How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoidthem (17 page)
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Authors: Ben Yagoda
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Writing
Going through the other parts of speech, you will never (except for stunts) end a sentence with an article or conjunction. Adverbs can work when it’s the adverb you’re stressing:
He played relentlessly and well.
That leaves prepositions. In the last chapter, I said it’s not in fact true that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition. However, you normally shouldn’t, because prepositions are so often weak that you could make the case they are inherently so. Consider:
[
Abernathy lives in the neighborhood the cougar was found in.
]
Yuck—and note the repetition of
in.
The fix that will usually first come to mind involves the word
which,
which leads in this case to:
[
Abernathy lives in the neighborhood in which the cougar was found.
]
That’s not so good, either. It’s wordy, and pretty obvious you’re trying to avoid a preposition at the end. The way to go here is to flip things around:
The cougar was found in Abernathy’s neighborhood.
To be sure, prepositions can work as endings. You just have to take each sentence on its merits.
What in God’s name are you talking about?
I wish those cougars would go back where they came from.
Don’t come in.
4.
LENGTHY IS DESIRABLE
SHORT IS GOOD (II)
Early in this part, I talked about using the shortest word that expresses your meaning and used a passage from
The Elements of Style
to illustrate the point. The same is true of sentences. Here is a famous passage from the original edition of the book, published as a pamphlet by William Strunk in 1918, in which Strunk explains what he means by the motto “Omit needless words”:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
Frankly, I am not so wild about Strunk’s use of the words
unnecessary
and
needless.
They wrongly imply, it seems to me, that there is one right way to express any particular thought, and that the way to achieve it is just to pare away all extraneous words until you get there. But I get what he means and I certainly concur with the sentiment “Vigorous [or “not-bad”] writing is concise.” I like his acknowledgment that a good long sentence can be very cool. And I love his use of the old-fashioned verb
tell
(in the old-fashioned subjunctive voice, no less). In a not-bad sentence, every word is serving a purpose. You should be able to identify what that purpose is. A good deal of revision involves going over your sentences and identifying words that
aren’t
serving a purpose and, as Strunk would say, omitting them.
Writing concisely is both selfish and generous. It’s generous because it contains an implicit acknowledgment that the reader’s time is valuable and that you do not intend to waste it. It’s selfish because, compared to verbosity, it is a much more effective way to get your point across.
Admittedly, it takes a good deal of time and effort to achieve. It’s much easier to write long than to write short. You could call it the Dickens Fallacy: somehow, we all seem to have an ingrained sense
that we’re being paid by the word. Once you get that excessive sentence down, then examining it for those needless words is laborious in itself. And when you’ve spotted them, you generally can’t just pluck them out and be done with it; the sentence has to be reshaped. But all this has always been the case.
Below are some pieces of verbosity from students’ work, with edits.
[
The book compiles fifty-two pieces of work from forty-five different writers each and every one of whom has a special connection to the tiny state of Delaware.
]
The book has fifty-two pieces of work from forty-five writers, each with a Delaware connection.
[
Cromartie hopes students leave the presentations with a better appreciation and understanding of the people of Uganda, the strife they are living with daily and the impoverished conditions from which they are trying to rise above through the education of children and vocational training for adults.
]
Cromartie said he hoped students would leave the presentations with a better understanding of both the people of Uganda and the efforts they’re making to improve the terrible conditions there.
[
City council members expressed inspections are to insure the healthy living environments residing within rental
properties as well as to protect the city from future incidents.
]
That one combines wordiness with vagueness. It’s missing information, and I have used my poetic license to provide it.
Two city council members made the point that inspections are important, both to promote the health of residents and to protect the city from lawsuits.
[
In an age that could not have even anticipated news being spread via the Internet, broadcast journalism took the media world by storm and allowed reporters to pledge their allegiance through trustworthy pieces aimed to satisfy the public interest.
]
In the 1950s and ’60s, broadcast journalism became more popular and effective.
[
Not only do journalists possess an undying passion to uncover and showcase relevant information to enhance the public’s knowledge on current events, but exhibit a willingness to go to great lengths to obtain stories fit to print.
]
The best journalists are passionate about their work and indefatigable in tracking down stories.
5.
THE PERILS OF AMBIGUITY
a. Crash Blossoms
In a
New York Times Magazine
“On Language” column in 2010, Ben Zimmer described how Mike O’Connell, an American editor based in Japan, was bemused by an article in a local newspaper about the successful musical career of a young musician whose father had died in a 1985 Japan Airlines plane crash. Specifically, he was bothered by the headline—VIOLINIST LINKED TO JAL CRASH BLOSSOMS—which made him wonder, “What’s a crash blossom?” O’Connell and another editor, Dan Bloom, thereupon coined
Crash Blossoms
as a term for such vexingly ambiguous headlines. Zimmer listed some prime examples:
[MCDONALD’S FRIES THE HOLY GRAIL FOR POTATO FARMERS]
[BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS]
[GATOR ATTACKS PUZZLE EXPERTS]
And two all-time greats, used by the
Columbia Journalism Review
for its collections of misleading headlines:
[SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM]
[RED TAPE HOLDS UP NEW BRIDGE]
The classic Crash Blossom is born out of the compression demanded by headlines, and the confusion can often be eliminated by adding missing words or changing the verb from present tense to something more appropriate:
MCDONALD’S FRIES ARE THE HOLY GRAIL…
THE BRITISH LEFT IS WAFFLING…
ALLIGATOR ATTACKS ARE PUZZLING EXPERTS
b. If Only English Were German
But Crash Blossoms are not limited to headlines. The English language has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and once a sentence gets beyond a “See Dick run” level of complexity, the ordering of the elements within it takes on a crucial strategic importance. As E. B. White observed, sometimes trying to cogently set down a thought requires “sheer luck, like getting across the street.” Certainly, ambiguity is a frequent problem in my students’ prose. Below, some of their sentences are grammatically correct but ambiguous if not misleading because of the way the elements of the sentence are ordered; snarky (mis)interpretations follow.
1.
[
I went back to visit the house I grew up in last week.
]
Growing up in a week is a pretty neat trick.
2.
[
Ashley finished painting the new garage door that she put up yesterday this morning.
]
Wait, did she put up the door yesterday or this morning?
3.
[
Gannett is sponsoring a panel about blogging in the Perkins Auditorium.
]
What about blogging
outside
the Perkins Auditorium?
4.
[
Lincoln University has dropped its controversial three-year-old requirement that students must take an exercise class with a Body Mass Index greater than 30.
]
Weird-sounding class.
5.
[
We saw the film that won the Oscar and went home.
]
And where exactly does the film live?
6. [
[Bert] Blyleven…a wily veteran with a wicked curveball who was finishing a twenty-two-year career with the California Angels.
]
That’s some career for a curveball. (The above quote was taken from the
New York Times
).
7. [
I smile to see my Christmas stocking still hanging on the fireplace, and smell a savory, homemade ravioli dinner escaping the kitchen stove.
]
I hope you didn’t have cleanup duties that night. Ravioli can be messy.
8.
[
She has on authentic Native American moccasins made directly from Navajo women.
]
Ouch.
9.
[
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
]
How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know. (The above quote and rejoinder were both uttered by Groucho Marx in the film
Animal Crackers,
written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind.)
As the Groucho quote indicates, verbal ambiguity is at the root of a lot of humor, some of it funny and some not very. But if you’re just trying to get your point across, this is a problem. Fortunately, in most cases, the problem can be addressed and resolved simply by reading aloud, or, more generally, mindfulness. 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. Eventually, you’ll come up with more than one reasonable and pleasing alternative, from which you can choose the one you like best.