The hard part of writing, part the umpteenth

I’ve been allowing my day job and other things to interfere with this website, and the English language has been falling apart around me while I have been slacking off. As if this humble site makes a difference, but I do like to think that the tender souls who read this site improve their writing as a consequence, and I’ve been sadly negligent. Please accept my humblest apologies. If it’s any comfort, I regularly flag errors I see, so I have a nice supply of topics in store for you. Look for one every other day, for a while, at least.

What’s the hard part of writing? It’s knowing what to do when a sentence is grammatical, but it’s still not right. The hard part is making it right. First a little back story: Last weekend I attended the Annapolis Boat Show, sailboat edition (next weekend is power boats),  to take some photographs for a friend who couldn’t be there. I shelled out $17 to get in, so I spent some time (seven hours) cruising around the walkways picking up samples and asking a lot of questions. I caught a bit of the sailing bug, and could consume several pages describing my adventures at the show, but I’ll save most of that for my travel blog, Travel with me. One thing I picked up was a copy of the magazine Living Aboard. I plan to read it cover to cover, including the ads. But it needs a proofreader! Someone like me, maybe. Here’s the sentence I want you to look at. It’s in an article about buying a used boat.

While this should not come as a real surprise to anyone I think it is fair to safely conclude that those with the financial means still prefer quality and are willing to pay for it.

Okay, first let’s fix the punctuation. Comma after “anyone.” (Separate a subordinate clause from the rest of the sentence with a comma, but you knew that, right?) That’s minor. So now we have a perfectly grammatical sentence, but it’s wrong:

While this should not come as a real surprise to anyone, I think it is fair to safely conclude that those with the financial means still prefer quality and are willing to pay for it.

Do you see what’s wrong? It’s the phrase “fair to safely conclude.” It contains a redundancy. Take out “fair” or “safely” so you have “fair to conclude” or “safe to conclude.” The writer needs only one to make his point.

I’m not done chopping up this sentence yet. Look at that introductory subordinate clause. “While” means “during the time of.” I don’t think he means that. What does “this” refer to? The fact that he comes to a conclusion? The fact that people with money prefer quality? How about “real”? Can you have a false surprise? Perhaps I’m being picky—he could have put “real” in there for effect, but the word is not necessary. But now for the final question. By saying it’s not a surprise, he’s saying that the following is a plain fact. Why not just state the fact and let it go at that? Delete the whole subordinate clause and you end up with a nice, tight conclusion to the paragraph.

Here’s some of the context, and I’ll supply the rewritten sentence at the end:

…these [higher-priced] boats were holding their asking prices very well and the sellers did not appear to be willing to give up the boats. These boats were in contrast to the lesser quality boats…which were taking large hits. I conclude that people with the financial means still prefer quality, and are willing to pay for it.

Nice and tight, like a good ship’s rigging. In conclusion, here’s what I imagine owning some day:

Perfect for cruising around the Caribbean. Click the picture two times to see it correctly.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

Two nouns and two verbs. You should avoid these four words whenever you can. That’s hard, sometimes, because you have to—(see the last word in this post).

Any form of “to be,” “to do,” thing,” and “stuff.”

These words can substitute for about anything. Because they are so versatile, they don’t mean much themselves, so don’t use them to substitute for the word you mean.

Here’s a recent 911 call in Southern Indiana: “Got a man with a knife who’s doing things.”  A 911 call, and a knife. And all we get is “doing things”? Give me more!

The police were more articulate, and I use them as an example of good writing: “ [he] used a hunting knife to cut through meat packages, throwing open containers of raw beef on the floor. He then poured dog food over some of the meat in hopes of contaminating it…” That tells you what’s going on.

What are your favorite meaningless words? Add yours to these four in the comments.

So. Whenever you find yourself about to use one (or more) of those meaningless words, don’t. Use the real words, words that describe what’s happening. The last word: Think.

A large portion of the advice on this humble site has been fairly straightforward, examples of the use and misuse of easy-to-understand rules that can be followed more or less mechanically. Sometimes, though, you have to actually think about what you’re writing. No rule but the meaning.

So here’s the rule: Be sure you say what you mean.

I have a couple examples of how to get this wrong. These are all examples of real writing, gleaned from various sources, online and off.

The impressive lobby features doric columns leading to an elegant wooden staircase of fine oak joinery which is almost unique in Ireland.

Let’s look at the issue of “almost” unique. Unique means one of a kind. You can’t be almost one of a kind—you are or you aren’t.

We have another problem with this sentence. Exactly what does Ireland have so few of? Columns that lead to elegant staircases? The staircases themselves? The oak joinery? Or perhaps a combination of these? Adjective clauses such as this one (“which is almost unique…”), which has a choice of candidates to modify, can be tricky if you want to be unambiguous.

How would you recast the sentence? Tell us in the comments.

Another example of the need to think when you write next time.

Not just any old plurals, either. You know all about ordinary plurals. Several words tend to trip up the educated (read pretentious), especially those in the upper echelons of business.

Incident—an event, especially if it’s remarkable in some way. This word takes a perfectly ordinary plural: “incidents.” Do not burden your listener (or reader) with the Latinized and incorrect “incidences.”

Process—another one the boss lies to Latinize. The plural is perfectly ordinary: processes (‘pra-sess-uz), not procesese, or procesees (pra-sess-‘eeze), or however you spell it.

Phenomena— This is the plural! The singular is “phenomenon.”

Data—neither a robot nor a singular. The singular is datum. This distinction is disappearing, and you see it mainly in scientific literature, but figure on maintaining the distinction in any context where you need to refer to a single datum.

Some words tell you whether to use the singular or plural. “Every,” for example, always refers to a singular. I found this one in the wild: “…has crossed every t’s and dotted every i’s…” I leave the fixing of that one as an exercise for the reader.

Got any pet peeve plurals of your own? Do the curmudgeonly thing and comment.

P.S. The title of this post is an expression used in purchasing departments, referring to the purchase of small numbers of items rather than large lots.

A lot of times we write about two things at once. That’s why we have “and.” Here’s a little trick that will make your writing more logical when you write about two things.

When you have two of something, they should be of the same grammatical type. We call this parallelism.

Here’s an example of how not to do it. The sentence below has three pairs, and one of them is wrong. Can you spot all three and identify the wrong one?

“Injuries and illness bring pain and suffering, as well as causing economic loss to the company.”

…

Got it? The two pairs of nouns are easy to spot. Injuries and illness, pain and suffering. We also have a pair of verbs, but one is an indicative (bring), and the other is a present participle (causing)! The horror! Writers miss this because they want to sound sophisticated by not using plain old “and,” but but the big, long, cumbersome, usually unnecessary “as well as.” Put “and” in there and suddenly “causing” is obviously wrong. It should be “cause.” Now the two verbs are parallel.  Here’s the improved sentence, nice and clean:

“Injuries and illness bring pain and suffering, and cause economic loss to the company.”

Don’t injure your writing by messing up your parallelism. Got any examples of your own? Share in the comments.