Style
Kitchen “ins” and “outs”
Thinking about remodeling your kitchen? Whether it be, trash, lighting, style, cabinets, etc., kitchen trends have changed a lot for this year.
Below is a list of kitchen trends decreasing and increasing in popularity, that may be of help to you.
Quality designs for each unit
Trash:
Popular: Recycling and trash can pull outs, trash compactors, and garbage disposal.
Not so popular: Random trash can placement.
Lighting:
Popular: Energy efficent LED lighting
Not so popular: Regular non energy saving light bulbs.
Stovetops:
Popular: Electric or induction stovetops, and also double wall ovens.
Not so popular: Gas stovetops. Warming drawers and single wall ovens are also losing their popularity.
Granite kitchen counters at the Duke.
Freezers/Refrigerators:
Popular: Side by side door and french doors.
Not so popular: Freezer on top refrigerator on bottom models.
Upgrades in Cabinetry:
Popular: Unchilled wine storage
Not so popular: Lazy susans, tall pantries, pull out racks, things like that.
Countertops:
Popular: Low maintenance countertops, quartz and granite are very popular. Marble seems to be gaining popularity as well.
Not so popular: Laminate countertops.
Design/Style:
Popular: Traditional remains number 1. Shaker style is increasing in popularity since last year.
Not so popular: Contemporary style.
Colors:
Popular: Grays, bones, and beige
Not so popular: Off whites, whites, brown tones.
Kitchen finishes:
Popular: Light and dark natural finishes, as well as colored paint finishes.
Not so popular: Glazed, medium natural, painted and distressed finishes.
Cabinetry:
Popular: Maple!
Not so popular: Cherry
Info gotten from the national kitchen and bath association.
Punctuation Toolbox: The Ellipsis (a.k.a. “Dot, Dot, Dot”)
The Poor Ellipsis: Overworked and Misnamed
The ellipsis is one of the most misused punctuation tools. To make matters worse, it is also the most frequently misnamed punctuation symbol. Imagine for a moment that you are the poor ellipsis. First, people force you to do a bunch of jobs that don’t even remotely fit your job description, then they proceed to call you by the wrong name, or they just forget your name altogether.
“Thanks for cleaning out that clogged sewer line; it must have been hard, since you were wearing that tie. Anyway, I really appreciate it, and I look forward to you doing it again next month. Hey–what’s your name again? I can never remember it. How about this: I’ll just call you Sewer Guy in a Tie, since that’s what you look like.”
The poor ellipsis: It must endure this treatment every day. When I speak to friends or students about the ellipsis, I am met with a confused look. I make sure to clarify, and by now I’ve memorized the line:
“Oh, an ellipsis is the three dots or periods you see when someone shows a hesitation in writing. You know: the dot-dot-dot symbol.”
“Oh yeah—I see! I’ve just always called it three dots. Is that the name? Eclipsis? . . .”
“No, it’s the ellipsis. There’s no k sound.”
If only I had a nickel for every time I had this conversation. I would have . . . let me see . . . well, about two dollars. Still, that’s a good many nickels!
So, to begin with, let’s get the name right. It’s not eclipse. (And, please, dear reader, no “Jacob or Edward” jokes.) It’s not three periods. And it’s certainly not dot-dot-dot. It’s the ellipsis. Spread the word.
What the Ellipsis Does (Two Functions)
More important than knowing the name is knowing how to use the ellipsis. Many novice writers overuse this poor punctuation tool, when they should use dashes, commas, parentheses, and even periods. They use it to show a sudden shift in thought (but that should be a dash). They use it to show a short pause (when they should use a comma). They even use it to show the completion of a statement–the very opposite of what an ellipsis represents! (And, for those who don’t know, we show the completion of a statement with the simplest punctuation symbol of them all: the period.)
So, what exactly does the ellipsis do? Essentially, the ellipsis serves two functions:
Ellipsis Function 1: The ellipsis shows a substantial pause of hesitation, one that allows a writer to mimic a hesitation in speech. This hesitation can show uncertainty, irony, humor, and other effects.
A good example is the sentence I wrote a bit earlier:
If only I had a nickel for every time I had this conversation. I would have . . . let me see . . . well, about two dollars. Still, that’s a good many nickels!
The first ellipsis shows that I am rethinking my calculation. The second ellipsis shows that I am hesitating because I do not want to say that the total is two dollars, since that is not a very impressive sum of money. Commas, while they do show pauses, would not show enough of a hesitation to express my uncertainty. Dashes—while they do show spontaneous shifts in thought—would be too sudden and assertive. I need a soft lingering, a moment to beat around the bush. That’s the ellipsis!
Ellipsis Function 2: The ellipsis shows an omission of words, usually within a quotation. It says, “There is more here in the original words I am quoting, but I am leaving those words out to save space, or to cut to the chase on my point. If you want to see all the words used, please feel free to look at the original source (which, of course, I’ve documented for you, since I want you to check out the good stuff I’ve been reading).”
You can also use an ellipsis to show the omission of items from a very long list, when you do not need to name all of the items in the list to get your point across. Just be careful not to manipulate your omissions so as to change the meaning of the original quote. While efficiency and concision are important, stay true to the original writer’s message.
Logically enough, I call this function an ellipsis of omission. It is not a stylistic use of the ellipsis, but one that writers use to stay true to their original texts while saving time and space. Here’s an example of an ellipsis of omission:
First, here is the full text from the quote:
MLK, in his momentous “I Have a Dream” speech, proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
And here is how a writer might omit elements to save space or to get to the point:
MLK, in his momentous “I Have a Dream” speech, proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children . . . will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
See how that works?
Now, what happens if the original quote already has an ellipsis in it? What if the original writing uses, say, a stylistic ellipsis to show a hesitation? How do I show that the ellipsis I add is mine, and not the original writer’s? This causes quite a problem, but the punctuation gods (in their infinite wisdom) solved it easily: I can place brackets around an ellipsis to show that the ellipsis shows an omission and is not part of the original writing. This bracket technique is especially useful when a passage has an ellipsis of hesitation, and the writer who is quoting has a second ellipsis to show an omission.
I should mention here the Bracket Rule of Thumb: Whenever you quote another text and you put something in brackets (whether an ellipsis, a comma, a word, a sentence, or even a single letter), it says, “Hey, this stuff in the brackets is mine–not the original writer’s.” This is the brackets’ function with the ellipsis as well: the brackets show that the ellipsis is that of the person doing the quoting, and not of the original writer. (If you want to learn other ways to use brackets, stay tuned: Brackets are the next punctuation technique we will examine.)
With the Bracket Rule of Thumb in mind, I tend to avoid the bracketed ellipsis in citing popularly known quotes (like MLK’s quote cited above, or the “to boldly go” Star Trek opening), since most readers will recognize missing parts as they are familiar with the quote. Still, if you are a better-safe-than-sorry writer, feel free to use the bracketed ellipsis to show all of your omissions.
Here is an example of a bracketed ellipsis. The following quoted passage comes from the introduction to Richard Lederer and John Shore’s entertaining punctuation handbook, Comma Sense. (I recommend this book if you want to take your punctuation knowledge to the next level, while enjoying a great read.)
Notice that the original ellipsis—the one Lederer and Shore insert to show a stylistic hesitation—is not bracketed, and that my ellipses of omission are bracketed:
Language experts agree that one of the primary reasons people so often associate commas with comas is that computers have somehow driven a wedge between the “Think/Take Care/Don’t Embarrass Your Mother” part of everyone’s brain and the “Freakin’ GO For It, dude!!” part. [. . .] Young people today [. . .] don’t read or write essays. They don’t write letters, or stories, or . . . travelogues. They don’t even write words. They text-message. They text-message a lot. And to say that messages delivered via cell-phone “text” tend to lack punctuation is like saying that yaks tend to be hairy, or that professional basketball players tend to be tall.
Because of the brackets, the reader knows which ellipses are mine, and which belong to Lederer and Shore. (Nifty, huh?)
Next Up: Getting the Ellipsis Right
Unlike most punctuation symbols, the ellipsis is made up of multiple symbols (that is, three periods). This leads to a great deal of confusion regarding how exactly the ellipsis is to be written. Is it always written with three dots, or can there be four–or five? Are the dots written together, or should they have spaces between them? And, how do we deal with an ellipsis that occurs at the end of a sentence–or, worse yet, one that occurs directly beside a comma? Should we write the ellipsis before the comma, or after it?
Are these questions keeping you awake at night? (I hope not.) Well, if they are, stay tuned for the next article! . . .
(And, yes, the way I ended that sentence answers some of those questions, so look carefully and sleep soundly, dear reader.)
Sources Cited
King, Martin Luther. “I Have a Dream.” Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. 28 Aug. 1963. American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches. 10 July. 2010 <http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm>
Lederer, Richard and John Shore. Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005.
Christopher Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, NY. As a community-college specialist, Mr. Altman is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language.
“Punctuation Toolbox” Introduction: Why Writers Need More Than Periods and Question Marks
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation: periods, question marks, and exclamation points. With a bit more consideration, they may think of some mid-sentence punctuation like the comma, and perhaps the semicolon.
If your punctuation toolbox stops there—with periods, commas, and question marks—then I expect that you often struggle to put what you want to say in writing. Consider the first sentence of this article. You may have noticed that I used a colon to introduce that list of the most commonly known punctuation. What if I did not know that function of the colon? (Many everyday Americans and new writing students don’t.) How would I introduce my list?
Well, I might make the most common substitution of using a comma in place of a colon. After all, commas can be used to introduce certain elements in writing, like quotations. If I had used a comma, the sentence would look like this:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation, periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
Ugh. As you may have noticed, the problem with using a comma to introduce this list is that the term, “end punctuation” appears to be the first item in the list when, in fact, it sums up all of the items that follow. That didn’t work.
Other writers, avoiding the comma as the introducing element, may simply choose to put nothing there. Here is the sentence that this let-it-be approach yields:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
Do you see the issue here? Once again, there is confusion with the first item of the list. Now, that first item appears to be something known as “end punctuation periods.” This let-it-be approach didn’t work any better than the comma approach.
I have seen this solution as well, using a semicolon:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation; periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
This is the best solution so far, since it creates a clear-cut break between the category, “end punctuation,” and the list of examples that follows. The problem, though, is that introducing lists is not really a function of the semicolon, and this slight misuse confuses readers. The semicolon—except in very rare cases (which I will discuss in the article on semicolons)—is used to combine two complete sentences. It replaces a period, or a comma-plus-coordinating-conjunction transition. It would not be used to separate a mere list of words from a complete sentence.
I have even seen students try to use a period as an introducing element. Of course, since a period represents a full stop to a sentence, it creates no transition into the list, and the attempt backfires, to say the least:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation. Periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
This leaves us with a fragment—and not a stylistic one. (Do you remember stylistic fragments from the previous series on grade-school English myths?) The words, “periods, question marks, and exclamation points” is not a sentence, but since the writer has ended the preceding statement with a period, and has capitalized the letter P in period and placed an end-sentence period after the last word, points, this grouping of terms appears in the form of a sentence. This confuses the poor reader.
Come on, dear writer: use a colon, already! Here, once again, is our original sentence, with the colon. Notice how clear-cut the message is:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation: periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
With the colon introducing the list, the commas serve their function of separating the items (so we know that the two-word term, “question marks,” is not two items—“question” and “marks,” but one item). The colon is not mistaken for combining two sentences (the problem with the semicolon), nor is it mistaken as part of the list (the issue with the comma). Simply put, the colon is the right tool for the job.
But, it’s not the only tool for the job, although up to this point, I have misled you to think so.
I could also replace the colon with a dash, if I intend a bit more spontaneity—that is, more bang—in introducing the list:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of end punctuation—periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
My rule of thumb for using dashes: think of a dash as a replacement for colons and some commas, used when the writer wants a tone of spontaneity and suddenness in the punctuation. Think of a dash as a “sudden colon” or a “spontaneous comma.” It does not merely walk readers gently into the next word of the writing. It pushes them into it. (More on dashes later.)
If I want to be extremely clear, I might add yet one more technique. This one does not replace the colon, but it assists in keeping the items very clear:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of three forms of end punctuation: (1) periods, (2) question marks, and (3) exclamation points.
As you can see, one use of parentheses is to set off numbers in a mid-sentence list. Notice that I used this technique after stating the total number of items in the list. (I told the reader beforehand that there would be three items in the list.) The numbering drives that point home, and it assists the commas in separating the three items further. It also acts as an at-a-glance visual aid for the reader, should she feel the need to review the items of the list later.
And, yes, I could also use this parenthetical item numbering with the dash introduction:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of three forms of end punctuation—(1) periods, (2) question marks, and (3) exclamation points.
Both examples are crystal-clear, aren’t they? But what if I used the numbers without setting them off in parentheses? The sentence would look like this:
When many people hear the word punctuation, they think of three forms of end punctuation—1 periods, 2 question marks, and 3 exclamation points.
Yuck! That looks horrible. It looks horrible because we are conditioned to see numbers as pluralizing or quantifying the nouns they precede. In other words, when the reader sees the phrase, “2 question marks,” she thinks that I am talking about two question marks, not “item number two: question marks.” See the difference? Notice how, with the parentheses separating the numbers from the language of the sentence, their role as external numbering labels is clear.
Behold: the power of advanced punctuation! (Or should I have written, “Behold—the power of advanced punctuation”?) The art of writing, first and foremost, involves writing exactly what you mean to say. A big part of developing that skill is in the words and phrases you use, but the stuff between the words—the pauses, the lurches, the hesitations, the shifts, the stops—is of equal importance. Accomplishing these distinct effects is the number-one reason for building a diverse punctuation toolbox.
Do you want to learn more about advanced punctuation? Read on!
(Stay tuned for articles on advanced punctuation. In this series, entitled, “Punctuation Toolbox,” I will commit articles to punctuation techniques for hyphens, dashes, colons, semicolons, parentheses, and more. I will post links to each article here, at the end of this introductory article.)
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective wri
ting to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Myths We Learn in Grade-School English: Never Write Sentence Fragments
Although it is a good general rule to follow, the rule that good writers should never write sentence fragments is a myth. In fact, the best writers use occasional fragments in their writi
ng, deliberately. Be careful though. In ninety-nine percent (or more) of your prose, you should write with complete sentences. In short, knowing when to use a stylistic fragment is an advanced writing technique. While there are no hard-and-fast rules that determine when a fragment is stylistically appropriate, I will try to share some general guidelines and examples.
What is a Sentence Fragment?
A sentence fragment (or fragment, for short) is a non-sentence written as a sentence. A fragment can be a word, a phrase, or a clause. Think of a fragment simply as a group of words that does not express a complete statement or claim, but that is written as one, in that it begins with a capital letter and ends with end punctuation.
Here are some examples of fragments. Notice that if you read them aloud, they make no sense as sentences. They do not express a full statement or claim, but are just spoken words.
Example Fragments:
- Room. (one-word fragment)
- Into the room. (phrase fragment)
- Because the teacher walked into the room. (clause fragment)
Clause fragments are the most difficult fragments to spot, because they are long enough to appear to be sentences. For this reason, most of the fragment errors I encounter in student writing are clause fragments. I recall a rule I teach my students: Length—or its lack—is not an indicator of a fragment. Many fragments are quite long, while many complete sentences are quite short.
Look at that third sentence fragment, “Because the teacher walked into the room.” Notice that this is not complete in itself, but that I can make it complete by adding a sentence (or independent clause) to that dependent clause:
Because the teacher walked into the room, the students suddenly stopped chatting.
Or, I can reverse the order:
The students suddenly stopped chatting because the teacher walked into the room.
This clause fragment needed a completing clause to form a complete sentence. Here are other examples. Notice that the clause fragment gains its completion when it is attached to a complete sentence. I have underlined the complete sentence (or independent clause) parts, for visual emphasis.
Fragment 1: When I write about composition.
Sentence 1: I am at my best when I write about composition.
Fragment 2: Balancing with perfect finesse.
Sentence 2: Balancing with perfect finesse, the cat walked along the top of the fence.
Fragment 3: Although you should generally avoid fragments.
Sentence 3: Although you should generally avoid fragments, occasional stylistic fragments are allowable, since they add spice and spontaneity to otherwise dull, predictable writing.
Do you see how that works? To fix most fragments, simply adding a complete-sentence part to the incomplete clause fragment is the key. Oftentimes, you can add the completing sentence before the clause, and sometimes you can add it after the clause. Once a fragment is written as part of a sentence, it is no longer an error. Think about the word, fragment. It simply means part or piece. With that in mind, make sure to write a fragment as that—a fragment, a part or piece of a larger sentence. Do not write it as a complete sentence in itself.
Well, that is true for ninety-nine percent of cases. But what if you sense that a fragment serves the purpose of style? Or, what if you intend a conversational, everyday tone, and a fragment achieves that effect? These uses of fragments are called stylistic fragments or deliberate fragments.
Stylistic Fragments: Why Most Teachers Don’t Discuss Them
A stylistic fragment (also called a deliberate fragment), is the deliberate use of a fragment to achieve a stylistic purpose. The best rule for knowing when to use stylistic fragments is to develop a sense of your audience(s) and your reader(s). Very formal writing is often directed at a professional or academic audience, and that writing serves the purpose of transmitting information to that audience. Considering your reading audience and your purpose in such cases, I suggest sticking with full statements and avoiding stylistic fragments. There is a time to sound official and to tone down the conversational or everyday style.
However, many teachers—especially those trying to introduce students to formal academic writing—advise their students never to aim for a conversational style. Yet, we know that those same teachers do not go home and read only formal writing, and that they surely write in the conversational tone when they compose e-mails to their friends and write letters to their lovers. What is going on, then? Why would educators teach one thing, yet practice the opposite?
Simple: They are trying to break inexperienced writers from writing exclusively in conversational styles. Getting that practice across to people who tend to write in conversational styles often requires imposing some tight rules for classroom writing. Although I think many teachers should include a small disclaimer that there are cases in which conversational styles are appropriate and even preferable, they are right to require formal writing of their students.
Also, such teachers are trying to teach their students to write with clarity. Most grade-school students do not write fragments to achieve stylistic effects. No, such young writers use fragments because they don’t yet understand what a sentence is. As an educator, I have a rule of thumb that I follow when teaching students the rules of grammar and basic mechanics: First, teach the rule and make students follow it, and only after a student has internalized that rule and its purpose, then teach the student how to break the rule for style. Think about it: to best break the rules, the writer must first know the rules.
A Close Look at Stylistic Fragments—Example: E.B. White
Now that we have discussed the hard-and-fast rules behind sentence fragments, it’s time to look at ways writers break the rules by using stylistic fragments. Consider the passage below, taken from E.B. White’s classic essay, “Once More to the Lake.” Here, the celebrated American author reflects on the passage of time and its powerlessness to diminish the permanence of memory. (You may know E.B. White from his most popularly known children’s story, Charlotte’s Web, which was later adapted into an animated film. Not coincidentally, “Once More to the Lake” and Charlotte’s Web both touch on the themes of death and the passing of identity and values from one generation to the next.) Notice that White begins the paragraph with neatly ordered complete sentences, but goes on to write the second half of the paragraph exclusively in fragments:
One afternoon while we were there at that lake a thunderstorm came up. It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe. The second-act climax of the drama of the electrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in any important respect. This was the big scene, still the big scene. The whole thing was so familiar, the first feeling of oppression and heat and a general air around camp of not wanting to go very far away. In midafternoon (it was all the same) a curious darkening of the sky, and a lull in everything that had made life tick; and then the way the boats suddenly swung the other way at their moorings with the coming of a breeze out of the new quarter, and the premonitory rumble. Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills. Afterward the calm, the rain steadily rustling in the calm lake, the return of light and hope and spirits, and the campers running out in joy and relief to go swimming in the rain, their bright cries perpetuating the deathless joke about how they were getting simply drenched, and the children screaming with delight at the new sensation of bathing in the rain, and the joke about getting drenched linking the generations in a strong indestructible chain. And the comedian who waded in carrying an umbrella.
Did you notice the fragments? You may have missed some of them, due to their length. Contrary to popular perceptions, many fragments are long—just as long as complete sentences. Notice what sets these fragments apart from sentences: these fragments do not form complete statements—at least, not in a grammatical sense.
For your convenience, here is the passage, with stylistic fragments underlined. Also, I have marked every other stylistic fragment in bold, so each stands out from the adjacent fragments:
One afternoon while we were there at that lake a thunderstorm came up. It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe. The second-act climax of the drama of the electrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in any important respect. This was the big scene, still the big scene. The whole thing was so familiar, the first feeling of oppression and heat and a general air around camp of not wanting to go very far away. In midafternoon (it was all the same) a curious darkening of the sky, and a lull in everything that had made life tick; and then the way the boats suddenly swung the other way at their moorings with the coming of a breeze out of the new quarter, and the premonitory rumble. Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills. Afterward the calm, the rain steadily rustling in the calm lake, the return of light and hope and spirits, and the campers running out in joy and relief to go swimming in the rain, their bright cries perpetuating the deathless joke about how they were getting simply drenched, and the children screaming with delight at the new sensation of bathing in the rain, and the joke about getting drenched linking the generations in a strong indestructible chain. And the comedian who waded in carrying an umbrella.
Look at each underlined fragment. If you isolate any one of those fragments, and read it aloud, out of the context of White’s narrative, it makes no sense as a statement.
By the way, this is the same author who, in his handbook on writing, The Elements of Style, advises:
Do not break sentences in two.
In other words, do not use periods for commas.
I met them on a Cunard liner many years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York.
He was an interesting talker. A man who had traveled all over the world and lived in half a dozen countries.
In both these examples, the first period should be replaced by a comma and the following word begun with a small letter.
What is going on here? Why does White violate his own rule?
Let’s read on. White continues:
It is permissible to make an emphatic word or expression serve the purpose of a sentence and to punctuate it accordingly:
Again and again he called out. No reply.
The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, lest his clipped sentence seem merely a blunder in syntax or in punctuation. Generally speaking, the place for broken sentences is in dialogue, when a character happens to speak in a clipped or fragmentary way.
So, do the fragments in White’s thunderstorm narrative “make an emphatic word or expression serve the purpose of a sentence”? I think so. Notice how the sentence fragments create a fitting sense of urgency, followed by an equally fitting sense of relief, as White relates his memories of the thunderstorm. Notice as well that there is a parallel structure at work within these fragments—which makes them seem to be part of a natural, flowing continuum. The fragments begin with phrases containing the article, the, accompanied by transition words like and, then, and afterward:
“and then the way the boats . . .”
“Then the kettle drum . . .”
“Afterward the calm . . .”
“And the comedian . . .”
These fragments exhibit a dream-like quality that stands out from the rest of White’s prose—as if, when recalling the power of thunderstorms, White slips away from consciously crafted sentences, and into euphoric musings that cannot be contained or described as complete, controlled statements. The writer here creates the illusion that he has lost his composure in the face of nature’s overpowering scale and force. (I use the term illusion with full intention; in reality, White has not lost one iota of his composure, but has crafted these sentences with masterful precision and care.)
Notice also that White creates a subtle transition from complete sentences to stylistic fragments—yet another sign of well-handled fragments. He begins with five full sentences before launching into the series of stylistic fragments that make up the remainder of the paragraph. The fifth sentence—the last complete, non-fragment sentence—has two parts: an independent clause, followed by a dependent clause. That dependent clause establishes the the pattern seen in the fragments that follow. By crafting this two-part sentence, White eases the reader from complete, grammatical sentences to spontaneous stylistic fragments. In this way, the writing begins with controlled, conventional prose (that is, complete sentences), and progresses into a style that expresses unpredictability and spontaneity—chaos. Why?
Because that chaos and unpredictability is exactly the content White is expressing—a thunderstorm. Thunderstorms are unpredictable, and they often sneak up on us with no warning, even on the most blue-skied of summer days. The thunder and the lightening are sudden, and startling. Here is unbridled nature: an overpowering, uncontrollable force that reminds us of our minuscule place on this turning, churning, heaving planet. What better way to show our lack of control in the face of such natural phenomena than to speak in fragments—to stutter and hesitate in awe of nature’s terrible majesty? I, for one, think White considered these points when he crafted those fragments. (By the way, did you notice that this paragraph’s opening sentence is a because-clause fragment? What is my purpose in using that fragment? Is that fragment a completion to a previous sentence?)
For these reasons, and many more, White’s fragments qualify as stylistic fragments: the kinds of fragments that we can—and should—employ in our writing.
Another Example of Stylistic Fragments: Maya Angelou
In her narrative essay, “Graduation,” renowned writer, autobiographer, and poet, Maya Angelou, recalls her eighth-grade graduation from the segregated school system of her childhood. In the passage below, the black principal of the school introduces the graduation speaker—a condescending white man whose address to the black graduating class is essentially for them to know their place in society as blacks. Here is the passage, with the stylistic fragment marked in bold:
[The principal] was talking about Booker T. Washington, our “late great leader,” who said we can be as close as the fingers on the hand, etc. . . . Then he said a few vague things about friendship and the friendship of kindly people to those less fortunate than themselves. With that his voice nearly faded, thin, away. Like a river diminishing to a stream and then to a trickle. But he cleared his throat and said, “Our speaker tonight, who is also our friend, came from Texarkana to deliver the commencement address, but due to the irregularity of the train schedule, he’s going to, as they say, ‘speak and run.’” He said that we understood and wanted the man to know that we were most grateful for the time he was able to give us and then something about how we were willing always to adjust to another’s program, and without more ado—“I give you Mr. Edward Donleavy.”
Notice that the fragment—which itself is a diminishing sentence—describes how the principal’s voice is diminishing. In this way, the diminishing language of Angelou’s prose reflects the diminishing voice of the principal. Style reflects content.
Three pages later, Angelou uses another stylistic fragment:
The ugliness [the white guests] left was palpable. An uninvited guest who wouldn’t leave. The choir was summoned and sang a modern arrangement of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” with new words pertaining to graduates seeking their place in the world. But it didn’t work. Elouise, the daughter of the Baptist minister, recited “Invictus,” and I could have cried at the impertinence of “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
Why might Angelou want this second fragment to stand out from the rest of the passage? Think about what the fragment expresses—the notion of an outsider, and uninvited guest. The “ugliness” of what the white speaker said to the black graduating class lingers in the room, and refuses to leave. The scene is awkward, to say the least, as the audience makes feeble attempts to continue with the ceremony after being degraded and demoralized. What better language to use to express this awkward, alien feeling than to do so with an awkward, normally inappropriate sentence—a fragment? This is the stylistic fragment at its best.
A Word on Fragments, Interjections, and Questions
Sometimes, a single word can form a complete sentence. One example is an interjection—a word (or phrase) that expresses an exclamatory idea. Although interjections are not to be considered fragments, you can treat them as deliberate stylistic fragments. (That is, you should use them, when appropriate.) Interjections are usually punctuated with an exclamation point.
Here are some examples of interjections:
A student told me that effective writing can never contain fragments. Nonsense!
Enough already! Let’s move on to the articles on advanced punctuation.
Writers sometimes pose questions in fragmented form—that is, the complete question is not asked, but is completed by the context of the sentence or question that precedes it. Doing this is perfectly permissible, so long as the fragmented questions follow with the original question or sentence. Usually, these questions are tentatively proposed answers to a preceding question. I call these specialized questions “fragment questions” (although the Grammar Gods may have other names for them).
Here is an example of fragment questions:
When should writers take on a conversational tone? E-mails? Creative writing? Letters to political leaders?
I have seen many an effective writer pose fragment questions like the ones above—that is, with capital letters at the beginning of each new question. However, in The New Well-Tempered Sentence, Karen Elizabeth Gordon advises,
You may come upon a question mark in the most intimate places—midsentence, for instance, and with others of its kind, ganging up on some innocent situation and interrogating it to death. Sprinkling question marks so liberally within a sentence, with no capital letters to make you think you’ve left it, emphasizes or mimics the thought process where such a series is appropriate.
Here is one example Gordon gives to show this use of fragment questions. Notice that when beginning a new question (and not merely a tentatively proposed answer-question), the writer capitalizes the first word of that question:
Do you love me truly? madly? deeply? Can you live without me? happily? despondently? just barely? Are we engaged? enamored? crushed? acquainted? Will you go to the ends of the earth with me? to the ball? to the mall?
I have noticed one difference between Gordon’s example and mine. In my example the first suggested answer is not within the first sentence. So, each suggestive question that follows begins as a new proposal—a new sentence—to answer that first question. In Gordon’s example, the first suggestion is within the original question. The suggestions that follow are part of that original sentence, and the question marks occur mid-sentence. Do you see the difference?
With this difference in mind, choose the method that works best for your purpose and style.
The Fragment Rule of Thumb: If you’re Scared, Don’t Do It.
Are you still haunted by past teachers’ red-font comment, FRAGMENT! littering the margins of your essays and writing projects? Are you so haunted that you cannot muster the courage to write stylistic fragments when you compose, perhaps in formal writing situations like college essays or letters to influential individuals? What should you do if you still feel shaky with stylistic fragments?
Simple: stick with what feels comfortable. Just as there is no rule stating that you can never use fragments, there is also no rule stating that you must use them. The stylistic fragment is a helpful tool, but not a requirement, for good writing. With time and experience, you will grow into your own writing style, and you will also develop a stronger sense of your readers. As you develop, your confidence will grow, and you will feel more comfortable using occasional stylistic fragments. Until then, stick with what you know. The art of writing is a lifetime endeavor; there’s no need to rush it.
Further Reading: Rhetorical Grammar, by Martha Kolln
If you are interested in learning more about how the rules of grammar can be manipulated (and violated) to create stylistic effects in writing, I suggest, for further reading, Martha Kolln’s book, Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects. As its title implies, Rhetorical Grammar explores the rules of grammar, not as a set of arbitrary rules we learn from over-zealous grade-school teachers, but as helpful tools for effective writing. If, after reading this article, you are seeking more examples of stylistic fragments, Kolln includes a section entitled, “the Deliberate Fragment,” that explains stylistic fragments, and gives examples of writers using stylistic (deliberate) fragments. This book is a must for those interested in improving their style while learning the essential rules of clear writing. Check it out.
Here is a link to the Amazon.com entry for Rhetorical Grammar:
Coming Soon—“Punctuation Toolbox: Advanced Punctuation and Style”
We have reached the end of our discussions of “Myths We Learn in Grade-School English.” Now it is time to move on to another subject, one that is critical to writing: advanced punctuation. What do I mean by “advanced punctuation”? Well, simply put, I define advanced punctuation as learning to use punctuation other than the period, the comma, and the question mark. Many new writers fail to achieve a natural, readable style, not because they lack the right words and phrases, but because they lack specific tools for expressing the absences between words and phrases—the pauses, hesitations, and linguistic lurches. These effects are accomplished through having a full toolbox of punctuation techniques such as colons, dashes, hyphens, semicolons, and (of course) parentheses. The next series of articles, entitled, “Punctuation Toolbox: Advanced Punctuation and Style,” will cover these forms of punctuation, and others.
Here is the link to the advanced punctuation introduction:
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. “Graduation.” The Blair Reader. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. 90-100.
Gordon, Karen Elizabeth. The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed. New York: Mariner Books, 1993.
Kolln, Martha. Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Education, 2007.
Strunk, William and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1979.
White, E.B. “Once More to the Lake.” The Blair Reader. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. 23-29.
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Myths We Learn in Grade-School English: Never Use the Pronoun “You” in Serious Writing
to use "you" in your writing.
to use "you" in your writing.
The Issue: The Generalized You vs. the Literal You
Here is a grade-school English myth that plagues the process of many adult writers:
Never use the pronoun you in your writing, especially in formal or serious writing.
Are you ready to see this one busted?
This absolute rule—enforced by many an educator—stems from the fact that there are essentially two ways to use the pronoun you in writing: (1) to address the reader and (2) to refer to the notion of people in general. The first function is useful and often unavoidable, but the second function—which I call “the generalized you“—is vague and often leads to false statements.
The first use of you is straightforward and quite literal: you means the person reading the writing. This is what I call “the literal you” or “the reader you.” This usage is useful, and often necessary if you (yes, you—the person reading this article) are writing a letter, or if you want your writing to speak to your reader(s). The pronoun, you, here is accurate and correct. The generalized you, on the other hand, is inaccurate. More often than not, it imposes assumptions on the reader.
What do I mean when I say the generalized you “imposes assumptions on the reader”? Consider the following statement, which I recall from a past student paper:
When you are pregnant, every aspect of life changes.
Now, there is an understanding here that you means any woman who becomes pregnant. Still, the reader—especially if male—does a double-take, if only for a moment. The reader sees you there, which of course makes him think, “Oh, that’s me.” And then, right there is the notion of the person known as you—in this case, the male reader—becoming pregnant. Unless we are talking about the protagonist in the Governator’s movie, Junior, I am pretty sure that the male reader knows that this sentence does not—and cannot—apply to him. The reader, just for a moment, is left confused. For that brief moment, his thoughts turn against the writer, since he wonders if the sentence could have been better written with him in mind. The writer may win him back in the sentences that follow, but she definitely loses a point or two in the rhetorical game simply through making the reader slip.
Those are the kinds of instances writers want to avoid. Admittedly, writers cannot control readers’ negative reactions completely, although writers do try to minimize it. With that goal in mind, good writers proofread carefully—and multiple times—to avoid typos in their finished product. They work hard to make sure that their arguments or explanations never contradict themselves. They make sure not to use words incorrectly. Such compositional pitfalls inhibit the flow of the writer’s ideas into the reader’s mind. We want to keep things smooth for our readers, and the generalized you—unless used with extreme care and appropriateness—disrupts the reader’s flow, just as typos or misspellings do.
Still, if negative reader reaction from being misidentified was the only issue with the generalized you, then I expect English teachers would consider letting it be. But there’s more to it than that. The use of the pronoun you to mean “people in general” is vague, and more often than not, it’s the result of lazy writing—and lazy thinking. Let’s return to the sample sentence. The student was writing a paper on effective methods by which social programs can assist single mothers. This particular paragraph was dealing with young, single mothers, who had become pregnant for the first time. That’s pretty specific—a far cry from you.
Many English teachers suggest a generic, cure-all solution to the generalized you: just replace it with the noun, one. That approach would leave us with this:
When one is pregnant, every aspect of life changes.
"One" is not the noun you are looking for.
Ugh. While one here is a step up from the generalized you in the sense that the sentence no longer imposes the prospect of pregnancy on the reader, it is unnatural and comes across as fabricated and pretentious. When teaching this concept to students, I jokingly refer to this use of the noun one as “Jedi-talk.” I mean, really!—Do we speak with sentences like, “One must learn the ways of the Force, young Padawan,” or, “The Force is strong with this one”? Of course not. (And, if you ever encounter a man who speaks that way, do not let him make funny, mystical gestures with his fingers as he speaks to you.) So, if overusing one represents an unrealistic, fabricated style, why write this way? Most readers won’t identify with such stodgy, pretentious diction.
Still, avoiding unnatural writing is not the main reason for avoiding one as a replacement for the generalized you. The most substantial reason for avoiding the overuse of one in writing is that one is vague—just as vague, in fact, as the generalized you. The writer can be a great deal more specific by expressing what kind of one she is discussing. With the goal of specific, pinpointed nouns in mind, how can the writer replace one or you with a better noun?
This replacement begins with a question: “Who exactly do I mean by you or one?”
Let’s consider the context of the student’s original statement. The paragraph is about young women who have become pregnant for the first time. So, why not replace you with that? If the student writes what she means, she would end up with something like this:
When a young woman becomes pregnant for the first time, every aspect of life changes.
That’s not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. The writer could specify further by including the point that the young woman is single:
When a single young woman becomes pregnant for the first time, every aspect of her life changes.
Or, how about this one?—
When a single young woman of any income becomes pregnant for the first time, every aspect of her life changes. This is especially true of low-income single mothers.
In this last revision, the writer uses a specific noun—that is, any single young woman who becomes pregnant—to make a transition into the next part of the discussion: low-income single mothers and pregnancy. See how that works? Specific words set the writer up for even more possibilities.
The possibilities seem endless, once we move away from vague one-size-fits-all language like you or one, and begin using pinpointed, specific nouns. I have other issues with the sentence, but it is well on its way. Now we have a sentence that does not impose false assumptions on the reader. Moreover, it is more accurate than the you version, and it makes for a more interesting (and convincing) read.
I mentioned earlier that the generalized you represents lazy writing. I stand by that assertion, in the vast majority of cases. (The rare exception represents a stylized use of the generalized you, but I suggest it only for advanced writers who have a strong sense of their audience.) The generalized you is lazy writing—and thinking—in the sense that it allows the writer an easy escape from discussing specific people in sentences. Think about it. A writer who uses you in every sentence does not have to consider that one paragraph discusses a young, low-income single mother, while a later paragraph addresses the situation of a thirty-eight-year-old mother who has become pregnant for a third (and unexpected) time. It’s easier just to say you in one sentence and you in the next, but it does little to let the reader know what is going on in each sentence.
To use the generalized you—or even its weak replacement, one—is to become a one-trick pony; that is, the writer uses the same writing technique time and again to avoid close consideration of her content. In the reader’s eyes, this small three-letter word appears to be the only way the writer knows to discuss people, when she should spice up her writing with a variety of techniques. It serves the writer—by making life convenient for her—but it inconveniences her reader, who must make sense of what is meant by you in each sentence.
Why Teachers Forbid You in Student Writing: Two Reasons
If the literal you is acceptable—and even preferable in some cases—why not teach students to avoid only the generalized you? Well, at the college level, I do teach this. But why do grade-school teachers ban all uses of the pronoun you in writing? Why do they teach it as an absolute?
Once again, let’s pay a visit to little Billy and his all-knowing English teacher, Mrs. Humperdinkle. Little Billy continues writing his essay on Disney World. He is starting to understand coordinating conjunctions (especially and), and he is using them frequently in his writing.
As his new introduction, Billy writes,
Have you ever been to Disney World? I went there this summer, and it was the most fun time of my life. My uncle John told me that he does not like Disney World. I cannot understand why you would not want to go there. You get to go on fun rides and see great shows. It has a huge haunted house. It will really scare you, but it will make you laugh too.
Do you see the issue here? Billy cannot differentiate between the literal you (which he uses to pose a question to the reader in his opening sentence) and the generalized you (which he uses later in the sentence, multiple times). He uses you in the ways he hears it used in spoken conversation, and he has not yet learned to differentiate between the ways that even he uses it.
If Mrs. Humperdinkle tried to explain the notion of the generalized you to Billy, chances are, he would not get it. He would still use you both in the accurate, literal way, and he would use it the wrong way: to express the notion of people in general.
So, choosing the lesser evil, Mrs. Humperdinkle teaches Billy simply to avoid all uses of you. In the same way that she would say, “Never touch the stove,” to a child who is just as likely to start a house fire as he is to cook a pan of stir-fry, Mrs. Humperdinkle warns, “Never use you in writing.” This zero-tolerance approach solves the issue for Billy, forcing him to use precise nouns in his writing. Here is the new version of his paper, with all traces of you purged from the prose:
I went to Disney World this summer, and it was the most fun time of my life. My Uncle John told me that he does not like Disney World. I cannot understand why Uncle John would not want to go there. He would get to go on fun rides and see great shows. It has a huge haunted house. It really scares people, but it makes them laugh too.
That’s a step in the right direction, although little Billy still has a lot to learn. Mrs. Humperdinkle is correct, at this point in Billy’s development, to have him eschew all uses of you in his formal prose.
There is a second reason that Mrs. Humperdinkle tells little Billy to avoid using you in his writing: she wants to teach Billy to focus on his subject matter. Most children Billy’s age are just beginning to consider the world objectively—that is, considering the world separately from considering themselves. When Billy thinks of Disney World, he is not thinking that it is important because of its impact on American culture and consumerism. He is not even thinking it is important because of what it means to other children. Heck, in Billy’s self-oriented mind, Disney World is not important because it is big, nor because of its many rides. Disney World is important, in Billy’s view, because Billy went there and he had fun. For Billy, it’s all about Billy.
Mrs. Humperdinkle wants to encourage Billy to grow beyond this kind of thinking. With that developmental goal in mind, she encourages Billy to write in such a way that the focus is directed, not so much towards himself or his reader, but towards Disney World itself. Teachers often ask students to avoid using the personal pronoun, I, in their writing for this same reason. Writing without the pronoun you (or, in some cases without the first-person pronoun, I) forces children to focus their thoughts on the subject. How people write reflects how they think; by the same token, people’s thinking is influenced by the rules they are given for writing.
In this sense, prohibiting the use of you or I in elementary-school writing is as much a thinking exercise as it is a writing practice. Later, when Billy has learned to focus on his subject matter, he can begin to address the reader, both for stylistic and practical purposes. So long as life experience and thoughtful teachers inform his development, Billy will learn when to address his reader, and how to differentiate between the literal you and the generalized you.
Unfortunately, things do not always turn out that way. What happens if no one ever tells Billy that avoiding all uses of you is merely a temporary, developmental exercise? What happens if Billy tries to continue writing this way into adulthood? What kind of writer will he become? How will he perceive writing? We will explore such issues in the next section.
Novice Adult Writers and the Pronoun, You
Most college freshmen (and other new writers) I encounter fall into two categories, regarding their use of the pronoun you in writing:
Category One: Those in Category One use you almost everywhere they mention other people in their writing, and most instances are the generalized you. If I had to draw a number out of the air, I would say that about seven out of ten freshmen write this way.
Category Two: Students in Category Two just avoid you altogether because they have a Mrs. Humperdinkle from their past who told them never to use you. They often use the word one to discuss people. This group, in my experience, includes about two out of ten students.
The remaining one out of ten is that rare student writer who knows how to use the literal you, but to avoid the generalized you. Chances are, these students had a Mrs. Humperdinkle who told them to avoid you, but then they had a later teacher (probably in high school) who taught them some advanced writing techniques. I applaud such high-school teachers, and I always delight in hearing about them.
Taking care of the students in Category Two is easy: I just show them how to use you, and they feel liberated and eager to write.
As for those in Category One—well, things aren’t so easy for them. And I know, because when I was a freshman, I belonged to this category.
Writing with the generalized you is a terrible habit to break. Even if the student is aware of the issue, she is so accustomed to expressing the notion of any person with the pronoun you, that she defaults to that reference point. (And, if you—my reader—think about it, a great many sentences involve people. The student, then, has been thinking of people in terms of you quite frequently, and for many years.)
Although knowledge is the first step, this is not an issue I can solve simply by teaching these generalized-you writers how to replace you with a specific noun. The lesson this article teaches is the equivalent of teaching a 467-pound man how to use a home-fitness machine. He may know all the finer points of triceps-extensions and leg-curls, but the only way for him to lose weight is for him to use the machine—which requires time, effort, and a smidgen (or more) of pain. He has to undergo a degree of personal struggle and sacrifice to progress.
So it goes with writing. The 467-pound writer is the one who slides sluggishly through the prose, describing everyone as you—whether a 43-year-old male transmission mechanic or a 22-year-old female marketing student. These generalized-you writers will simply have to revise until they have replaced their many cases of you with vivid, pinpointed nouns. At first, it’s hard, but as the writer continues to work, it gets easier, in the same way that life gets easier for the 467-pound man (who will soon weigh 350 pounds, and whose body will acclimate to physical work as he continues to lose weight and progress). Whether it’s a physical workout or a compositional one, Day One is always the hardest.
The best advice from here is simple: Stick with it.
Replacing the Generalized You: A Working Method
Does the generalized you plague your writing? Have English teachers told you time and again to avoid it, but have yet to provide you with a working method? Are you struggling?
Worry no more, dear reader. Here is a method that works, but it will still require some effort on your part. Trust me: it’s worth every effort you put into it.
Here is the method:
Step 1: Write as you normally write. Don’t worry a bit about the generalized you. If that’s what ends up on the paper, fine. It’s not the end of the world—and certainly not the end of your paper. This is a process, and you are only on the first step.
Step 2: Look over your writing, and highlight all instances of the pronoun you. I suggest finding them yourself, without the use of a word processing find feature. However, after you have found all instances you can locate, you can use a find feature to double-check your search. No matter how you find the instances of you, use the highlight feature to place a color highlight over every appearance of you. (I prefer red or yellow for highlighting, since they stand out to the eye and still allow for the black-font text to remain clear.) Also, don’t forget other forms of you, like your (possessive form of you) and you’re (contraction for you + are). When I speak in these steps of the word, you, I am also speaking of these forms.
Step 3: Go through the highlighted instances of you, and un-highlight the cases in which you use you to address your reader. Those are cases of the literal you, and in most cases, you can keep them. This is especially true if you are writing an e-mail or letter, or if you are writing an expository essay that teaches the reader how to perform some practice or process. Using the literal you in such pieces is often necessary and preferable. (Note: These articles on writing are that kind of expository writing—that is, they explain some idea or practice, in this case, writing techniques. You will notice that I use the pronoun you quite frequently, since I am addressing you, my reader, the one with whom I share these techniques and practices.)
Step 4: Make notes on what you mean by each use of the generalized you. All that remains highlighted are cases of the generalized you. Consider each highlighted generalized-you instance in order, and don’t be afraid to spend time on each of them. Use the comment feature in your word-processing program to note the people you mean to identify with you. I’ll bet you know who they are. Just take a moment for each to write it out, in a comment bubble. (Note: This is the essential step of the process. With practice, you will be able to simply replace the generalized you in your writing with the person you intend. With further practice, even that step will disappear when you simply write the noun you intend from the start. But for now, break it down into steps.)
Step 5: Use the information in each note or comment to replace the generalized you in the sentence. This may require a few adjustments to the sentence—and to the language from the comment—so make sure to look at the whole sentence after you have replaced you with the intended person. Read it aloud to make sure it sounds natural and clear.
After you go through these steps, read your prose. Compare it to older prose, where you used the generalized you. Notice that it sounds more professional, more scholarly—more like the prose you might read in an acclaimed nonfiction book. Know that you are headed in the right direction, and that soon this level of specificity and clarity will typify your writing.
There you have it: identifying and replacing the generalized you. Now, give it a try.
Are There Times to Avoid You Completely?
We have looked at how the generalized you can hurt our writing, and how in many writing situations the literal you is not only unavoidable, but also preferred. There’s no way around it: sometimes we just have to talk to our readers.
But are there times when we should not address readers directly? Are there forms of writing or writing situations where addressing the reader as you should always be avoided?
Well, I do not like thinking in terms of always. However, as a rule, we should avoid addressing the reader directly when doing so is unnecessary or excessive. One example is scientific writing, where the purpose is to express the data and findings from research, and not to speak to the reader directly. When writers address their readers as you, they are seeking to pull their readers into the discussion—perhaps inviting readers to access their own memories and to use those life experiences as touchstones for understanding the points made in the writing. This is effective if you are trying to convince your audience of your position on a controversy or debate. (That’s what we call “persuasive writing.”) It’s also productive, as I mentioned earlier, in expository or explanatory writing, where the goal is to make the reader understand some concept, process, or practice. These are reader-focused forms of writing, so addressing the reader is helpful and necessary.
If the focus is the information itself, there is often a specialized audience. If a biologist writes a paper on the formation of DNA from RNA, chances are, the audience will be made up of other biologists. The writer, in a sense, knows who you is (a circle of specialists within the scientific community), so the people understood to be you never need to be mentioned. The goal is to express as much of the data as possible, as efficiently as possible. Simply put, scientific writing is not about you; it’s about the findings. The same is true for statistical research, mathematical research, and any writing in which new research is presented to a specialized academic audience.¹
Still, I would like to see even this change. Writers—before they are columnists, political writers, scientists, or mathematicians—are people, with all the everyday tendencies and practices that most humans share. I think that the best writers are those who can stay on point, while infusing the prose with passion and personality. Very few people, scholars and scientists included, enjoy reading streams of data in the form of sentences. They may enjoy the ideas themselves, but the writing is dry. At the end of the day, all of us prefer to read writing that keeps it real.
My point, in writing this article, is not to have you use the pronoun you in every sentence or essay that you compose. My goal, dear reader, is to counter the pseudo-rule that you should never use the pronoun you in any of your writing. Those who try to follow that rule will struggle to write, and even after that struggle, a great deal of their writing will be unnatural and pretentious—and consequently, ineffective.
One final warning: Although I do hope you feel free to use the literal you in your writing, dear reader, be careful not to overuse it. (Remember what they say about too much of a good thing?) There is a point where addressing the reader excessively shifts too much focus onto the reader, and away from the subject matter. I cannot give you any clear-cut maximum frequency for addressing the reader with the pronoun, you. It varies according to the writing situation, the audience, and the discipline in which the writer composes. Some forms, like letters and e-mails, will involve many instances of the pronoun, you. Others, like college essays on Shakespeare’s sonnets, will involve very few—if any—cases where the writer needs to address the reader.
The best rule I can give you is to be aware of your purpose for the writing. Does addressing the reader help achieve that purpose? If so, you will probably end up using you with some frequency. If using you does not lend itself to the purpose of your writing, then why use it? I think that this is a good rule of thumb for knowing when (and when not) to address the reader.
Next up: Sentence Fragments
Next up in our exploration of grade-school English myths: “Never write sentence fragments.” Here is a link to that article:
Notes:
1. Some writing—like that of the celebrated astrophysicist and spokesperson for science, Neil DeGrasse Tyson—is intended to share the worlds of science with the general public. Such writers address their readers quite frequently. Although it is about science in a general sense, this form of writing is not what I mean when I say, “scientific writing” or “academic writing.” (If you need an example of an effective writer, look no further than Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s essays and books. While a book on astrophysics may not be the first place you go for an entertaining read, trust me when I say that Tyson’s writing will change that perspective. He is an equally effective public speaker, and you can access many of his talks on sites like Youtube.)
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
A Bit More on Myth 3: “Because” and Other Words Like It
In the latest article on Myths We Learn in Grade-School English, I attempted to bust the myth—spread by many a well meaning grade-school English teacher—that we should not begin sentences with the word, because.
This discussion applies to other words that are very similar to because. Because belongs to a very useful group of words called relative adverbs. There is another group of words that are almost identical in function, called relative pronouns. As their names imply, relative adverbs and relative pronouns are words that transform otherwise freestanding, independent sentences into relative clauses (also called subordinate clauses or dependent clauses).
As an educator who seeks to demystify the arts of writing, the last thing I want to do is to clutter your head with yet more terms and grammar jargon. Avoiding conventional jargon often requires that I make up my own simplified, common-sense language for grammatical and stylistic practices. So, for simplicity’s sake (and for the sake of your sanity, dear reader), I am going to group relative adverbs together with relative pronouns. As per their function, I will call such words relative clause starters (Get it? Relative clause starters: words that start relative clauses. Complicated stuff, huh?)
Here are some relative clause starters:
Because
Since
Although
Which
While
When
As
What do I mean when I say that these words transform sentences into relative clauses? And what, for that matter, are relative clauses?
An example will serve best. Notice that the sentence below expresses a complete, stand-alone idea:
Billy worked hard to write his Disney World essay.
That sentence stands alone. We can read this isolated sentence, and come away with a sense of completion. Now, let’s take that sentence and add a relative clause starter to the beginning of it:
Although Billy worked hard to write his Disney World essay.
Now, that doesn’t sound right, does it? It sounds incomplete, and it leaves the reader waiting for more—namely, for a completion. That word, although, has made what was once a complete sentence into a relative clause—that is, a clause that gains completion relative to some other sentence. (These are also called dependent clauses, since they are grammatically dependent on other clauses. You can even label them both ways, by calling them relative dependent clauses.)
To create a relative clause, all you need to do is to place a relative clause starter at the beginning of an otherwise complete sentence, as in the example above.
Now, let’s complete the sentence by adding a complete sentence (or independent clause) after the relative clause:
Although Billy worked hard to write his Disney World essay, he earned a D grade.
Let’s play with it a bit by inverting the two clauses:
Billy earned a D grade, although he worked hard to write his Disney World essay.
While I did need to invert the name, Billy, and the pronoun, he, notice that the inversion was otherwise word-for-word. I simply took the two clauses and swapped them out. But are these two sentence orders different?
Look at the first version—where although begins the sentence. When you read that word, do you know something of what is to come in the second part of the sentence? Do you have a sense of contradiction—of a but—there? The relative adverb although expresses that idea. It says, “The opposite of what you think would be the case is going to happen to little Billy.” We know, after reading only that dependent clause, that Billy’s efforts did not pay off as fully as he would have liked. This word then, when used at the beginning of a sentence, creates suspense within the reader. It makes the reader want to reach the second part of the sentence (the independent clause) to find out poor little Billy’s fate. Although readers know that Billy’s results were not good, they wonder how badly Billy has done. Did he earn a C? A D? An F?
Want to find out? “Press on, dear reader, if you want to satisfy your curiosity,” the sentence playfully teases. In this sense, beginning a sentence with a relative clause tempts readers to continue, giving them just enough of the story to catch their attention, and ensuring that they will complete the sentence. (And that’s a good effect to achieve.) The alternate version, where the relative clause comes second, lets the cat out of the bag at the beginning. To avoid such boring statements, writers often begin sentences with the relative clause, and save the independent clause completion for the end.
It’s the same with because. When you begin a sentence with because, it sparks suspense in the reader’s mind. It makes the reader wonder, for a moment, what the outcome will be. Consider the following two sentences and how they affect readers:
Because he had a teacher who challenged him in childhood, Bill grew into an effective writer. (Relative Dependent Clause + Independent Clause)
Bill grew into an effective writer because he had a teacher who challenged him in childhood. (Independent Clause + Relative Dependent Clause)
Purely in terms of grammar and clarity, both of these are fine sentences, but I prefer the first sentence for its style. It keeps my reader hooked. Sure, there are cases when I do not want to create suspense in my reader, and in such cases, I might choose the second form. Or, I might choose to invert the sentence structure in cases where the suspense is found, not in discovering the outcome, but in uncovering the cause. Here is such an example:
Actor John Soandso died in his condo because he suffered a fatal drug overdose.
Upon hearing that John Soandso has died, readers immediately want to know why. Was he murdered? If so, who did it? His brother? His wife? His mistress? Or, was his untimely death due purely to natural causes? If so, was foul play suspected? Did he commit suicide? If so, why on earth would he end his own life? The second part of the sentence gives the reason—in this case, the cause of the suspense. In such cases, I save the because for last.
At the end of the day, there is no universally superior order for your clause structures. The best way to order your sentences depends upon the content and its intended effect on the reader. These decisions are always a matter of case-by-case consideration. Both of these forms are at your disposal; just make sure to use them accordingly.
Here are more examples. Notice how each of the two sentences below uses since differently:
Since he never revisited it in his adulthood, Bill tends to idealize Disney World.
Since his one childhood visit there, Bill has not had the opportunity to return to Disney World.
Consider the two ways I used since in the sentences above. The first sentence uses since to express cause and effect, while the second sentence uses it to express a notion of elapsed time. A very similar word is while: it can be used to express simultaneity (that is, when two things occur at the same time), or it can express contradiction (like although). The two sentences below show those applications of while:
While I shower in the morning, my coffee brews in the kitchen. (simultaneity)
While grade-school writing myths were once good, we should unlearn them by adulthood. (contradiction)
If you find yourself using but or although a bit too often, consider setting up some sentences with while. This will lend diversity and variety to your prose, while putting a slightly different spin on the way you express contradictory notions within sentences.
Relative Clause Words vs. Coordinating Conjunctions
Recalling the article on coordinating conjunctions, attentive readers may have noticed that we now have two ways to combine sentences:
- Relative Clause Starters
- Coordinating Conjunctions
And, yes, there are even more ways to combine sentences, but these two are the two most important forms. Two additional forms are conjunctive adverbs (words like however, therefore, thus, hence, etc.) and sentence-combining punctuation (especially semicolons and colons). I think conjunctive adverbs sound a bit stodgy and formal, so I reserve them for loaded sentences that express heavy, serious content. Sentence-combining punctuation like semicolons should be reserved for expressing unspoken connections. (One of my previous articles, entitled “Fixing the Comma Splice,” explores these sentence-combining methods in detail.)
Some especially attentive readers may have noticed that some coordinating conjunctions correspond in essential meaning to some relative clause starters. For example, the relative clause starter although means much the same thing as the conjunction but. Similarly, the coordinating conjunction for expresses a cause or reason in much the same way that the relative clause starter because does. With such corresponding functions in mind, you might view these words according to the following table:
Coordinating Conjunction Relative Clause Starter(s)
but although, though, while, whereas
for because, since
so then
and while, then, as (depends on how and is used)
So, if they often fulfill the same purpose, what is the difference—other than variety—between coordinating conjunctions and relative clause starters?
Well, a relative clause starter is part of the clause that it introduces, whereas a coordinating conjunction sits in the middle of two clauses it combines without being part of either one.
Confusing? Some examples will serve best. Consider the two sentences below. They are identical, with the exception that one uses the coordinating conjunction, but, to show contradiction, while the other uses the relative clause starter, although.
Relative clauses are fairly simple, although they have their finer points.
Relative clauses are fairly simple, but they have their finer points.
Now, you might think that but and although are interchangeable in the sentences above—and to some degree they are, so long as the sentences occur in the order above. But what happens if I invert the order of each sentence? Let’s find out:
Although they have their finer points, relative clauses are fairly simple. (This works fine.)
But they have their finer points, relative clauses are fairly simple. (Ugh . . . not so fine.)
Why does one inversion work, while the other does not? Simple: the relative clause starter, although, is a part of the clause in which it appears, while the coordinating conjunction, but, is separate from the clauses it combines. If I were to invert that second sentence successfully, the but would need to remain in the middle of the two clauses. The word, although, on the other hand, travels with the clause in which it appears.
How, then, do we invert a sentence structure involving a coordinating conjunction like but? Simple: Just swap out the two independent clauses, while leaving the coordinating conjunction in the center. Still a bit confusing? No problem, dear reader; I’ll show you how it works.
Let’s begin with the original coordinating conjunction example:
Relative clauses are fairly simple, but they have their finer points.
Now here it is, inverted. Notice that but stays in the center of the two clauses:
They have their finer points, but relative clauses are fairly simple.
And, yes, I need to swap out the nouns and pronouns to make this sentence just right:
Relative clauses have their finer points, but they are fairly simple. (That’s it!)
Here is a structural way of looking at these sentences. Pay attention to how brackets separate the clauses and other parts of the sentence. When the writer inverts the sentence structures, each bracketed section moves (or doesn’t move) as a unit.
First, let’s invert the sentence with the relative clause starter, although:
[Relative clauses are fairly simple] , [although they have their finer points].
When inverted, it becomes . . .
[Although they have their finer points] , [relative clauses are fairly simple].
Now, let’s invert the sentence with the coordinating conjunction:
[Relative clauses are fairly simple] [, but] [they have their finer points].
When inverted, it becomes . . .
[They have their finer points] [, but] [relative clauses are fairly simple].
And here it is with the noun and pronoun adjusted for readability:
[Relative clauses have their finer points] [,but] [they are fairly simple].
Since a relative clause starter (like although) is an inseparable part of the relative clause in which it appears, that clause cannot stand alone. Its meaning and completion are relative to (and dependent on) the independent clause. (That’s why we call them relative dependent clauses.) Without the presence of an independent clause, the relative dependent clause is left hanging—which leaves the reader on a linguistic bridge to nowhere. (And, no, Alaskans don’t write relative-clause fragments any more than those of us in the Lower 48.)
Clauses and the Three Sentence Types
You may remember from past English courses that sentences fall into one of three categories: (1) simple, (2) compound, and (3) complex. These sentence types have to do with clause combos, like the ones we explored in the examples above. The first example above, where one clause is dependent on the other is a complex sentence. It’s called complex because it is made up of two different types of clauses (1) an independent clause and (2) a dependent relative clause. The sentence involving the coordinating conjunction but is what we in the English business call a compound sentence: a sentence made up of two equal independent clauses. Here’s the rule of thumb: Relative clause starters appear in complex sentences, while coordinating conjunctions appear in compound sentences.
As its name implies, a simple sentence is the most straightforward form of all: a single freestanding independent clause.
Here are examples of each:
I enjoy writing about language. (Simple)
[Independent Clause] = Simple Sentence
Little Billy is working hard, but his progress is slow. (Compound)
[Independent Clause] + [Conjunction] + [Independent Clause] = Compound Sentence
While absolutes work for children, set-in-stone rules often hinder adults. (Complex)
[Relative Dependent Clause] + [Independent Clause] = Complex Sentence
Or, we can have a complex sentence with the independent clause first, followed by the relative dependent clause:
Write for your readers, because they are the ones who matter most. (Complex)
[Independent Clause] + [Relative Dependent Clause] = Complex Sentence
See how that works?
Next up: Myth #4
That’s it for the myth that you shouldn’t start sentences with because. Next up is a myth I see spread not only in grade-school English, but also in college-level courses:
Myth #4: “Do not use the personal pronoun you in serious writing.”
Want to see this myth busted? Want to know if there is any truth to it? If so, I suggest clicking the link below to read my next article:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Myths We Learn in Grade-School English: Never Begin Sentences with Coordinating Conjunctions
The Myth
Here is Grade-School Myth #2:
Never begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions like and, but, or so.
As with the other myths we explore in this series, teachers spread this particular myth among children for good reason. Children—unless they are writing savants—do not know the appropriate times to begin sentences with conjunctions. They do not yet grasp transitions, nor do they grasp why they should use transitions. As adults, though, we can understand these concepts, so we should employ them in our writing.
A helpful way to remember the seven coordinating conjunctions
Transitions: Essential to Effective Writing
What do I mean by transitions? Transitions are words, phrases, or even sentences that allow your writing to flow from one idea to the next.
Transitions connect your sentences, your paragraphs, and your ideas. For example, notice how I ask a question at the beginning of this paragraph about a point I made in the preceding paragraph; that’s a type of transition (paragraph-to-paragraph transition). Notice how, in the last sentence you read, the phrase, “for example,” connects to the sentence that precedes it. (That is a sentence-to-sentence transition.)
So why do we need transitions? Well, it’s just good, common sense: transitions keep our readers reading. Transitions carry ideas from sentence to sentence. They keep the reader on a smooth, uninterrupted track as they experience our prose. Readers, like anyone, want to be well served. They like their reading experience to be convenient, and maybe even the slightest bit entertaining. Is that too much to ask, you think?
Well, think about it. We are asking people to take time out of their lives to read our ideas and opinions. The very least we can do is serve them with a smooth, readable style. Aside from writing clearly and having something worth saying, the chief rule for serving readers is to write with smooth transitions. As with other endeavors like cooking or show-business, bringing our readers a convenient, pleasurable experience often involves some degree of inconvenience on our part. Paradoxically, an effortless experience for the reader requires great efforts from the writer.
The reward for these efforts is that your audience reads your work from start to finish. Also, readers are more likely to buy your ideas if they like the way you express them. And, even if they still disagree with your assertions, readers will at least give you credit for an enjoyable, easy read. We have many tools available for creating transitions. Sometimes, a well placed “also” or “in addition” creates a quick but helpful transition. Also, we have handy phrases like “for example” and “for instance” that connect an example to the ongoing discussion. These are generic, run-of-the-mill transition words and phrases, but they work. The best writers use them. Still, the best writers also make sure to use creative transitions.
What do I mean by creative transitions? Well, consider this paragraph I am writing here. Look at that first sentence—a question that references my language in the previous sentence. This is one great way to create a transition: explain what you mean by a certain phrase or word you used in the preceding sentence or paragraph. This technique creates transition—connection with the earlier sentence or paragraph—but it also shows your readers that you care about their needs; it shows that you genuinely want your readers to get your ideas, such that you will go to extra effort to get those ideas across. This attitude is important. I hope you see it in my writing.
Coordinating Conjunctions Create Transitions
So, what do coordinating conjunctions have to do with transitions?
Everything. Coordinating conjunctions are a great way to create spontaneity in your writing. They are not so stodgy and self-important as words like however, thus, or therefore. Who talks like that, anyway? Why can’t our writing and our speaking be one?
I think for the best writers, writing and speaking are one. For many academic writers, they are not. (That’s one reason that almost no one—not even academics—really enjoys reading academic prose, although they may pretend to enjoy it. Sure, they may enjoy the ideas that the writing expresses, but I doubt that anyone enjoys the style.)
But how exactly does starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions make your writing everyday or colloquial?
Well, imagine if I started the question above with however (which, by the way, is not a coordinating conjunction):
However, how exactly does starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions make your writing everyday or colloquial?
Ugh. That didn’t work. (One reason it didn’t work, aside from its excessive emphasis and formality, is the repetition of how in the adjacent words, however and how.
Let’s try the minimalist approach, by not using any transition word at all:
How exactly does starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions make your writing everyday or colloquial?
If you place that second sentence in context, it is broken from the ongoing discussion. It just drops on the reader, out of nowhere. The reader has to stop for a split-second to see the notion of but there. And that’s one thing you never want—your readers stopping because you failed to guide them. That’s work for the reader, work that is the writer’s responsibility. I think of those old ads with the scrubbing bubbles, and the motto: “We work hard so you don’t have to.” That’s a good rule for writers: writers should work hard so readers don’t have to.
Often though, it’s not even hard work. In many cases, providing helpful transitions for our readers requires minimal effort. Think of the example we explored above. All that transition took was a simple three-letter but to keep the reader on track—a very small effort for providing our readers with transition and clarity.
The Myth and Its Purpose
If sentence-starter conjunctions are such valuable tools for creating transitions, why do our grade-school teachers so often forbid this practice?
Meet little Billy, and his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Humperdinkle. Billy is writing a paragraph for an assignment entitled, “My Weekend.” Billy writes:
On Saturday I went to the mall with my mom. And we had a great time. And I ate a big pretzel. And Mom got me a shirt. And I got some toys. And I like to play with them. I like going to the mall. And I like seeing movies too.
Now, is little Billy using and to create transitions? Not really. He simply wants to show the idea of in addition to or next. A type of transition is created—sure—but Mrs. Humperdinkle wants to see Billy combine those related ideas into more substantial sentences, like this:
On Saturday I went to the mall with my Mom, and we had a great time. The best part was when I ate a big pretzel. Mom got me a shirt, but she also got me some nice toys. I like going to the mall, even more than I like seeing movies.
But Billy doesn’t use conjunctions to write this way. He is missing the connections between his sentences because he thinks purely in terms of “and” or “in addition to.” This exclusive use of and reflects the simplicity of a child’s perspective. In Billy’s mind, things simply coexist, or occur in sequence. They do not have relationships beyond coexistence and occurrence. Mrs. Humperdinkle wants Billy to think about relationships like cause-and-effect (indicated by connecting words like so, since, or because), and contradiction (but, yet, and although). There’s more to our complex, interconnected world than and, so our language should show that.
And, even if Billy learns to use advanced conjunctions like or, so, and but, Mrs. Humperdinkle knows that Billy needs to write longer sentences. And, no, she doesn’t want Billy’s sentences to be too long. (And, yes, Mrs. Humperdinkle knows not to call such sentences run-ons.) She does not want him to limit his writing to short, disconnected, chop-chop statements of fact. Mrs. Humperdinkle’s goal, then, is to force Billy to form sentences that describe realistic, complex relationships between people, actions, and events.
With that goal in mind, Mrs. Humperdinkle teaches little Billy to use conjunctions to join sentences. Since Billy has trouble thinking in terms of transitions between sentences, he must begin at the level of seeing transitions within sentences. Having assessed Billy’s level of development, Mrs. Humperdinkle orders the boy not to use conjunctions to begin sentences. She knows that using conjunctions only within sentences is not realistic for advanced writers, and that there are plenty of exceptions to the rule she is now teaching Billy. But she cannot say that to Billy! She must teach this temporary writing practice, not as something that will change with time, but as a set-in-stone absolute. Since Billy is a child, equivocal language will not get the point across to him. If Mrs. Humperdinkle says, “This rule will change later,” or even, “Try to avoid starting most sentences with conjunctions,” Billy may not stick with the program. Children think best in terms of absolutes, so Mrs. Humperdinkle must express even temporary developmental writing practices as absolutes.
While elementary-school teachers like Mrs. Humperdinkle are correct in absolutely forbidding students from beginning sentences with coordinating conjunctions, this approach has repercussions later in life, when the student attempts college-level writing. As with the myth of the run-on sentence, which we discussed in a previous article, the issue occurs when higher-level teachers do not recognize the myth and its effects on later writing. They never tell their students, “I’ll bet a lot of you learned in elementary or middle school not to begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions like and, but, or so. Well, you can do that now, but just don’t do it in every sentence. Here is how to do it. . . .” This is a conversation that must happen; otherwise Mr. Bill will continue to try to write like little Billy.
And so it goes. For us, seeing beyond these myths—and writing beyond them—is a must. So, free your mind, and experiment with those conjunctions. But don’t overuse them (as I am doing intentionally in this paragraph). And make sure not to use them so much that they lose their force (as they are in these sentences). And don’t forget that there is nothing wrong with the conventional method, as taught by Mrs. Humperdinkle. Combining ideas into complex, cohesive, fully expressed sentences is a good practice, from grade school to college—and beyond.
A Bit on Coordinating Conjunctions
Since this is a discussion of coordinating conjunctions, I should share a word or two on the seven coordinating conjunctions and how they function.
What is a coordinating conjunction? What does this fancy two-word term mean? Consider the first word of the term: coordinating. To coordinate is to manage things, such that they function in a certain way. If I coordinate a meeting, this is to say that I set up and organize the meeting, so that the events of that meeting will occur in an appropriate manner and sequence. In a similar way that people can coordinate the roles of other people, some words can coordinate other words. A coordinating conjunction, as per its name, coordinates.
Now, consider the second part of the term: conjunction. A conjunction, in general, is a joiner of two things. The same is true for language and grammar: a conjunction is a connector—a combiner. So, a coordinating conjunction joins two things.
With both parts of the term in mind, a coordinating conjunction is a word that joins two sentences, but also one that manages (or coordinates) the sentences it joins, by showing the relationship that connects those sentences. A coordinating conjunction—a conjunction that coordinates: ah-ha!
Coordinating conjunctions, though, go beyond coordinating and joining just sentences. They can also coordinate and join words, phrases, and even paragraphs. Still, when English teachers speak of coordinating conjunctions, they are usually referring to their function as sentence joiners—that is, taking two complete sentences, and joining them into a single sentence.
The table below lists the seven coordinating conjunctions and their essential functions. Whether you are using conjunctions to show transitions within sentences, between sentences, or even between paragraphs, always make sure to choose the best, most fitting conjunction for the job.
Coordinating Conjunction Function
and coexistence
but contradiction
yet contradiction
so cause and effect
or choice
nor additional negation
for precedes a cause or reason
Some of these conjunctions deserve a bit more explanation than this at-a-glance table provides. Compared with conjunctions like and or but, the conjunction nor is not a frequently used word, nor is the conjunction for frequently used. Let’s look briefly at nor and for, before moving on to the other conjunctions.
Conjunction: Nor
Nor is similar to and, except that it shows negation, or not-ness. It shows that a second item or statement is also not the case. You can think of nor as meaning not + and, or even not + or. (Actually, if you look closely at the word, nor, it appears to be a type of contraction for not + or. This is also true, for example, of the pronoun, none, which I think of as an abbreviated form of not + one—one reason that most hard-nosed grammarians consider none singular, and never plural.)
Like and or but, the conjunction nor can combine short items (like nouns), as well as sentences. Oftentimes, such appearances of nor are preceded in the sentence by the word, neither. (If you like fancy words, using that neither- nor combination is called a correlative conjunction—that is, a multiple-word conjunction that contains two words that correlate to one another.) Here are some examples of nor used in sentences:
I enjoy neither ironing, nor doing laundry. (neither-nor correlative conjunction)
Bob did not write his paper on time, nor did he bother to proofread. (coordinating conjunction)
I did not give Bob an A, nor a B, nor a C. (nor to combine negated items in a series)
Note: In this final example, you can replace nor with or, particularly if you want to achieve a colloquial, everyday tone. However, I think that nor is preferable in the sentence above, in that it drives home a sense of negativity through repeating a negation. (Think about it: I want my negative tone to come across, since I am not happy about Bob’s performance. By repeating nor, I am effectively saying, “No, no, and no.” I also want to sound a bit snobby and aloof, to show that I disapprove of Bob’s work. Nor achieves both of those goals perfectly.)
For: Sometimes a Conjunction, Often a Preposition
The other conjunction I want to mention is for. This word can be confusing, for it serves another role as a preposition. Notice how in the previous sentence I used for to combine two sentences. The first sentence communicates the effect (for can be confusing), and the second sentence reveals the cause of that effect (the reason for is confusing: it serves another role as a preposition). This application of for simply means because; however, using for instead of because creates a formal tone, in a very similar way that nor is more formal than or to show additional negation.
Here is an example in which for combines two sentences. Notice the effect-cause order.
Mrs. Humperdinkle asks little Billy not to begin sentences with conjunctions, for she knows that he does not yet grasp how to start sentences with coordinating conjunctions.
Here are the roles the two sentences play, when for combines them into a single statement:
Effect/Outcome: Mrs. Humperdinkle asks little Billy not to begin sentences with conjunctions.
, for
Cause/Reason: She knows that he does not yet grasp how to start sentences with coordinating conjunctions.
Quick Note: the coordinating conjunction so reverses this effect-cause order, creating a cause-effect combination. Consider the following inversion of the example above:
Mrs. Humperdinkle knows that little Billy does not yet grasp how to start sentences with coordinating conjunctions, so she asks him not to begin sentences with conjunctions.
One point that makes for a bit complex is that it also serves the role of preposition. Consider how for serves as a preposition in the sentence below. Notice also in this example that for does not combine two sentences.
I am writing this series of articles for anyone who remains daunted by writing rules they no longer find relevant.
In this sense, for is used to mean “in the service of,” or “for the benefit of.” In other contexts it can mean, “for purposes of,” as in the sentence below:
Good writers use transitions for clarity and readability.
In this second example, the prepositional version of for is very similar to the conjunctive form—that is, both communicate effect-cause relationships. I think that this similarity leads to some reluctance to use for as a conjunction, which leads many writers (and readers) to view it as a slightly old-fashioned convention. With this popular perception in mind, I like to use for as a coordinating conjunction when expressing a statement in a stern or formal tone:
I gave Bob an F grade, for he did not complete the course requirements, nor did he put forth any substantial effort in class.
(I slipped in a nor as well.—Now, that’s some aloof, stodgy stuff, isn’t it? My goal: to sound authoritative and intimidating.)
Yet vs. But
Yet and but are generally considered interchangeable. I disagree with this perception, since I find that yet and but express very different tones and formality levels in writing. While you can replace but with yet to show contradiction, never make this replacement arbitrarily. Reserve yet for those statements or assertions you would rather express in a formal or emphatic tone. Because it is not used as often as but in spoken conversation, yet is perceived—whether consciously or subconsciously—as the more formal conjunction. Use it when you want a very strong (and ever-so-slightly old-fashioned) sense of but-ness.
So What?
I like to use the common conjunctions (and, but, so, and or) to begin sentences, and often to begin paragraphs. Just as it does within sentences, the conjunction but expresses contradiction when it opens sentences. It tells the reader, “Pay attention: I’m about to say something in this sentence that goes against what I just said in the preceding sentence.” This creates suspense in the reader’s mind, especially if the writer had expressed the preceding sentence with a strong degree of conviction.
The conjunction so is similar to but, in that its role as a sentence opener serves a very similar function to its role as a sentence combiner. Whether it acts as a sentence starter or a sentence combiner, so introduces some effect or outcome to that which precedes it. But sometimes, it takes on an additional meaning when it kicks off new sentences. Simply put, so, when introducing a sentence or paragraph, can mean, “with that in mind,” or “to sum.” It tells the reader, “Okay, now think about everything I just said and move forward into this new discussion with that in mind.” It also retains its cause-and-effect quality, in the sense that it says, “Because of all that I just said to you in the previous paragraph(s), the point I am about to make is applicable and worth consideration.” The conjunction, so—a two-letter word—says all that? You’d better believe it!
So, when considering conjunctions as sentence or paragraph starters, make sure to consider that their functions, while similar to their mid-sentence applications, can change slightly. Did you see how I used so to open this paragraph? In that context, it means, “with the preceding paragraph’s content in mind.” Also, notice how so there is followed by a comma. That comma shows a pause of emphasis. It invites the reader to pause to notice that appearance of so. This pause invites the reader to reflect, for one moment, on the previous paragraph and its implications. It sets so apart, showcasing the point that so there means, “What I just said is important to what I’m about to say; don’t drop it just yet.”
This comma after the conjunction is a frequent, but not ubiquitous, practice for using conjunctions as sentence starters. How do we know when to place a comma and when to omit it? Recalling the article on the comma rule of thumb, your best guide for deciding whether to place that comma is to listen to the sentence. Read the sentence aloud, and make sure to read it naturally, in the same way that you would speak it. If you hear yourself pause after the opening conjunction, then place a comma. If the 0pening conjunction runs into the word that follows it without any pause, do not place a comma. (Note: I find that so, when used to start sentences, is followed by a comma more often than and or but.)
Coming up: Yet More Sentence Starting Myths
Well, that’s it for this myth of grade-school English. So go forth, dear reader, and use those coordinating conjunctions for all they’re worth.
It’s time now to move on to Myth #3: “Never begin sentences with because.”
Here is the link to that article:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Myths We Learn in Grade-School English: True for Children, Not for Adults
"Stay away from the stove!"--Good advice for children, but not for adults.
So far in this series on “Myths We Learn in Grade-School English,” we have explored the myth of the run-on sentence, which erroneously states that all long sentences, simply by virtue of being long, are run-on sentences. This myth not only scares people away from writing cohesive, flowing prose, but also conceals the true identity of run-on sentences. (That is, writing two complete sentences with no punctuation to combine them.) Most often, people learn this misinformation from grade-school English teachers, usually at the elementary or middle-school level, but sometimes in courses as advanced as the high-school level.
But are those teachers wrong to require their students to avoid long sentences? If they are teaching at the high-school level, yes. Students should learn at the high-school level to write complex, flowing sentences. Students who do not develop these compositional practices in high school will struggle, both emotionally and academically, in college-level courses. And, if teachers find that communicating the difference between effective and ineffective long sentences is beyond their teaching capabilities, they should get out of the teaching business.
Elementary-school and middle-school teachers, though, are right to warn their students against excessively long sentences, although I wish they would not call such long sentences run-on sentences, since that misused term causes a great deal of confusion later on. These rules become myths only when they persist into adulthood. For grade-school students (particularly, grades 1-5), these myths are actually great advice, and for middle-school students (especially grades 6-7), they are still applicable. But, eventually, we must outgrow even some of the good rules we follow in childhood.
At this point, some readers may raise questions that go something like this: “But isn’t good writing the same for all ages? Why can’t we just learn the rules of effective writing when we are young, and follow them into adulthood?” Although it seems I have made things more complex for you, dear reader, this is not a matter of complex pedagogy. In the spirit of good old-fashioned common sense, here is an analogy, one I will reference throughout this series of articles: kids and stoves.
When we are young, say four years old, our parents would tell us, time and again, “Don’t touch the stove. Never turn the dial on the stove. STAY AWAY FROM THE STOVE!”
And of course they would not want us using the stove; at that age, we were not ready to use it. Chances are, we’d end up getting burned—without so much as a bowl of Chef Boyardee to show for our second-degree burns. “Don’t use the stove”—sound advice, at the time.
Now, what if you were to encounter a thirty-three-year-old man who refused to cook on his stove? His defense?—“No, I can’t do that. My mother told me never to go near the stove, under any circumstances.” I expect that you would find this fellow rather curious, at best. (This is clearly not the guy you want to bring home to meet your parents.)
It’s much the same for adults who still follow the writing rules they learned in grade-school. Yes, some of those rules still hold (for example, “Begin sentences with capital letters, and spell words correctly”), just as some moral or ethical rules we learn in childhood still apply (for example, “Avoid hurting others and starting fights”). However, rules like “Never cross the street,” or, “Do not touch the stove dial” disappear completely in adulthood.
Many of the rules, even those that still hold, change with time and with circumstances. Recalling one example from the previous paragraph, I try to avoid hurting others and starting fights—which was and still is sound advice. But if I see a child being attacked by a man, or if I see some defenseless person being physically victimized, the moral thing for me to do is to start a fight. For a capable individual to turn the blind eye in such cases would be reprehensible. As we grow, the absolutes we learn in childhood become gray; specifically, they become situational.
The rules of writing are the same. Believe it or not, there is a time to use the sentence fragment, even if we are told in high-school English (or even college English) that it is always wrong. (It’s called a stylistic fragment, and it should be used appropriately and sparingly. I will touch on this technique in a later article.) The best artists mind the rules, but sometimes they knowingly break them. Knowingly there is the key word.
Why Don’t People Grow out of the Myths of Writing?
Common sense and necessity teach us to use the stove. Similarly, experience teaches us that there is a time to stand up and fight to protect others. So why don’t we grow out of the myths of grade-school English, in the same way we naturally grow out of other absolutes we learn as children?
Well, let’s consider how we learned about the stove. As we grew older, we were able to watch how our parents or older siblings operated the stove as they cooked our Chef Boyardee. We noticed how they put the dial on Medium. We noticed that they were careful never to touch the eye, especially when it glowed red. (And, if they did, some odd word beginning with sh- and ending in a harsh -t would often follow.) We noticed that they would stir the food—and sometimes they even put us in charge of the spoon. Our teachers—the very same ones who had once told us never to use the stove—were there, showing us how to use it. The point that we should use the stove with adequate knowledge, and with adequate height, sinks in with time and familiarity.
Why doesn’t writing work this way? Well, for some people, it does. If you had parents who were professional writers—say, journalists or English professors—you probably learned how to use the stove. They probably made a point of showing you some of the finer points of compositional cooking, only a few years after you had learned not to go near the stove. Also, such parents might expect their children to begin formal writing at an early age, and to continue doing so through young adulthood. Such students handle college writing assignments as easily as most people breathe. It is a natural part of their lives, one that seems self-evident to them.
But, if you were raised in a household like mine, you did not learn the rules of advanced writing because no one was there to show you. My parents—intelligent people, quite proficient at their own trades—were not so well versed in writing. They themselves had never progressed past rules like, “Don’t write long sentences.” When it came to writing, they were still at a grade-school level simply because they had never been exposed to the rules of advanced writing.
Where were their teachers? Don’t junior-high and high-school teachers help us progress? Well, that depends. You’d be amazed if you knew how many high-school teachers I have encountered who think that run-on sentences are simply long sentences. Because many English curricula deemphasize grammar knowledge and embrace a whole-writing approach (that is, “Just read and write a lot and eventually good writing will just feel right”), many of today’s educators themselves do not know the rules—and much less, how the rules change from childhood to adulthood.
The other issue is that we often do not have the same teacher in high school that we had in grade school. If, for example, I taught English in a private school from Grade 1 to Grade 12, I would know to tell my ninth graders something like this:
Do you guys remember what I taught you in third grade about not writing long sentences? Well, I told you that because at that age you were not ready to write that way. Now you are ready. With that said, here are a few ways to write long sentences. . . .
More often than not, though, students do not keep the same teacher from elementary school to high school. Chances are, that teacher from early childhood is no longer around when the student reaches high school. She is no longer around to explain, for example, why she taught that long sentences are bad, nor is she present in these young adults’ lives to encourage effective, flowing sentences. That being the case, it is for the high-school or college-level educator (1) to be aware of the myth and the reasons that early childhood educators teach it, and (2) to dethrone the myth from its place as a set-in-stone absolute. The issue, in most cases, is that too many high-school and college-level educators do not realize how many of their students arrive in the classroom laden with myths—myths that were taught to them by people they trusted (namely, teachers from childhood) who expressed those myths as absolute truths. I think that one of the first things that must happen in any high-school or college-level English class is for those myths to be explained, and then promptly busted. We have too many adults running away from their stoves, when they should be cooking ravioli for themselves. The buck stops here: high-school English.
And, if it does not stop there, I make sure it stops in my college-level classroom. Many great student writers have come to me with horrible writing, not because they didn’t know the rules of writing, but because they were burdened with too many rules. And, the grade-school teachers who taught them those rules are no longer around (and, quite frankly, could stand to take a college-level writing course themselves). It’s just the new college student, alone in a new educational environment, dragging around 6.3 tons of writing no-no’s that no longer apply. My first job as that student’s English instructor is to look her in the eye and say, “Hey, you need to drop all of that. Stop killing yourself.” Oftentimes, that alone is all the student needs to write effective prose. (And, yes, there are also those students who come to me not knowing enough rules, and, even worse, there are those who know all of the wrong rules and do not know the real rules. Differentiating between these groups of students is critical to teaching English and writing.)
Further Reading
If this set of articles is your first encounter with someone dethroning these myths of writing, rest assured that I am not the first to address these issues. In his masterful book on effective prose, Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing, John R. Trimble includes a chapter entitled “Superstitions,” which addresses some of these myths I am discussing, and a few others. I suggest reading that chapter, and the entire book, if you are interested in freeing your writing and empowering your prose. In these articles, I have suggested books on grammar and punctuation. However, if you are looking for a book on effective, powerful writing, I can think of no better place to start than John Trimble.
Here is the link to the Amazon listing for Writing with Style:
Next up is Myth # 2: Never begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions like and, but, or so.
If you want to see that myth busted, I suggest clicking the link below and reading on:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Myths We Learn in Grade-School English: The Myth of the Run-On Sentence
Run-On Sentences: What They Are (And What They Are Not)
In this series of articles, I hope to dethrone some of the myths of writing that many of us learn in grade-school English. First up is the myth of the run-on sentence. We should begin by recognizing that there is an error called a run-on sentence. I will address that error shortly. First, though, I need to address the myth, written below.
Is Mr. Gump a run-on man, or just a man who runs a long way?
The Myth of the Run-on Sentence:
A run-on sentence is a long sentence. Any time you write a very long sentence, it is a run-on sentence. The notion of “run-on” describes the long nature of the sentence; that is, the long sentence runs on and on.
This myth needs to be busted right now. (Although, unlike the popular myth-busting television show, my myth-busting will involve neither exploding fuel tanks, nor handlebar-mustached bald men swimming with man-eating sharks.) Contrary to what we may learn from the teachers of early childhood, long sentences are not run-on sentences. Further, people should feel free to write long sentences, when doing so serves their purposes.
You may recall me mentioning that there is an actual error known as a run-on sentence. If that run-on error is not defined as a long sentence, then what exactly is a run-on sentence? Simple: a run-on sentence is writing two (or more) sentences together, with no punctuation or connecting words between them. They can be long, but they are often short.
One caveat: many teachers now have a new name for run-on sentences: fused sentences. Such educators use this term to avoid confusion with the term run-on sentence. While I do find the term fused sentence more specific and literal than run-on sentence, I stick with the original term when explaining this grammatical error to students and readers. Why? I hope to return the language to its correct usage. For me to change terms because other people create false definitions is for me to say, “It’s fine for people to get their terms wrong. If others (who don’t know what the heck they’re talking about) use the term run-on to mean long sentences, they should feel free to keep using it that way (that is, the wrong way). Instead of correcting the misuse of the term, run-on sentence, I will just step aside and use the term fused sentence.” Nonsense! It’s time to get our terms right. With that purpose in mind, here are the terms that I propose using for these writing practices:
Run-On Sentence: The writer runs two sentences together with no punctuation.
Long Sentence: A long sentence
How to Fix Run-On Sentences
What do run-on sentences look like? Here is an example of a true run-on sentence. Note its brevity:
I enjoy Facebook the status comments are fun.
Here are the two sentences, written separately:
1. I enjoy Facebook.
2. The status comments are fun.
This run-on (like most of them) is easy to fix. Dividing the parts into two separate sentences, although in some cases a legitimate option, is not the best way to fix this particular run-on. Think about it: the writer probably put them together because their messages are related. The writer should show that connection by combining the sentences using punctuation and/or combining words. Here are two quick ways to combine those sentences into a single statement:
I enjoy Facebook; the status comments are fun. (Semicolon—shows an unspoken connection.)
I enjoy Facebook because the status comments are fun. (Relative adverb “because”—shows effect-cause)
Or, you might try revising for more enriched sentence structures, like this one:
Facebook’s status comments are fun, so I enjoy using that site.
The combining word here is “so.” Particularly, “so” is what we call a “coordinating conjunction.” The other six coordinating conjunctions are and, yet, but, or, for, and nor. Always choose the best coordinating conjunction to express the relationship between the two related sentences.
Here is yet another way to express the cause-effect relationship between the two sentence parts:
Since its status comments are fun, I enjoy Facebook.
In the example above, I reversed the effect-cause order to create a cause-effect order. This reversal involved placing the relative adverb “since” at the beginning of the sentence. I could do this with the earlier example sentence involving “because.” Here is that sentence, reordered:
Because the status comments are fun, I enjoy Facebook.
Finally, if I want a bit of additional clarity, I might try something completely different:
I enjoy Facebook for its status comments, a feature that I find incredibly fun.
And so on. The sky’s the limit.
Comma Splice and Run-On Sentence: Essentially the Same Error
If you read my articles on commas, you may recall an error called the comma splice. A run-on sentence is quite similar to a comma splice, in that both involve running two sentences together without the adequate degree of connective material.
To review, a comma splice (literally, a “comma joining”) uses only a comma to connect two sentences. Here is an example:
I enjoy Facebook, the status comments are fun. (Comma Splice)
The formula for a comma splice looks like this:
(Sentence) + (Comma) + (Sentence) = Comma Splice
Similarly, a run-on uses nothing to connect the two sentences. It just runs them together:
I enjoy Facebook the status comments are fun.
The formula for a run-on sentence looks like this:
(Sentence) + (Nothing) + (Sentence) = Run-On Sentence
As the examples above demonstrate, the comma splice and the run-on sentence are very similar. In fact, they differ only by one comma. For this reason, I consider the comma splice a special type of run-on sentence. The key to addressing both of these issues is simply knowing that you need more than a comma—and, of course, more than nothing—to combine two full-blown sentences.
Here are some options:
1. Semicolon (;) (This shows an unspoken connection and creates a slightly longer pause than a comma.)
Example Sentence: The term, fused sentence, is specific; I still prefer run-on sentence.
2. Comma + Coordinating Conjunction:
The Seven Coordinating Conjunctions: and, but, yet, so, or, nor, for
Example Sentence: The term, fused sentence, is specific, but I prefer run-on sentence.
3. Relative Adverbs and Pronouns (sometimes with commas, sometimes not)
Some Relative Adverbs: because, since, although, though, which, while, etc.
Example Sentence: While the term, fused sentence, is specific, I prefer run-on sentence.
4. Semicolon + Conjunctive Adverb + Comma
Some conjunctive adverbs: however, thus, therefore, hence, moreover, furthermore, etc.
Example Sentence: The term, fused sentence, is specific; however, I prefer run-on sentence.
A note on conjunctive adverbs: Use semicolon + conjunctive adverb + comma formations when combining two large or impacting sentences, especially in formal writing. Use them when you are trying to express a point of some gravity, to make the reader pause between the sentences and say, “Oh, the writer’s about to drop something heavy on me. I’d better pay attention.” Think of these conjunctive adverbs as emphatic versions of coordinating conjunctions. For example, the conjunctive adverb however serves much the same function as the coordinating conjunction (but); however, the conjunctive adverb is stronger—more emphatic—than the coordinating conjunction. It makes for a stronger break in the sentence structure. When you need to place extra emphasis on the but-ness of a sentence, make sure to use however.
5. In some cases, specialized punctuation works. For example, in cases where you are making a statement that expresses equal identity or renames the thing being discussed, try a colon.
Example: Here’s the problem with run-on sentences: too many people don’t know what the heck they are.
This is to say . . .
The problem with run-on sentences = too many people don’t know what the heck they are.
(Note on colons: I think of the colon as the equal sign of writing. Heck, they even look a bit alike. If that analogy works for you, then feel free to use it.)
Is There Any Truth in the Myth?
Long sentences are not run-on sentences—fair enough. But can’t a long sentence still be bad? Isn’t there a point where a long, meandering sentence loses your reader’s interest, making him feel that he is being drawn into an endless vortex of words, one that spirals ever away from the core content of the sentence, where the poor reader, by the end, feels like he would be better off reading, say, a good science-fiction novel (like Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon—one of the most fascinating, and horrifying, visions of humanity’s future), since he feels that your writing leads him down a linguistic rabbit hole into some other world of meaning, in the very same way that this sentence (the one you are finishing now) does?
Sure. This happens with excessively long sentence structures, especially those that lack unifying elements, like the sentence above. Even so, writing lengthy sentences is a matter of style—not a matter of grammar. It is a matter of knowing your audience. For example, if I was writing a handout on verbs for fifth graders, I would not want to use terribly long sentence structures. I would stick with short, to-the-point statements. But to use those same sentence structures when writing a tutorial for my college composition students would be to insult my readers’ intelligence. When making decisions about sentence length, do not think in terms of right and wrong; think instead in terms of effective and ineffective, appropriate and inappropriate.
Sentence length is not only a matter of audience, but also of the writer. Most elementary-school teachers forbid children from attempting long sentences because those children lack the control (and the attention span) to be able to compose long sentences that are cohesive, or even readable. Like the child who cannot yet operate the stove, the fledgling writer cannot yet handle long sentences. Children should first master the essentials of short sentences (subjects, predicates, and basic content) before moving on to expressing long, complex notions.
Still, when does long become too long? Is there a standard maximum length for sentences? If so, where do we draw that line? Should we figure that all sentences should remain between one and five lines long? Should we say that a sentence taking up an entire paragraph is too long? Should we set any limits at all?
You tell me. Consider the following sentence, taken from Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Is it effective? Despite its great length, does it flow well? Does it keep you reading?
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are), and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
MLK: A great American civil-rights leader, but also a great American writer.
With the exception of the first line, that paragraph is one sentence. Stunningly powerful, isn’t it? Think about the elements that keep the reader on track. Do you see any repeating patterns? How might such patterns function to unify the sentence? Also, does the unity of the sentence’s content (what it says) reflect the unity of the sentence’s style (how it says it)? Since King is talking about the notion of having to wait, do you think he might be trying to make the reader wait for the end of the sentence? Why might he do this? These are all points of consideration.
Still, I wonder how many would write “run-on error” beside this sentence? I’d like to think not too many, although people—even some English teachers—surprise me. If MLK had taken that approach, we would not have this impacting, moving sentence. I am glad he ignored the conventional wisdom of grade-school English and chose effective writing instead. We should do the same.
Are there times, though, when the conventions of grade-school English are good? Are the teachers of our early childhood right to teach the myths of grade-school English? The next article, “True for Children, Not for Adults” answers these questions—and more. Stay tuned.
Works Cited
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. Clayborne Carson.New York: Warner Books, 1998. 188-204.
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
Myths We Learn in Grade-School English: Introduction
Have you ever heard any of the following rules for writing?
- Do not write long sentences. Those are run-on sentences.
- Never begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions like but or and.
- Never begin sentences with because.
- Do not use the personal pronoun you in serious writing.
I expect that if you learned these rules, you heard them from a trusted teacher, probably when you were young. If you are still trying to follow these rules, you probably get the sense that following them is often unrealistic—and even damaging—for your writing. You feel a profound sense of relief whenever you write informal, personal prose, if only for the reason that you are able to ignore these rules and write like yourself. You get the sense that journalists and award-winning authors have found some secret way around these rules, for such expert writers break these writing taboos quite frequently—and to great effect. You have an overwhelming sense that there is a bigger, better world of writing, but you have an equally large sense that you can never enter that world.
Fret no more, dear reader. In this series of articles, entitled, “Myths We Learned in Grade-School English,” I hope to free your writing process of these pseudo-rules, learned from those who are trained to teach writing to children—not to adults.
I call such rules myths (and not lies or untruths) because like myths of old, they contain some truth, although they are not to be considered wholly or absolutely true. Of course I know that there is no man who was invincible with the exception of his heel (Achilles); however, I do find some truths within this fiction. Achilles’ myth teaches, for example, that overestimation of oneself leads to loss, and that everyone—no matter how great—has some weakness. The myth of the Garden of Eden expresses a truth about humans’ desire to seek knowledge, even (or perhaps especially) when it is forbidden. The myth of Icarus communicates the devastating outcome of arrogance and overreaching ambition.
Similarly, the fictions we learn about effective writing in grade-school English class contain some kernel of truth. However, these myths are too often considered absolutes, and instead of being instructive, they become stumbling blocks to effective writing. Although perfectly acceptable for eight-year-old children, many of the writing practices we learn from the teachers of childhood should change as we develop, both as writers and as people. To stay in the confines of these pseudo-rules is the equivalent of a thirty-four-year-old man entering the Tour de France on a pink kiddy bike with training wheels and handle-tassels. Like the hindered (and somewhat curious looking) cyclist, you will not go very far in your writing if you continue to practice the conventions of childhood.
So, are you interested in knowing the truth behind these rules, and knowing why so many grade-school teachers express them as absolutes? Would you like to drop these myths from your writing process so you can write with a liberated, unfettered mind?
If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” then these articles are for you. The first article, “The Myth of the Run-On Sentence,” covers one of the most common writing myths learned in childhood.
Here is a link to that article:
Christopher Altman, a community-college composition specialist, is passionate about bringing the art of effective writing to average, everyday Americans. He has published work in the field of medieval literature, and has authored a book on advertising language entitled, Telling the Truth to Deceive: How Advertisers Manipulate the English Language. Mr. Altman is an assistant professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.
