to do with a creature’s ability to see? Or are we speaking of a creature’s appearance? One more thing: the paragraph’s final sentence seems to me a bit too self-congratulatory.

My best revision:

At each location, I found that other researchers did little more than look at animals. Even those whose work involved some attention to sound failed to notice the biophony and the distinctive vocalizations of individual species. It was as if these researchers were deaf to the richness and variety of natural soundscapes.

My revision takes this paragraph from seventy words to fifty-two, with no dashes. The dash problem, as I discovered by turning pages, is everywhere: 236 pages, and only twenty-odd are dashless.

The book, by the way, is from Little, Brown. The writer thanks his editor for a “finely tuned combo of eye and ear for proper voice and structure.”

*

3:35 p.m.: One more change: from “distinctive sounds” to “distinctive vocalizations.” I didn’t like the repetition of “some attention to sound” and “distinctive sounds.”

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[Biophony? The writer defines it as “sounds originating from nonhuman, nondomestic biological sources.” This post is no. 67 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Review: How to Not Write Bad

Ben Yagoda. How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. New York: Riverhead Books, 2013. xiii + 175 pages. $15 paper.

I am always looking for new and better books to use when I teach prose writing to college juniors and seniors. Thus I found my way to Ben Yagoda’s How to Not Write Bad. Its premise — that novice writers can improve greatly by learning what not to do in their prose — is sound. But the book is a disappointment.

I found an examination copy of the book in the mailbox one morning last month, right before meeting this semester's writing class. Feeling the show-and-tell spirit, I brought the book to class and opened at random to page 52 and a discussion of the semicolon. I read the first two sentences aloud:

My initial thought is to limit this entry to one sentence: “If you feel like using a semicolon, lie down until the urge goes away.”

That is because when my students utilize this piece of punctuation, a substantial majority of them utilize it incorrectly.

My students winced, at least some of them. I winced too. We winced for the same reasons: the condescending tone, the ponderous diction. Utilize ? My students know better. And substantial majority ? Why not most ? What’s especially puzzling: elsewhere in this book, as I was to discover, Yagoda advises against such ponderousness. He even recommends use for utilize. It may be that the diction in the sentences I’ve quoted is meant as a joke, but the joke, if there is one, will likely be lost on a reader who wants to understand the use of the semicolon, a mark of punctuation that many teachers of writing would say is not so much misused in student writing as merely absent.

Yagoda's brief treatment of the semicolon is not likely to be of much use to such a reader. The passage continues:

[W]hile it is tempting to outlaw semicolons and just move on, that would be too easy. For one thing, there is a particular circumstance when a semicolon absolutely has to be used. This is a series of three or more items, one or more of which contain a comma.

It’s an odd presentation that begins with this relatively exotic matter before discussing the semicolon's use in joining complete sentences. And why particular circumstance? Why absolutely ? Elsewhere in the book, Yagoda says of particular that it “usually adds nothing to a thought except four syllables.” And he says that absolutely and similar qualifiers make a writer sound “mealymouthed.”

On to the primary use of the semicolon:

A semicolon can be used to connect two independent clauses if the clauses aren't already linked by conjunctions (and, but, although, etc.).

This advice is highly misleading, because it fails to distinguish between coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet) and subordinating conjunctions (such as although, because, whenever): the latter cannot introduce independent clauses. Yagoda leaves unmentioned the words that often signal semicolon territory: conjunctive adverbs (such as however, nevertheless, therefore) and transitional phrases (as a result, even so, in fact). Thus his presentation of the semicolon is grammatically confused and alarmingly incomplete. And a brief discussion of comma splices a few pages earlier in the book gives no indication that however is a word often found somewhere to the right of a semicolon. To the contrary: the sample sentences in that section of the book carry the unintended implication that because however is not a conjunction, it plays no part in joining sentences:

Tuition will go up again next year, however, it will be the smallest increase in five years. [Given as wrong.]

Tuition will go up again next year. However, it will be the smallest increase in five years. [Given as correct.]

Tuition will go up again next year, but it will be the smallest increase in five years. [Given as correct.]

The sentence that’s conspicuously missing:

Tuition will go up again next year; however, it will be the smallest increase in five years.

Or better:

Tuition will go up again next year; the increase, however, will be the smallest in five years.

The problems in my randomly chosen passage are present throughout the book. The writing is breezy and often condescending: “I certify this is an actual student sentence,” Yagoda writes of one especially bad sentence. How great to be the sap who’s responsible. Yagoda’s presentation of the word mindfulness (the idea of the mindful writer runs through the book) would not pass muster in an essay for freshman comp:

A word you see a lot nowadays is mindfulness. I confess I don’t know exactly what it means; something having to do with meditation and/or yoga, I believe. But the concept can definitely, and profitably, be adapted to writing.

Has Yagoda not heard of Thich Nhat Hanh? Or even Wikipedia? But also: why does he give mindfulness a pass and not count it with deal breaker, difference maker, and meme as a contemporary cliché? Try a Google search: mindful asset planning, browsing, cooking, driving, exercise, facilitation. Mindfulness is everywhere. I am lost.

And why does Yagoda clutter his sentences with empty prose additives like definitely (“definitely, and profitably, be adapted”)? Again and again, his writing violates the book’s precepts, not wittily but clumsily, as if neither writer nor editor was paying attention. Words that Yagoda prohibits — actually and the previously mentioned particular — turn up in his sentences often (actually, twelve times; particular, seventeen). The words definitely and simply (which are not on the hit list but should be) turn up five and seven times respectively. The book cautions against clichés, yet there are many: “bad boys” to “smoke out,” “clean bill of health,” “thunderous applause,” “train-wreck,” even a reference to a sentence “riddled” with clichés. Right before advising against unnecessary quotation marks (air quotes or scare quotes), Yagoda uses them: “eventually, you will streamline the process and ‘hear’ yourself write.” He uses such quotation marks elsewhere too: “selected and processed by an editor, and then ‘published.’”

What’s worse is that some of this book’s advice about writing is unhelpful or mistaken. At one point Yagoda recommends quotation marks for titles (“Gone with the Wind”), but elsewhere in the book he recommends italics for titles of “books and other compositions.” (Sample sentences in How to Not Write Bad are always in italics, which would make for maddening complications in showing the use of italics with titles.) Yagoda’s advice about the Oxford or serial comma — “choose a style you like, and stick with it” — ignores the overwhelming support for this comma in American English. Says Garner’s Modern American Usage ,

Although newspaper journalists typically omit the serial comma as a ‘space-saving’ device, virtually all writing authorities outside that field recommend keeping it.

In other words, it’s a question you shouldn’t be deciding for yourself. Yagoda’s presentation of skunked usage casts the possessive followed by a gerund (“I don’t like your talking about the senator in that tone”) as a mistake, but “you talking” is the problem, as the sample sentences make clear. And concerning the use of the word this alone (a pervasive problem in student writing), Yagoda blithely advises substituting the word that : “it can be slipped in,” he says, “without doing any damage. You didn’t hear it from me.” Such advice won’t do.

As with Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence, the real difficulties of writing good prose come in for little attention. Trying to figure out the writing conventions that apply in a field? Read “the best practitioners” and “maybe even copy down some of their sentences and paragraphs. Eventually you’ll get a feel for the expectations.” Tangled syntax? Just be mindful:

If, every time you put down a sentence, you go over it unhurriedly, you’ll learn to pick up on any ambiguities or confusion. To fix them, just shuffle and reshuffle the elements of the sentence, as if you were putting together a bouquet of flowers.

And three pages from the end of the book, we’re told that the “key issues” we now must consider are “cadence or rhythm, variety, novelty, consistency, and transitions.” In the word of many a Brooklynite before me: Sheesh.

Though this book is marketed for use in writing courses, its design alone makes it an unlikely choice for that purpose. Yagoda suggests that a teacher direct a student to “the appropriate entry in the book” to solve a writing problem. But finding, say, II.B.4.d. will be easy for neither teacher nor student: the book has no chapter headings, no index, and only a sketchy table of contents. Section II.B.4., for instance, has five parts, a. through e., none of which are identified by page number or topic in the table of contents. It’s not surprising that Yagoda himself gets lost in this maze, directing the reader to the non-existent II.I.C.2., and referring to II.C.2.d. when he means II.D.2. Imagine the fun I’ve had working out the details of this paragraph.

How to Not Write Bad comes highly recommended, with Cynthia Ozick on the front cover and an unnamed Atlantic reviewer on the back, touting the book as appropriate for the “syntax-obsessed reader and writer” and “copy, grammar, and writing nerds.” But there is little that such readers will learn from this book. And for the student who wants to become a better writer, there are books far more helpful and trust-inspiring. They would include Claire Cook’s Line by Line, Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences about Writing, and Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences. I remain on the lookout for books as good or better.

[Are college juniors and seniors “novice writers”? In most cases, yes. Their writing experience is limited. “Empty prose additives” is a lovely phrase I’ve borrowed from Claire Cook.]

How to improve writing (no. 20 in a series)

From a pen catalogue:

As is true for all fine Faber-Castell chirographic instruments…

The Oxford English Dictionary has no entry for chirographic. The OED does include chirography, with the most recent example of the word's use dating from 1882. If chirographic isn't obsolete, it's certainly been a long time on the shelf.

Looking at chirographic for a bit helps to bring its parts into focus: the word is made from the Greek χειρo-, from χείρ, hand (also found in chiropractor) and -γραφικός, "written or transmitted in a (specified) way." A chirographic instrument is, simply, a writing instrument.

I'm not sure how to account for chirographic. Is the word meant to appear learned, so as to impress? Or whimsical, so as to charm? Or has the writer just gone hunting in a thesaurus? Given the context — ad copy in a catalogue for pen fans, the simpler word writing is enough. It would make the writer's meaning clear and keep the focus on those fine Faber-Castell products.

This post is no. 20 in a very occasional series, "How to improve writing," dedicated to improving stray bits of published prose.

[Definition of -graphic from Merriam-Webster Online.]

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How to improve writing (no. 49)

One way to improve writing: when you’re composing a bulk e-mail, never forget that you’re composing a bulk e-mail. Here’s the start of a bulk mailing from my union:



An improvement:



Dropping Arial and boldface and the unnecessary first and would like to would also improve things. This e-mail’s first sentence might require all of six words: A Happy New Year to you. I think capitals are better with this wish.

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[It may have been possible to address Walt Whitman as “each and every one of you.” He was large and contained multitudes. This post is no. 49 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 29)

From a form for setting up automatic payments:

By signing below, you authorize Verizon Wireless to electronically debit your bank account each month for the total balance due on your account. The check you send will be used to setup Automatic Payment. You will be notified each month of the date and amount of the debit 10 days in advance of the payment. I understand and accept these terms. This agreement does not alter the terms of your existing Customer Agreement. I agree that Verizon Wireless is not liable for erroneous bill statements or incorrect debits to my account. To withdraw your authorization you must call Verizon Wireless. Check with your bank for any charges.

This passage is a mess, in ways both small and large.

Small: setup should be two words. And it’s the information on the check that will be used in setting up automatic payments.

Large: the sentences are a jumble, and there’s that bewildering shift from you to I (and to you to I to you again). I want to ask: Who’s responsible for this shift? Whoever wrote these sentences needs to cut this shift out. I’m tired of this shift. I really am.

An improved version:

By signing below, you authorize Verizon Wireless to electronically debit your bank account each month for the total balance due on your Verizon account. The information on your check will be used to set up automatic payments. You will be notified each month of the date and amount of the debit 10 days in advance of the payment. To end automatic payments, you must call Verizon Wireless. Check with your bank for any charges.

Verizon Wireless is not liable for erroneous bill statements or incorrect debits to your account.

Your signature below means that you understand and accept these terms. This agreement does not alter the terms of your existing Customer Agreement.

I’ve corrected the problems with setup and the missing information, added Verizon (to distinguish Verizon account from bank account) and a comma, and changed “withdraw your authorization” to “end automatic payments.” And I’ve dropped the capitals from Automatic Payment. (Note that bank account and payment are already fine without caps.) Customer Agreement probably needs its capitals for legal reasons.

More importantly, I’ve reorganized the jumble of sentences into three paragraphs: an explanation of how automatic payments work; a disclaimer; and “Yes, I get it,” followed by the relevant disclaimer.

What follows the above passage is one more sentence in need of repair: “Sign name in box below, as shown on the bill and date.”

If anyone from Verizon happens to be visiting: this work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License. No commercial use without my permission.

[This post is no. 29 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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How to improve writing (no. 71)

From an appreciation of a poet:

[O]f course the codex form was a primary affinity, as all of his work and life indicates.

This partial sentence made me stop and want to improve it. Notice the inflated diction: “the codex form,” “a primary affinity.” I’ve used the word codex when teaching about ancient texts. It’s a fine word. But there’s no question here of preferring codices to scrolls. As for “a primary affinity,” notice that a form of to be precedes the words, removing any strong sense of agency. The form was an affinity? And a primary not secondary affinity?

And now I think of Richard Lanham’s command in Revising Prose (2007): “Find the action.” And I think of Michael Harvey’s explanation of basic sentence structure in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (2013): “who (or what) does what.” And I realize that “a primary affinity” is not only an instance of inflated diction but a decidedly indirect nominalization. Who did what?

A possible revision:

As his life and work attest, he loved the printed book.

I chose “the printed book” to suggest a love of the object, rather than a love of reading. I think that’s what the writer means to suggest.

Which sentence do you find more convincing?

*

An afterthought: I now realize that it seems odd to think of someone’s life as attesting to that person’s affection for x. I can’t see any difference between, say, “As his life attests, he loved his family” and “He loved his family.” The second sentence clearly implies that the evidence of love is to be found in the content of the person’s life. So a better revision:

As his work attests, he loved the printed book.

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[This post is no. 71 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 39)

In August 2008 I wrote a note to myself with some book-buying advice. It ended like so: “Ask yourself, self, the crucial question: do you need to buy this book, or can you be happy getting it from the library?”

More and more often, I am happy getting it, whatever it is, from the library. So it is with Kenneth Slawenski’s J. D. Salinger: A Life (New York: Random House, 2011), a book I found myself rewriting as I read it. Its language is filled with tiresome phrasing: criticism is scathing; friends are close and personal; royalties are handsome; stories are finely crafted.¹ The words actual and actually, often meaningless intensifiers, appear again and again. Some sentences appeared to have been run through a thesaurus: “The episode scorched Salinger fans, a sensation exacerabated twelve years later when Internet booksellers replayed the feint only to deliver disappointment once again.” And Slawenski’s efforts at lit crit rely upon lengthy paraphrase and reductive symbolism: “The room also symbolizes Franny’s spiritual and emotional state.” “The value of acceptance through faith is symbolized by the character of Muriel’s tiny great-uncle.” No, and no.

Here is a sample paragraph, about a novel that was to be devoted to the Glass family:

In attempting such an ambitious work, Salinger tried to employ the same method that worked for him so well when he had penned The Catcher in the Rye: he sought to construct the new book by sewing together pieces that could also stand on their own as self-contained stories. “Zooey” is a prime example of this method. While his letters leave no doubt that “Zooey” was intended to rest with the new novel upon the book’s completion, the story’s most immediate purpose was to stand alone as a sequel to the story “Franny.”

Here’s my more readable version, which omits reference to ambition (as there’s no explanation of what makes this work so ambitious), drops the slightly pompous penned, avoids the illogic of a stand-alone sequel, and reorders elements of the paragraph to make a more logical point: yes, the story is a sequel to “Franny,” but it was meant to be more:

Like The Catcher in the Rye, the new novel was to be a sequence of self-contained stories. While “Zooey” would first serve as a sequel to the earlier “Franny,” Salinger’s letters leave no doubt that the new story was meant to be part of the novel.

Shame on Random House for not making this book’s prose better. Back to the library.

¹ And then there’s this sentence about Claire Douglas, who became Salinger’s first wife: “At the time Claire could not have suited Salinger better had he crafted her himself.”

[This post is no. 39 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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How to improve writing (no. 38)

I’ve been reading cereal boxes at breakfast since childhood. But it’s only in recent years that I’ve started to edit while eating. Consider this sentence, from a list of “simple things to feel good each day” on a box of Post Shredded Wheat:¹

Show thanks to your local neighborhood by picking up one piece of trash every day.

This sentence invites small- and large-scale rethinking. Small-scale:

Show thanks to your local neighborhood by picking up one piece of trash every day.

But there’s a larger problem: this recommendation makes little sense. If there’s lots of trash to be had, picking up one piece per day hardly seems like an expression of gratitude. If anything, the gesture seems a bit passive-aggressive. Imagine this sort of effort in a different context:

Show thanks to your local spouse by picking up one piece of clothing from the pile on the floor every day.

I think the local spouse would feel that she is being baited.

Here’s a more helpful recommendation:

Care for your neighborhood by picking up trash.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to remove some items from a nearby floor — books, not clothes.

¹ Yes, “simple things to do to feel good each day” makes better sense. But here too there’s a larger problem, because the list includes things to do only occasionally — babysitting a friend’s children, for instance.

[This post is no. 38 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. Post is a cereal offender when it comes to lousy writing.]

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How to improve writing (no. 23 in a series)

David Frauenfelder, whose Breakfast with Pandora is fine reading for anyone interested in language and myth and storytelling, wonders what I would do with the following sentence, from a Los Angeles Times article by Rachel Abramowitz:

Of all the major American artists, [Woody] Allen has experienced one of the cruelest and most violent whipsaws of fortune, of tumbling from audience adulation to mass approbation.

David notes the various problems with this sentence: "preposition abuse," "false genitive," "a terrible mixed metaphor," "and to top it off, a hilarious malapropism at the end."

Preposition abuse: check. Of all . . . , one of . . . of fortune, of tumbling . . . . The repetition is awkward; the final of could be cut with no loss.

False genitive: check. The genetive or possessive case "marks a noun as modifying another noun." "[A]udience adulation" should be "audiences' adulation." (I'm grateful to know the name for this problem, which I correct often in my students' writing.)

A terrible mixed metaphor: check. P.R. Wilkinson's Thesaurus of Traditional English Metaphors (London: Routledge, 2002) defines whipsaw as "A double disadvantage; bad dilemma; something that cuts both ways and is injurious whatever you do [Amer]." Nothing to do with tumbling, and nothing to do with what happened to Allen. The writer may have been thinking of whiplash or backlash, though those tired metaphors too don't go well with "of fortune" or "tumbling."

A hilarious malapropism at the end: check. Approbation is "an act of approving formally or officially." David suggests that the writer was in search of opprobrium: "something that brings disgrace," "public disgrace or ill fame that follows from conduct considered grossly wrong or vicious."

So what to do with the original sentence? I'd revise to give a clearer sense that Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn generated more widespread interest than his movies. I'd also remove the pretension of "major American artists" and the melodrama of "fortune." Reversal of fortune is a trope that applies to, say, Oedipus or Lear. Such reversal follows from choices made with inadequate knowledge, by those who have no way to foresee what will befall them. It's reasonable though to anticipate disapproval when embarking on a relationship with the adopted daughter of one's long-time partner. My sentence:

Once celebrated by critics and fans, Allen is now a figure of scandal even among those who have never seen his films.

[This post is no. 23 in a very occasional series, "How to improve writing," dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. And by the way, I like Woody Allen's films, or most of them.]

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How to improve writing (no. 70)

The page-ninety test was a Ford Madox Ford habit: “turning to page ninety of any edition of an author . . . and then quoting the first paragraph of reasonable length” as a way to gauge a writer’s prose. Here is the first paragraph of reasonable length from page ninety of a recent book about the history of handwriting. “James” is the novelist Henry:

By the 1890s, James began dictating all his novels to a secretary, who typed the author’s words as he said them aloud. At first James found it hard to find such an amanuensis who would understand his words. As he put it, “The young typists are mainly barbarians, and the civilized here are not typists,” he declared, noting that hiring a woman was “an economy” over his previously male secretary.

I see a number of problems:

~ The use of by with began with is an odd way to mark the onset of action. For instance: “By the 1980s, I began to use an Apple computer.” “By the 1980s, I was using” or “In the 1980s, I began using” sounds more natural.

~ “All his novels”: all is unnecessary.

~ There is no difference between saying and saying aloud, and no other way to dictate than by speaking (or using sign language).

~ “James found it hard to find”: awkward repetition.

~ Amanuensis, though a word James favored, looks like an inelegant variation on the word secretary. And there is no difference between an amanuensis and “such an amanuensis.”

~ “As he put it” and “he declared”: putting the one before the quotation and the other after suggests a need for more careful copyediting.

~ “His previously male secretary”: yikes. I’m afraid to ask what happened to the guy.

Here again is the original paragraph and a revised version (which adds another phrase from the letter in which James refers to his new secretary as “an economy”):

Original: By the 1890s, James began dictating all his novels to a secretary, who typed the author’s words as he said them aloud. At first James found it hard to find such an amanuensis who would understand his words. As he put it, “The young typists are mainly barbarians, and the civilized here are not typists,” he declared, noting that hiring a woman was “an economy” over his previously male secretary.

My revision: By the 1890s, James was dictating his novels to a secretary, who typed as James spoke. At first James had difficulty finding someone who could understand his words. “The young typists are mainly barbarians, and the civilized here are not typists,” he complained. James found that hiring a woman to replace a male secretary was both “an improvement” and “an economy.”

The page-ninety test gives a fair representation of this book, which is not especially well written. For instance: “Graphologists had a steady business counseling people before answering marriage proposals as well.” Or: “A recent stylometric analysis of Double Falsehood, a disputed play by William Shakespeare, was proved to be partially the work of the Bard after it was run through computers.” Were graphologists answering marriage proposals as a sideline? Did the analysis turn out to be partly by Shakespeare? Was the play by Shakespeare partly by Shakespeare? Was it the analysis or the play that was run through computers? Whatever.

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Nature and music, a page-ninety test

[This post is no. 70 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 68)

A passage from a piece in the October 10 New Yorker:

But, just five weeks before the election, the race remains close. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them having to do with millennial voters, a demographic that overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama and has shown some allegiance toward Clinton but not much enthusiasm for her.

The phrasing in the second sentence is ponderous: “There are a number of reasons for this,” “one of them having to do with,” “some allegiance toward Clinton but not much enthusiasm for her.” And it’s unnecessary to identify millennial voters as a demographic: the phrase “millennial voters” itself does so. A possible revision:

But with five weeks before the election, the race remains close, for several reasons. One is that millennial voters, who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, have shown far less enthusiasm for Clinton.

The passage shrinks from forty-eight words to thirty-one. One more:

The journalist Jonathan Rauch has noted that candidates typically have fourteen years from the time they are elected to a major public office — the Senate, a governorship — to achieve the Presidency. Beyond that, a sort of expiration date is reached, owing, at least in part, to the fact that the longer one’s résumé the more likely it is that one will be whipsawed by past positions and changing values.

Here, too, the phrasing in the second sentence is ponderous: “a sort of expiration date,” “at least in part, to the fact that.” And I’m not sure that whipsaw works. Merriam-Webster’s definition: “to beset or victimize in two opposite ways at once, by a two-phase operation, or by the collusive action of two opponents.” In the sentence above, a candidate risks being attacked not in two opposite ways but in one way, because her or his past positions are no longer acceptable. A possible revision:

The journalist Jonathan Rauch has noted that candidates typically have fourteen years from the time they are elected to a major public office — the Senate, a governorship — to achieve the Presidency. After fourteen years, it’s a greater challenge, in part because changing values will make it likely that a candidate’s past positions have become difficult to defend.

The second sentence shrinks from thirty-eight words to twenty-six.

An observation I used to share with my students, from Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage (1966):

Wherever we can make twenty-five words do the work of fifty, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish, and by reducing the span of attention required we increase the force of the thought.

My revisions cut by a third — not a half-price sale, but still a pretty deep discount.

I don’t read New Yorker prose (or any prose I’m not editing) looking for things to change: these passages presented themselves to me (or to my bad-sentence radar) as prose in need of repair.

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[This post is no. 68 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 60)

My son Ben thought I would like writing about this first sentence of a Reuters article:

A San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service Uber is an employee, not a contractor, according to a ruling by the California Labor Commission.

I see four problems:

1. The pile of phrasal adjectives. “San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service Uber” has the ungainliness of Hammacher Schlemmer headlines, though Reuters at least uses hyphens.

2. The repetition of -based with different meanings, which is at least slightly jarring. A driver may be based in a city, but the service isn’t based in a phone.

3. The lack of agency. Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing suggests a crucial question to ask about a sentence: Who did what? Here the action — that a commission ruled — is buried in a phrase at the sentence’s end.

4. Too much material for a single sentence. The overloaded opening sentence is a symptom of journalese. (See also this post.)

My attempt at improvement:

The California Labor Commission ruled today that Uber driver Barbara Ann Berwick is an employee, not a contractor. Uber, a San Francisco-based company, markets a mobile app that allows users to arrange for transportation with drivers.

Some news stories describe the ruling as applying to all drivers. But it applies only to Berwick. Adding her name adds clarity. I’m not happy about “San Francisco-based.” I’d prefer “a San Francisco company,” but that phrasing might suggest that Uber is a local business. “San Francisco-based” at least beats “headquartered in San Francisco.” I thought it more important to identify Uber (rather than Berwick) as based in San Francisco. The driver’s location could come in later in the story.

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[This post is no. 60 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 32)

In August 2008, I wrote myself a note re: bookbuying:

When you learn of new non-fiction that addresses matters of culture, education, language, or technology, wait. Read a sample online or in a bookstore. Consider whether you’re willing to take on several hundred pages of the writer’s prose. Look at Amazon reviews (which are occasionally far more discerning than those found in traditional media). And ask yourself, self, the crucial question: do you need to buy this book, or can you be happy getting it from the library?

Thus I borrowed Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus’s Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — And What We Can Do About It (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2010). That ungainly subtitle suggests the quality of the prose within. Here is a sample paragraph, introducing descriptions of ten colleges that Hacker and Dreifus “like”:

Frankly, in a system this vast and varied, there are good people and good schools everywhere; the trick is to find them. What follows are a few places that caught our attention. The list isn’t comprehensive, but rather focuses on a few good colleges that strike the right balance. Some of the things the schools we liked had in common: they are student-centered, rather than driven by the whims of the faculty or by administrators’ ambitions. We liked schools led by idealists, the only kind of leaders with the courage to buck the conformity that cripples most corners of contemporary higher education. We were drawn to schools that had good core values, for want of a better term, which were genuinely adhered to. Most of all, we preferred schools that actively tried to keep fees low — or free. Confined by financial limitations, their leaders could keep their eyes on what really mattered, which is always the students. At the end of the day, any school must be about putting the “higher” back into education.

I see many problems here.

Frankly: like personally, it’s usually meaningless when prefacing a statement. And personally, I’ve disliked frankly since 1977, when I was interning at a publishing house and an editor told me, frankly, just what he was willing to pay me to do some part-time copywriting.

“[G]ood people and good schools”: the trick here though is to find the schools, not good professors scattered here and there.

“What follows are”: a clumsy juxtaposition of singular and plural. Singular and plural forms pose a strangely persistent problem in this book:

Kenyon is often the fallback choice when Jennifer or Jeremy fail to get fat envelopes from Dartmouth or Brown.

They are freed from committee chores and can keep their offices, although they may share it with a visitor during their off-semesters.

“The list isn’t comprehensive”: unneccesarily repetitious, as the preceding sentence refers to “a few places.”

“Some of the things”: the sentence goes on to state only one thing the schools have in common.

“[T]he conformity that cripples most corners”: a ghastly metaphor. What’s more, this sentence creates a deep contradiction in the paragraph: if “most corners of contemporary higher education” are crippled, how can it be that good schools are “everywhere”?

“[F]or want of a better term”: what’s wrong with “core values”?

“[V]alues . . . which were genuinely adhered to”: an awkward use of the passive voice, and another unnecessary adverb. But also: just as there is no difference between genuinely adhering to values and adhering to them, there is also no difference between having values and adhering to them. One’s values are those one adheres to.

“[W]e preferred schools that actively tried to keep fees low — or free”: actively seems meaningless here. (Can one try inactively?) And fees cannot be free. Notice too the shifts between the present and past that have begun to turn up in the paragraph. As the descriptions of colleges that will follow are meant to be current, the present tense, stating what is the case, would be appropriate.

“At the end of the day”: sigh.

“[A]ny school must be about putting the ‘higher’ back into education:” more precisely, putting the higher back into higher education.

Here’s my revised version, shrinking the paragraph from 175 to 94 words:

In a system this vast and varied, there are many good schools; the trick is to find them. Here we present a handful, all of them serving students, not faculty whims or administrative ambition. Idealists lead these schools, men and women courageous enough to resist the conformity that cripples much of contemporary higher education. We have chosen schools that adhere to good core values, and we give preference to schools that keep fees low — or eliminate them. Working with limited funds, focusing on students, these schools are putting the “higher” back into higher education.

What about the argument of the book? Hacker and Dreifus’s survey of higher ed is largely anecdotal, in the manner of an article in Newsweek or Time. There’s one story of professorial laziness (with a student using the notes that her mother took when she was a student) that’s almost certainly apocryphal. The depiction of pampered faculty working a handful of hours per week bears no relation to academic life as it’s lived in what profs sometimes call “the trenches.” And the book’s contradictions bespeak incoherence. Faculty research is a bad idea, Hacker and Dreifus say, but they make an exception for Arizona State, which they praise as a “research powerhouse.” And while Hacker and Dreifus acknowledge both the exploitation of contingent faculty and correlations between contingent instruction and student failure, they praise a community college where, as they acknowledge, 75% of faculty are part-time, without offices or even desks. Students in the know, they say, “plan their programs around full-time professors.” That’s core values for you.

For a far more perceptive and persuasive analysis of problems in American higher education, I’d recommend Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works.

[This post is no. 32 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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How to improve writing (no. 25)

From a book on design, a sentence about the look of a royal spouse’s “consort throne”:

It was gilded to look as if it were made of gold, the metal that is still the universal signifier of durability and status in almost every culture.

One way to improve this sentence: trust the reader to know what gilded means.

A second: clear up the inconsistency of “universal” and “almost every.”

A third: find a precise alternative to durability. That word might be associated with, say, long-wearing fabrics. But gold doesn’t resist wear; it doesn’t wear.

A fourth: rethink status. Yes, status does mean “high rank,” but I’d rather see the word with a modifier, for the same reason that I’m opposed to “quality” education.

A better sentence:

It was gilded, as gold still signifies high status and abiding value in almost every culture.

I’ve omitted the names of writer and book: neither should be judged by a single sentence. But many sentences in this book are in need of revision: cuts, breaks, rearrangement of parts, and plain old correction (of subject-verb disagreement, for instance). It makes sense that there is no note of thanks to an editor. W.W. Norton & Company, you’re slipping.

The moral of the story: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. And many more are to be borrowed from the library. Try before you buy.

[This post is no. 25 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. With apologies to Francis Bacon.]

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