How to lay off of Josh Marshall

[Lay off of : in the middle-school and high-school sense. “Hey, lay offa him!”]

As I’ve written before, every time I look at Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more of Josh Marshall’s sentences. It’s true. I’ve written five How to improve writing posts about his sentences — more such posts than I’ve written for any other public writer.

But now that I know that Josh Marshall doesn’t write, I’m going to lay offa him. From a 2022 Marshall post:

Relatively early in my writing career I realized that I write in a way that is different from how most people do it. I don’t actually write. Not precisely. What I do is speak in my head and basically transcribe the sounds. This sometimes leaves funny artifacts in my writing. Like many who write fast and online I have no shortage of missing words or typos, “theirs” that should be “theres” and vice versa. But that’s not what I mean. Sometimes I will actually include words which sound vaguely similar to the intended word but are not homonyms and are totally different words. They just create a similar set of sounds if you run them together in a spoken sentence. Read English sentences they can read like gibberish. but if you speak them quickly aloud the meaning will often be clear.

People will sometimes point out that I’m clearly using transcription software that is screwing up. But in fact I’ve never used transcription software in my life. My brain is just wired in this particular way. There actually is transcribing. But I’m the one doing it.

I have no idea what it means to work in this way. But criticizing the prose that results now feels pointless. I’m gonna lay offa him.

But before I do, I have to point out that their s and there s would be better plural forms. Garner’s Modern English Usage: “The best way to form the plural of a word used as a word is to italicize it and append -s in roman type.” Also, there’s an as missing from the closing sentence of the first paragraph: “Read [as] English sentences.” And the period in the middle of that sentence should be a comma.

I still can’t believe that people pay to read Talking Points Memo.

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How to improve writing (no. 110)

It never fails: or, rather, it always fails. I look at Talking Points Memo and I end up tinkering with one or more sentences from Josh Marshall. I stopped at five:

The fact that one or more of the Supreme Court Justices appear to be venally corrupt in a rather fulsome fashion is a new addition to the story of the early 21st century. But the heart of it remains this: The current corrupt majority wants to wholly remake American law with little attention to precedent or any coherent jurisprudence or theory of interpreting the constitution. They’ve got the power and they’re going to use it. If you don’t like it, too bad. Yet they also want the deference and respect accorded to thoroughly apolitical players guided by restraint and an approach to the work that is more than dressing up their own policy aims with whatever theory serves the needs of the moment.

What I notice:

~ Empty prose additives: “the fact that,” “in a rather fulsome fashion,” “new addition,” “wholly remake,” “deference and respect,” “thoroughly.”

~ Vagueness: “the heart of it remains this,” “apolitical players.” I must have written “Avoid this alone” several thousand times in the margins of students’ essays. I have no idea who the players might be. Persons? Institutions? At any rate, players suggests the opposite of those who are apolitical.

~ An abundance of prepositional phrases: “in a rather fulsome fashion,” “to the story,” “of the early 21st century,” and so on. Chains of prepositional phrases are often a sign of slack writing. (See Richard Lanham’s paramedic method.)

~ Awkwardness: “an approach to the work that is more than dressing up their own policy aims with whatever theory serves the needs of the moment.”

~ Illogic: It makes no sense to speak of corruption of one or more jusitices followed by a claim that a majority of justices are corrupt.

A possible revision:

A corrupt Supreme Court is something new in twenty-first-century America. Yet even as the Court remakes American law with little regard for precedent, jurisprudence, or the Constitution, it insists on being accorded the deference shown to institutions guided by restraint and objectivity.

From 123 words to 44. Is anything missing? Well, yes: an indication of what the institutions guided by restraint and objectivity might be. So perhaps:

A corrupt Supreme Court is something new in twenty-first-century America. Yet even as the Court remakes American law with little regard for precedent, jurisprudence, or the Constitution, it insists on being treated with respect.

From 44 words to 36.

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[This post is no. 110 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. “Empty prose additives” is a lovely phrase I’ve borrowed from Claire Cook’s Line by Line: How to Improve Your Own Writing.]

How to improve writing (no. 108)

As I’ve written in a previous post, “Every time I look at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more sentences.” From an item posted today:

I understand that people are outraged by the Tucker Carlson/Kevin McCarthy video stunt. It’s natural and understandable to react negatively and angrily to liars and traitors. But this is not at all the best or most effective response. The first response is simply mockery. That’s the most logical response and also the most effective.

“Natural and understandable,“ “negatively and angrily,” “the best or most effective,” “most logical and . . . most effective”: it’s like reading the work of a student writer aiming to hit word count.

Improved:

It’s reasonable to be angry about the dishonest, traitorous Tucker Carlson/Kevin McCarthy video stunt. But anger is not an effective response. A better response: mockery.

From fifty-five words to twenty-six. Is anything missing?

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[This post is no. 108 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 98)

As I wrote in no. 75, “Every time I look at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more sentences.” Even the polls need rewriting. To wit:

Hypothetically speaking, would you be in support of or not in support of an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule with regard to legislation involving voting rights?

☐ Would support
☐ Would not support
☐ I’m not sure
☐ Other / No opinion

Do you support an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule in order to pass voting-rights legislation?

☐ Yes
☐ No
☐ Undecided
☐ No opinion

From thirty-eight words to twenty-two. Which question would you prefer to read and answer?

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[This post is no. 98 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 93)

As I wrote in no. 75, “Every time I look at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more sentences.” And so it is today. Here’s a paragraph:

But it’s not the business model of newsletters that brings me to write about them today. It’s the more intangible or elusive qualities that makes them attractive to readers. The apparently viable business model makes them attractive to independent journalists and publications. But none of it would work if there wasn’t demonstrable demand. And that demand very clearly exists.

I noticed the error in agreement first: it’s the more intangible or elusive qualities that make them attractive to readers. But then I kept looking. Here’s an improved version:

It’s not the business model of newsletters that interests me: it’s the qualities that make newsletters attractive to readers. The business model attracts independent journalists and publications. But that model would fail if there weren’t demand among readers — and there is.

From fifty-nine words in five sentences to forty-one words in three, with no loss of meaning. What’s lost is the junk: “brings me to write about them today,” “apparently viable,” “demonstrable demand,” “very clearly exists.” I almost missed “demonstrable demand,” which of course is no different from “demand.”

*

June 27: Here’s further improvement:

It’s not the business model of newsletters that interests me: it’s the qualities that make newsletters attractive to readers. The business model that attracts independent journalists and publications would fail if there weren’t demand among readers — and there is.

Thirty-nine words across two sentences, with no loss of meaning.

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[This post is no. 93 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

How to improve writing (no. 75)

Every time I look at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more sentences. Consider this sentence:

The fact that this taxicab family that is joined at the hip to Michael Cohen and his people is getting into the legal weed business is immaterial to me.

The fact that makes a bad start. The two instances of that don’t help. The three instances of is don’t help. Joined at the hip, his people, weed: all tiresome phrasing. (And his people turns out to refer only to Cohen’s father-in-law.) And the syntactic jumble of Michael Cohen and his people is getting into the legal weed business needs sorting out.

A larger issue: the question of agency in this sentence. Applying Richard Lanham’s command for sentence revision — “Find the action” — makes clear that nothing happens here. All we know is that the fact is immaterial.

A possible revision:

I don’t care that Semyon “Sam” Shtayner, a taxi baron close to Michael Cohen’s father-in-law, is entering the legalized cannabis industry.

Marshall uses the first-person pronoun later in his paragraph, so beginning with I makes sense: I don’t care. . . . But there’s new information. . . . I’ll follow up later. But no one needs to follow up with what Marshall calls “an explainer on what it seems to mean.” What else would an explanation seek to explain?

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[“Find the action”: from Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose (2007). The AP calls Shtayner a taxi mogul; I chose baron in honor of the old Trump pseudonym John Baron (or Barron). This post is no. 75 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]