The World in Words

I just discovered a worthwhile podcast from Public Radio International’s The World: The World in Words. The most recent episode: How to Fake an Accent and Get Away With It.

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.

Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)
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.]

William Zinsser, listening

“People read with their ears, whether they know it or not”: William Zinsser, now blind, coaches writers by listening to them read their work.

On Duke Ellington’s birthday

From Richard O. Boyer’s three-part profile “The Hot Bach” (New Yorker, July 1, 1944). Ellington is talking to fans on a train and has turned to the subject of food:

“I have special places marked for special dishes,” he said. “In Taunton, Massachusetts, you can get the best chicken stew in the United States. For chow mein with pigeon’s blood, I go to Johnny Cann’s Cathay House in San Francisco. I get my crab cakes at Bolton’s — that’s in San Francisco, too. I know a place in Chicago where you get the best barbecued ribs west of Cleveland and the best shrimp Creole outside New Orleans. There’s a wonderful place in Memphis, too, for barbecued ribs. I get my Chinnook salmon in Portland, Oregon. In Toronto I get duck orange, and the best fried chicken in the world is in Louisville, Kentucky. I get myself a half-dozen chickens and a gallon jar of potato salad, so I can feed the sea gulls. You know, the guys who reach over your shoulder. There’s a place in Chicago, the Southway Hotel, that’s got the best cinnamon rolls and the best filet mignon in the world. Then there’s Ivy Anderson’s chicken shack in Los Angeles, where they have hot biscuits with honey and very fine chicken-liver omelets. In New Orleans there’s gumbo filé. I like it so well that I always take a pail of it out with me when I leave. In New York I send over to the Turf Restaurants at Forty-ninth and Broadway a couple of times a week to get their broiled lamb chops. I guess I’m a little freakish with lamb chops. I prefer to eat them in the dressing room, where I have plenty of room and can really let myself go. In Washington, at Harrison’s, they have devilled crab and Virginia ham. They’re terrific things. On the Ile-de-France, when we went to Europe, they had the best crêpes Suzette in the world and it took a dozen at a time to satisfy me. The Café Royale, in the Hague, has the best hors d’oeuvres in the world — eighty-five different kinds, and it takes a long time to eat some of each. There's a place on West Forty-ninth Street in New York that has wonderful curried food and a wonderful chutney. There’s a place in Paris that has the best octopus soup. And oh, my, the smörgåsbord in Sweden! At Old Orchard Beach, Maine, I got the reputation of eating more hot dogs than any man in America. A Mrs. Wagner there makes a toasted bun that’s the best of its kind in America. She has a toasted bun, then a slice of onion, then a hamburger, then a tomato, then melted cheese, then another hamburger, then a slice of onion, more cheese, more tomato, and then the other side of the button. Her hotdogs have two dogs to a bun. I ate thirty-two one night. She has very fine baked beans. When I eat with Mrs. Wagner, I begin with ham and eggs for an appetizer, then the baked beans, then fried chicken, then a steak — her steaks are two inches thick — and then a dessert of applesauce, ice cream, chocolate cake, and custard, mixed with rich, yellow country cream. I like veal with an egg on it. Monseigneur’s, in London, has very fine mutton. Durgin-Park’s, in Boston, has very fine roast beef. I get the best baked ham, cabbage, and cornbread at a little place near Biloxi. St. Petersburg, Florida, has the best fried fish. It's just a little shack, but they can sure fry fish. I really hurt myself when I go there.”

Duke’s audience seemed awed at his recital, and he looked rather impressed himself. “Gee,” he said admiringly, “I really sent myself on that didn’t I?”

Duke Ellington’s music has been making my life better for more than thirty-five years. For an introduction, I recommend The Great Paris Concert. If you’d like to browse other Ellington posts, they’re listed at Pinboard.

[Boyer’s profile is reprinted in The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).]

The irregular restrictive what ?

John McPhee’s “Draft No. 4” (in the April 29 New Yorker) has a passage that puzzled me, about “the irregular restrictive which ” (italics mine), a term that McPhee learned from the New Yorker editor William Shawn, who “explained that under certain unusual and special circumstances the word ‘which’ could be employed at the head of a restrictive clause.” In other words, which can sometimes substitute for that .

Which in fact often substitutes for that ; there is no absolute rule that that divides their use. Many writers, however, prefer to reserve that for restrictive clauses, which for nonrestrictive. The distinction brings a small (very small) element of consistency to writing:

There are three magazines on the table. I want to read the magazine that arrived today.

[That introduces a restrictive clause: “that arrived today” identifies magazine .]

There are two pieces of junk mail and a magazine on the table. I want to read the magazine, which arrived today.

[Which introduces a nonrestrictive clause: “which arrived today” is not needed to identify magazine .]

McPhee explains that “the irregular restrictive which ” is reserved for sentences in which “words or phrases lie between the specific object and the clause that proves its specificity.” The term “irregular restrictive which ” seems to be a Shawn (or Harold Ross?) creation: the only evidence for it that I can find is McPhee’s essay.¹ This use of which , however, goes back at least as far as H. W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926), where it is explained in the entry “That, relative pronoun.” Fowler’s defining and non-defining are the equivalents of restrictive and nonrestrictive :

Each that -clause is, or at least may be meant as, defining; but between each & the actual noun of the antecedent . . . intervenes a clause or phrase that would suffice by itself for identification. In such circumstances a that-clause, though correct, is often felt to be queer, & it is usually possible, though by no means necessary, to regarded it as non-defining & change that to which .

McPhee gives three examples from his recent writing of “the irregular restrictive which .” Here is one:

In 1822, the Belgian stratigrapher J. J. d’Omalius d’Halloy, working for the French government, put a name on the chalk of Europe which would come to represent an ungainly share of geologic time.

Try it the other way:

In 1822, the Belgian stratigrapher J. J. d’Omalius d’Halloy, working for the French government, put a name on the chalk of Europe that would come to represent an ungainly share of geologic time.

I find it hard to see any difference: name seems the obvious antedecent each time. McPhee’s other examples leave me just as confused.

But I found a way out of my muddle by consulting Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009). In the entry "Remote relatives," Bryan Garner addresses “the exceptional which”, his name for what Shawn called “the irregular restrictive which.” Garner presents this use of which as an attempt to avoid ambiguity:

Garner’s final four sentences are a model of clear reasoning about usage. Now I know that I need not spend another second thinking about “the irregular restrictive which.” Clarity!

*

11:21 a.m.: Not done yet. The New Yorker ’s Eleanor Gould credited William Shawn:

[Quoted in Barbara Wallraff’s Word Court (2000). The sentence in question referred to “a dispute about language which they would like this column to resolve.”]

¹ Harold Ross, who founded the New Yorker, was a Modern English Usage devotee. From a 1949 letter to Kay Boyle:

We think ourselves into knots over style things around here, although we’ve long since cracked most problems. We’re having one now on when to use which and when to use that that is a little gem. Fowler, in Modern English Usage, differentiates between them and, somehow or other — I don’t know how, so help me — we got to following him in the editing of all house (or unsigned) stuff and then in practically all fact stuff (the writers are around the office and can be talked to from hour to hour), and then in more or less all the fiction, most of the writers falling into line.

Notice that Ross doesn’t use “the irregular restrictive which ”:

We’re having one now on when to use which and when to use that that is a little gem.

The logic of “the irregular restrictive which ” would have the sentence read:

We’re having one now on when to use which and when to use that which is a little gem.

I found this letter quoted in John Updike’s More Matter: Essays and Criticism (2009).

[I wonder: does “exceptionally well-edited” mean persnickety ?]

Draft, draft, draft, draft

In the April 29 New Yorker, John McPhee writes about writing and revision in “Draft No. 4”:

After reading the second draft aloud, and going through the piece for the third time (removing the tin horns and radio static that I heard while reading), I enclose things in boxes for Draft No. 4. If I enjoy anything in this process it is Draft No. 4. I go searching for replacements for the words in the boxes. The final adjustments may be small-scale, but they are large to me, and I love addressing them.

No link: the piece is online for subscribers only.

Recently updated

Elvis pretzels Now with a photograph of Elvis Lamanna, the Elvis pretzel man.

Studying for finals

[Yorick and friend.]

Unscrewing the top of your head and pouring in information doesn’t work that well: the tidying up is terrible. Better strategies in this post: How to do well on a final exam.

In some corners of the world, final examinations are already in the near near future.

[“A young boy studying the human skull.” Photograph by Nina Leen. New York, New York, 1948. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Oscar’s Day today

I think that Geo-B and I are living parallel lives today, even if his cup holds coffee, not tea: Oscars’s Day No. 249.

6:24

I snoozed this morning in eight-minute increments all the way to 6:24. It felt pretty transgressive.

And so I’m a little late getting to the rest of Thursday. See you tomorrow.