A comic by a curmudgeon

The curmudgeon isn’t me, either. A colleague from work texted me the link to this graphic. Looks like it’s from a Canadian who is acting decidedly un-Canadian, but he’s right on the money when it comes to content.

It looks like the link in the comic doesn’t work. Try angryflower.com for the site (big white labels are links to comics), and angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif for the comic.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

Most of the time The Writing Rag is about expository writing—writing to communicate information in a manner that causes the least amount of effort for your readers. One of my rules of thumb is that if your reader has trouble understanding, the problem is with the writing, not the reader. Business letters, instructions, technical writing, essays, and (in my opinion) good journalism fall into this type of writing.

Other useful kinds of writing exist, whose intent might be to amuse, inspire, motivate (cause action), persuade (cause belief), or cause any number of other effects in a reader. To accomplish these, someone might use poetry, short stories, novels, riddles, essays. You name the genre, the writer has a reason for exposing a reader to it. Obviously some writing formats fit into more than one purpose—blog posts, for example.

For completeness, I should remind you that sometimes the writer is the reader, and the purpose might be to clarify thinking, record events, or express feelings. For these purposes we have notes, journals, diaries.

One kind of writing has the goal of creating a mindset in the reader. This type of writing is the slogan. I am tempted to give a bunch of examples, but I’d rather let you suggest a few of your favorites in the comments.

A famous slogan: Do a good turn daily.

That one was suggested by Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting. I’m not going to tell you how to write an original slogan, but if you have a nicely codified way to write one, please share with all of us in the comments.

Instead, I must cop out. I found a website that creates a slogan for you. Type in something, click the button, and you get a slogan.  Here’s the link. Go play with it. http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi. They even give you a snippet of code so you can put a slogan you like on your website, with a link to their site, of course. Here’s my favorite, so far:

After trying a few, I figured out that they plug your word into a selection of existing slogans, some well-known, and sometimes with amusing results. How about

You’re in the Grammar Generation!

My apologies to that carbonated sugar water.

I suppose that’s one way to create a slogan: Take a popular meme and plug your own words into it. Some of my colleagues told me about the most interesting man in the world recently, mainly because I had never heard of him and I look like his brother. So I’ll offer his meme for a slogan base:

I don’t often write letters to the president, but when I do, I use good grammar.

My third invitation to comment: What can you come up with? Share.

The Oatmeal is a comic I follow, partly because the writer is a grammar curmudgeon, as I am. He also attracts a fair number of like-minded souls who also hate bad grammar, and who aren’t averse to adding the occasional comment. Even though The Oatmeal uses far more profanity than I, he’s correct on a lot of issues, and quite good at explaining grammar. Check out the site.

Recently (I think) he posted a comic called The worst thing about Valentine’s Day. Someone commented using incorrect grammar, and it spawned a series of comments that I thought were worth repeating. I haven’t gotten anyone’s permission to repeat their remarks, so if you are quoted here and don’t like it, let me know, and I’ll remove your portion.

Bobsagetjustcuz22: less long comments, more sexy rumpus

Kannma1717: Fewer long comments.

Paul Nelson Schofield: Less grammar police.

Toasty: *Fewer grammar police, Less grammar *policing.

Corey Danger: If there’s, one thing that, grammar police, hate it’s comma, splices. And sentence. Fragments.

Branrules101: I’m going to need back up for this serious offender.

Mrs. B.: If theres two thing’s that grammar police hate, even more its poor punctuation…. ellipse’s…. apostrophe’s used wrong and incorrect adverb usage.

ostyCollapse: not to mention runon sentences with no capitalization or punctuation or breaks of any kind they just go on and on and on talking about stuff that nobody cares about or can even read let alone discuss intelligently am i right

Can you find all the mistakes?    Happy valentine’s Day to you all.

First, a little linguistics lesson. If you want, you can skip to the last two paragraphs.

These folks haven't discovered the joys of linguistics yet

Hebrew doesn’t have tenses the way English does. Hebrew has aspect. Aspect has to do with whether what the verb describes is over with or not. The perfective aspect translates pretty easily into our simple past (He ran). After all, if an action is over with, it’s in the past, right? And the imperfective aspect goes pretty well with our  present progressive (He is running). (Greek has a past tense called the aorist that has this perfective aspect, equivalent to our simple past; and an imperfective past tense equivalent to our past progressive, “He was running.”) Here are a few examples:

Hebrew: katal—English: he killed. Hebrew: okal (pronounced okayl)—English: he is eating.  Hebrew doesn’t have a way to say “he eats.” (As far as I know, but we translate it that way a lot.)

We have aspect in English, too but we don’t usually call it that—partly, I suppose, because we have some verb forms that don’t quite fit. Some of our verb forms do, though. Our simple past fits into the perfective aspect, too. And the progressive tenses are all imperfective regardless of when they happen. I am running and I was running are both imperfective.

All that to introduce today’s lesson, how to use the past perfect and present perfect tenses, which show both aspects!

The last two paragraphs:

1. The past perfect says that something was done and then ended in the past.

He had entertained thoughts of being the winner until he saw the score.

The trick to using the past perfect is you need to make some indication of when the deed ended, not just when it happened. In this case, it’s the phrase “until he saw the score.” Here’s the rule: if you don’t state or clearly imply when the deed ended, use the simple past. For example, “Yesterday he entertained thoughts of winning.” You’re saying when he did it, but not when he stopped. Simple past. Let’s turn the rule around: If you use the past perfect, indicate when the deed ended.

2. The present perfect means that something began in the past and continues until now.

He has entertained thoughts of winning ever since he began training. Also: Ever since he began training, he has entertained thoughts of winning.

The trick with the present perfect is that you need to indicate when the deed started. In this case, it’s the phrase “ever since he started training.” If you don’t give an indication of when it started, consider rewriting your sentence.

I won’t get into the perfect progressive tenses, which emphasize the imperfective aspect even more. (“He has been entertaining” and “He had been entertaining,” if you’re curious.)

And we’ll save the future perfect for a future post.

Here are three more opportunities to make your writing transparent and readable. The rule here is when you have a choice, use the shorter word. Even if you have all sorts of intellect and can handle big words.

Utilize is pretentious; use is plain. Why force your readers to slog through three syllables when one will do? Someone suggested that “utilize” means to use something for an unintended purpose, such as using a wrench for a hammer. Even then, “utilize” is unnecessary. He utilized a wrench as a hammer. He used a wrench as a hammer. Same difference. Go with “use.”

Do you know the name for this kind of hammer?

Upon is so old fashioned. On does the job nicely. Don’t use “upon” unless you’re deliberately trying to suggest age (for example, “Once upon a time…”). If your goal is to convey the facts, “on” is better. Less distracting. He hit upon an idea, or he hit on a better way. He climbed up upon the chair. Give me a break. He climbed up on the chair. “He climbed onto the chair” is also good.

Using an adverb as an adjective is pretentious. The -ly ending changes many words into adverbs, but don’t do it unless you need an adverb. I got this one from a large corporate newsletter. What better place to find pretentiousness?

Even more importantly, we remain committed to providing a superior customer experience with a focus on delivering what our customers value most.

Oops. I revealed the company responsible for the newsletter.

“Importantly” means in an important manner. But their commitment is actually important (presumably), not merely done in an important manner. So that sentence should start with “Even more important, we remain committed…”

Your goal  is to transfer your ideas to your readers. Don’t distract them with pretentiousisms.