Superfluous words

I remember this lesson from junior high English. Here’s an example of what my English teacher said not to do:

 It’s kind of like going to a showing of The Princess Bride expecting to see a romance film.

Can you believe this movie has been around for 20 years?

“Kind of” and “sort of” were anathema. We were supposed to use “rather.”

This site is mostly about expository writing, the kind of writing you find in technical literature, essays, explanations, instructions; the type of writing in which you explain something. When you explain something, you want to throw as few obstacles as possible into the mental path of your reader. Unnecessary words are obstacles to comprehension—they give your mind something to examine, then reject: two steps when none will do.

In fact, my English teacher didn’t go far enough. “Rather” doesn’t add to the sentence, either. You send the whole message when you write

 It’s like going to a showing of The Princess Bride expecting to see a romance film.

—and it’s less work for your reader.

When your purpose is to explain something, keep an eye open for words that don’t change the meaning if you take them out. Then take them out. Your readers’ minds will thank you.

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(I use “may” in the sense of “permission,” not as a weak version of “might.”)

We all have heard the prohibition: “Never end a sentence with a preposition.”Recently someone commented twice on this blog, both times on the subject of sentence-ending prepositions. I get too few comments to satisfy my narcissistic nature, and this person was kind and alert enough to comment more than once, so I feel the subject merits a fuller discussion. I hope he sees this post. (I think it’s a “he.” The reader uses a pseudonym.)

First, a bit of history. This proscription seems to have descended from English teachers who loved Latin too much. The same folks who said you shouldn’t split an infinitive (to boldly go, for example), which is verboten in Latin. I confess I’ve never studied Latin (Greek and German, yes), but I take it you mustn’t ever end a Latin sentence with a preposition. English belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, and terminal prepositions are fine in German. They are called separable verbs. See the fourth point, below.

Second, a bit of apocrypha. A young aide is said to have corrected Sir Winston Churchill for ending a sentence with a preposition. Sir Winston is said to have replied, “Impertinence, young man, is something up with which I will not put.”

Winnie staring down an aide

Third, a bit of style. A sentence with one o’ them there preposition thingies at the tail end is more casual than a sentence constructed using something such as “with which” or “for whom.” I shall add that formality has its place; but see the rule at the end.

Finally, a bit of grammar. Those prepositions at the end of sentences are used as adverbs. When you see a sentence with a preposition at the end, the preposition goes with the verb; it doesn’t have the feel of missing an object. Take a look at the title of this post. “With” is telling you how.

My conclusion, the rule: Write whatever flows the most smoothly, what your reader will absorb with the least effort and with the least likelihood of misunderstanding. Write so your reader thinks about the content, not the writing.

My thanks again to the person who stimulated this post. If you comment, you might give me something to post about.

This post fits into the category “the hard part of writing.”

Perhaps the most important rule in good writing is to proofread your work. I wrote an article about proofreading a while back, but almost nobody reads it. I think the title isn’t catchy enough. Anyway, I re-read my previous post, and I found something to fix.

Here’s the passage that needs work:

I think maybe, perhaps, the use of “born” instead of “hatched” fits rather well, even in an article that later gives the scientific name of antibiotic-resistant fecal bacteria, especially if you read the entire article.

Think about that last clause, starting with “especially. ” It doesn’t quite fit. The sentence says that the article gives that scientific name especially if you read the entire article. That’s nonsense. The meaning I intended is that you can tell that “born” instead of “hatched” fits rather well if you read etc. So we should move that “especially…” clause closer to the front of the sentence, perhaps after “rather well.” But if you do that, the reference to the scientific name is too far away. I caused the problem by going for a chatty effect (by using “maybe, perhaps) and leaving out the important phrase, “you can tell” after “I think.”

Fecal bacteria are boring little rod shapes. I figured this picture would gross you out more—after all, today is Halloween.

I see two respectable ways to fix this bad sentence.

• Put in “you can tell” and put the “especially…” clause after “tell.”
• Make two sentences: “Read the entire article. I think maybe, perhaps, etc.”
• Leave off that final clause altogether. You probably went and read the entire article already anyway.

(Oops, that’s three. Don’t say I never gave you nuthin.’)

What do you think? Maybe you have a fourth rewrite. Post a comment.

If you haven’t already done so, read the previous post.

Here’s a professionally-written article on a scientific subject. The article is about house flies spreading germs. I’m not going to say the writer is wrong; I’m pointing out that you have a choice when it comes to picking what word to use, and your choice affects the tone of what you write. The farther from the literal truth, the more, well, poetic. Another reason I chose to comment on this article is that it begins with a poem by my favorite Chinese poet, Kobayashi Issa. Here’s some of the first paragraph:

Each day, in each country, a housefly is born. Lots of houseflies really. Houseflies have been being born around us for thousands of years. They are born of what everyone else abandons, corpses, cakes, and excrement.

I considered showing a picture of a house with wings and calling it a metaphorical house fly

Within four sentences, the writer uses “born” three times referring to flies hatching. The whole first paragraph of this Scientific American article about flies spreading contagion is full of imagery. I think maybe, perhaps, the use of “born” instead of “hatched” fits rather well, even in an article that later gives the scientific name of antibiotic-resistant fecal bacteria, especially if you read the entire article. What do you think?

Who was on the other side of Castor’s wall? A rooster. He was hatched.

One of my favorite errors to point out is an unhyphenated compound adjective. A compound adjective is when two words work together to modify a noun, and you need to connect those two words with a hyphen. If you leave out the hyphen, you get the first word modifying the second word, and this can lead to serious ambiguity. I wrote about missing hyphens recently here. Go look at the article—it contains examples. People don’t usually put in the hyphen if they don’t need it, but I found an unnecessary hyphen today. The article is interesting, too, if you like astronomy.

 By blowing a wind prior to exploding, the white dwarf was able to clear out a huge “cavity,” a region of very low-density surrounding the system. The explosion into this cavity was able to expand much faster than it otherwise would have.

You’re reading along, and suddenly you wonder, “a region of low-density what?” That hyphen told you “compound adjective here” so you expected a noun. Maybe you filled in the noun yourself—low-density vacuum. Or perhaps you re-arranged the whole sentence, “…a very low-density region surrounding…” Or maybe you picked the simplest  solution and removed the hyphen—a region of low density.

Perhaps some science writer has been reading this blog and got over-enthusiastic about hyphens. (I flatter myself. I’ve never gotten a comment from a science writer about anything.) Here’s the picture that goes with the article.

Four telescopes teamed up on this one

Oh—one other thing I need to be curmudgeonly about: Don’t write “prior to” when you mean “before.”