Says David Owen, in "The Objectively Objectionable Grammatical Pet Peeve/A semi-attentive investigation into a confounding sentence type" (The New Yorker).
He actually is stating a rule. It's just a very general rule and it has a very general exception. He just can't force writers to follow that rule, and he's written a long article railing against one very particular type of variation from natural spoken-English word order:
[P]eople nowadays seem more likely than ever to begin sentences with appositives or similarly irritating clauses or phrases—as in this triple punch, from the Washington Post...
A husband of 28-years, now he was a widower. A father of two college-age boys, one was dead while the other was recovering from his own gunshot wound. A man of faith, he was burning at God for letting tragedy strike.
A century or so ago, as near as I can tell, no one wrote like that. Then something happened. What?
It doesn't so much matter why it happened — it seems to have begun as a way to insert additional information into newspaper articles. What matters is noticing when you're doing it and cutting it out.
Reading about Owen's pet peeve, I run into my pet peeve, the word "garner":
The other day, as a test, I picked up the top book on a pile of mysteries that my wife was about to return to the library—“Entry Island,” by Peter May—and found one after flipping through it for a minute or two: “A lonely boy trapped in the body of a man, Norman had only found company in a world he created himself on his ceiling.” There’s one in the author’s bio, too: “One of Scotland’s most prolific television dramatists, May garnered more than 1,000 credits over a decade and a half spent as scriptwriter and editor on primetime British television.”
It's not Owen writing "garner," though. It's May (or whoever wrote May's bio). He hit Owen's pet peeve and mine in the same damned sentence.
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38 comments:
It's a long way from Thurber's article on the perfect infinitive after a past conditional.
One sentence corrected:
He was the father of two college-age boys; one was dead while the other was recovering from his own gunshot wound.
The WaPo made the horrible mistake of starting three sentences in an identical, attention-noticing way. That doesn't make the structure universally wrong.
Even Hemingway broke from subject-verb-object. You proved that a week or so ago.
A clause corrected:
Norman found company only in a world he himself created on his ceiling
====
Not:
Norman had only found company in a world he created himself on his ceiling
The rules for spoken English are looser because we don't have time or opportunity for reflection. We speak on the fly, often beginning a sentence without a clear idea of how we're going to end it. Too, some things are just pleasing to the ear despite not being strictly correct. The rules for written English are stricter because those excuses aren't available.
But the end-goal for both is the same: clear communication.
A husband of 28-years, now he was a widower.
A father of two college-age boys, one was dead while the other was recovering from his own gunshot wound.
A man of faith, he was burning at God for letting tragedy strike.
The writer is attempting poetry, using parallel wording to create a rhythm. But they fail because the writing is indistinct. All of the sentences are comma splices that grate on the ear. And it doesn't help that the first sentence is unclear--is he 28 years old? Or was he married for 28 years? You can figure it out from context, but when you first hit the sentence, you have to pause to wonder. The next two sentences hold together better, but the parallel wording makes you stumble anyway, carrying that first mistake through the rest of the paragraph.
"May garnered more than 1,000 credits"
This is fine, an appropriate use of "garner."
WWYD
I understand Owens complaint about leading appositives. I'm certainly guilty of it. Yet Owens give us examples and then coming out of the examples he gives us this: "A century or so ago, as near as I can tell, no one wrote like that." Now I'm confused.
The Yoda rule, it this?
A lonely boy trapped in the body of a man, Norman had only found company in a world he created himself on his ceiling.
Several aspects of this sentence are confusing.
-----
Is the reader supposed to think of Norman as a boy or as a man?
The syntax indicates that Norman is a man now, but when Norman had been a boy, then he had found company in a world on his ceiling.
However, the common sense indicates that he found that company on the ceiling when he was a lonely boy. If so, then, the verb tense had found seems to refer confusingly to some earlier time.
-----
The word only is placed immediately before the verb found, although it modifies the following phrase in a world.
Misplacing the word only is a very common syntactical mistake.
-----
The phrase trapped in the body of a man should be removed from the sentence.
Norman had been such a lonely boy that he had found company only in his world on the ceiling.
Perhaps Norman now is a boy trapped in the body of a man, but that is a separate concept that should be addressed in a separate sentence.
A century or so ago, as near as I can tell, no one wrote like that.
That's not an appositive, but he still wrote that sentence in basically the way that he's complaining about. Did he do that ironically?
He doesn't seem to recognize any difference between rhetoric and conversation.
And finally, a century ago, James Joyce published Ulysses. Don't tell me that people didn't write in weird, self-conscious ways back then.
May I objective to the word "nowadays" in writing? I don't mind someone saying it, but "nowadays" doesn't belong in text. Just my two cents.
The passage quoted contains one of my own pet peeves - misplacement of the word only.
The correct phrasing would be "Norman had found company only in a world he created himself on his ceiling."
The reasoning is that the word only should appear directly before the word or phrase it modifies. Norman did not only find company in that world; presumably he found comfort, interest, etc. But he found it only in that world.
Writers are treating their openings like carryon luggage. Readers, in the role of TSA agents, have to quickly make out what they’re looking at. But, because carryon is not behind a paywall, writers are packing everything up to an including the proverbial kitchen sink. In the time of “safe spaces” the situation is rising to intolerable levels.
I think it was Orwell who said, "Words are the currency of thought."
This is the primary purpose of writing anything, from a grocery list to an epic novel: to make the thoughts clear to a reader. The "rules" do not matter as much as this simple truth, and anyone putting words together ignores this at his peril.
My experience is that most people are not particularly good at picking the wheat from the chaff and have a difficult time clearly saying what they intend to say. It is perfectly fine to assume that a reader is smart and will understand clear writing. It is not fine to assume the reader is a psychic and will understand whatever thought is being conveyed without a mutual understanding and respect for convention.
>Ann Althouse said...
Reading about Owen's pet peeve, I run into my pet peeve, the word "garner"<
One of the great mysteries of the blogosphere is why you, a logophile, have yet to come to an understanding of the difference between 'garner' and 'get' - something most any dictionary can teach you in a couple of sentences.
A husband of 28-years, now he was a widower.
A father of two college-age boys, one was dead while the other was recovering from his own gunshot wound.
A man of faith, he was burning at God for letting tragedy strike.
The three constructions are not parallel.
The second sentence's structure is different from the other two sentences' structures.
"And finally, a century ago, James Joyce published Ulysses. Don't tell me that people didn't write in weird, self-conscious ways back then."
"People" didn't; James Joyce did.
"Norman had been such a lonely boy that he had found company only in his world on the ceiling."
Then his stinky little sister put vaseline in the glue pot.
"Several aspects of this sentence are confusing."
I don't think so; I think you're reading too much into the sentence. I read it as a description of a grown man who remains as he was as a child, emotionally immature, a man who had always been lonely save for the solace of his imaginary world.
"Is the reader supposed to think of Norman as a boy or as a man?"
The reader (to my view) is supposed to see Norman as a grown man who is lonely and emotionally immature.
"Norman had been such a lonely boy that he had found company only in his world on the ceiling."
Your rewrite lacks mystery, missing the subtle undertones of the author's phrasing. The author's phrasing leads us to read on, to wonder and learn more about Norman. Your rewrite is bluntly descriptive; it tells us who Norman is and does not allow for Norman to be revealed to us.
""May garnered more than 1,000 credits"This is fine, an appropriate use of "garner.""
Is there a metaphorical storehouse of "credits" somewhere? No. It's a silly use of the word. It's an effort to vary the vocabulary but without any spoken-word sensibility or ear for whether an unusual word is doing something worth doing.
I suspect you have no ear but just look up the word in "Webster's" dictionary and conclude that it isn't incorrect and actively misused.
Just remember, the whole point of my concern about "garner" came from its being a running joke at Meadhouse after we noticed how often Jeb Bush used it.
"One of the great mysteries of the blogosphere is why you, a logophile, have yet to come to an understanding of the difference between 'garner' and 'get' - something most any dictionary can teach you in a couple of sentences."
Read what I've written and ponder the great mystery longer and you may one day understand. Meanwhile, enjoy your encounter with "Webster's" and good luck trying to write.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Robert Cook!
What nuance of meaning is contained in "garner" that justifies writing “One of Scotland’s most prolific television dramatists, May garnered more than 1,000 credits over a decade..."?
A fluent, native speaker of English would never *say* that. Only an awkward person trying to sound smart would speak words like that. Normal people might say "earned credits." The whole sentence is a mess. If you were trying to speak the facts you see there, how would you say it? The whole thing is such awkward junk it's hard to unravel it to the point where you can say it like a normal person. That's a writing problem!
Lem Former Twitter Aficionado said...
Writers are treating their openings like carryon luggage. Readers, in the role of TSA agents, have to quickly make out what they’re looking at. But, because carryon is not behind a paywall, writers are packing everything up to an including the proverbial kitchen sink. In the time of “safe spaces” the situation is rising to intolerable levels.
Clarifying and worth a repost...
My vote is that paragraph sounded fine.
"A fluent, native speaker of English would never *say* that. Only an awkward person trying to sound smart would speak words like that."
Thank you for crystallizing my recurring objection to bad scientific writing, by the way.
Somewhere along the line, someone takes these people aside and tells them to make their writing incredibly stilted, because great formality confers great seriousness. At least I assume someone did, resulting in lab reports with phrases like, "as it can be seen utilized here."
In a comment, I asked the student to imagine she was talking with a classmate who hadn't done the experiment: Would she ever speak the phrase, "as it can be seen utilized here"?
For my trouble I received an e-mail about how hurtful that comment was.
>Ann Althouse said...
""May garnered more than 1,000 credits"This is fine, an appropriate use of "garner.""
Is there a metaphorical storehouse of "credits" somewhere? No.<
Of course not. But then, you are, disingenuously, not looking beyond the "storage" sense in order to bolster your "point" in this discussion.
>I suspect you have no ear but just look up the word in "Webster's" dictionary and conclude that it isn't incorrect and actively misused.
Read what I've written and ponder the great mystery longer and you may one day understand. Meanwhile, enjoy your encounter with "Webster's" and good luck trying to write.<
Seems you haven't lost your well-known superciliousness, either. (I've won local travel writing prizes and have been published, if you care to believe it.)
>Just remember, the whole point of my concern about "garner" came from its being a running joke at Meadhouse after we noticed how often Jeb Bush used it.<
Could be. Then it progressed into your repeated equating of "garner" and "get" - the instances of which I unfortunately failed to garner and store over the years.
>What nuance of meaning is contained in "garner" that justifies writing “One of Scotland’s most prolific television dramatists, May garnered more than 1,000 credits over a decade..."?<
The elements of assemble, collect, gather, with effort, over time - all or one, take your pick. All part of the uniqueness of "garner. None of which are implied in "get." Again, the dictionary, which you are suddenly eschewing for purposes of your retort.
Eg.,
"I get a birthday present on my birthday."
"He garnered praise for his achievements over the course of his career."
Anyway, do what you wish with your misapprehension of the word. No one really cares; it is merely notable.
Go here for further discussion of Owen's article : https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=57642
A regular reader of paragraphs, something I never noticed.
I don't disagree with Owen's point that the three sentences in the example begin with appositives or similarly irritating clauses or phrases. But I'm with Mike S.: that second sentence is beyond irritating, it's an abomination.
"Norman had been such a lonely boy that he had found company only in his world on the ceiling."
Is Norman on the ceiling walking about with comrades in an inverted, imagined world?
Or, is Norman living in a projected reality created by maps, pictures, aircraft models he had thumb-tacked to the ceiling above his repose on the bed?
If I remember my 9th grade Latin, some of this seems to be an attempt to revive the ablative absolute. "Heavy rain falling, I stayed home."
I think you can lay the blame for this on several factors, not the least of which is the continual dumbing-down of the curricula at all levels of schooling.
Time was, you were taught Latin and Greek, plus things like formal rhetoric. You were taught to think about what you were saying, and how to express yourself with clarity. You were provided ample opportunities to stand up and use those tools in debate and argument. Most people today would be entirely unarmed, going into a formal argument with your average 19th Century educated adult. I shudder to think what a hash any of the "great debaters" like Lincoln or Douglas would make of a modern politician.
Because this sort of thing isn't taught, people don't appreciate it. At. All.
You can tell a good deal about the quality of someone's thinking from the manner in which they express themselves. It's not always the clarity and simplicity of what someone is saying, either--Think of how often we're overawed by the man or woman using great big words in beautiful confections of verbiage. The way we've all been conditioned, we think that if it sounds smart, then it is smart. Which it very often isn't.
I have to blame a lot of the teachers we've all had; our host finds the use of the word "garner" irritating and somewhat offensive. I can understand that point, but I see the issue pointing deeper in to other issues, like the way we're taught. Who, precisely, decided that repetition was a bad thing? Why is it that we were taught never to use the same word to describe something more than once in a sentence or paragraph? Is that not... Arbitrary? And, do we not "get away" with that, only because we're speaking and writing English, with its rich vocabulary of borrowed words for the same damn things?
There are a lot of annoying affectations in the language, most of which are artifacts of some wannabe idiot trying to display their erudition "back when". You try to overcome all those things you've been taught, down the years, and you're going to find it damned difficult because it's all there, enshrined in what you read every single damn day.
There's a thing in language, where you start copying the accents and usages of those around you. Termed "code-switching", they usually use it to discuss how minorities are forced to go back-and-forth between their own pidgin vernacular and that of the larger and more dominant society around them. Same thing goes on with regards to this issue; you're mimicking what you're reading, and what you're reading has been gaining cruft for a long damn time. Everybody writes funny because everybody they read has been writing funny; it's a self-reinforcing vicious circle of literate convention. Teachers tell you how to write because they want you to fit in; you think you're fitting in, but all you're really doing is repeating stylistic error and perpetuating it all.
I think we could be doing a better job of teaching people how to write and speak; the formal conventions and mechanics of all that are a woefully neglected subject, in these sadly diminished days.
The key to whether appositives are "good" or "bad" seems to be whether you immediately know who the appositive refers to as you read it (before going beyond the appositive to discover the subject of the sentence). If you do, then it isn't confusing.
So they are generally ok in a eulogy because most sentences are about the deceased, so you immediately know the appositive is about the deceased.
When the subject is simply "he" or "she", the appositive is usually ok too because the use of the pronoun implies the reader already knows the subject of the sentence. In fact, it can be good writing because the subject is old news and is better shunted to later, whereas, the appositive is usually new info.
The problem comes when you don't know who the appositive applies to, so you have to hold interpretation of the appositive in abeyance until you gather information from the rest of the sentence. Then, the appositive imposes too high a burden on the reader, and they can be confusing.
R.C. Belaire's link (https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=57642) is helpful here. It finds a lot of appositives when the subject is a pronoun. "I should note that in most (though not all) of the cited examples, the initial appositive modifies a pronominal subject." In Robinson Caruso, almost all the appositives have the subject "I", because the book is largely in the first person. In a biography a lot of sentences are about the subject of the biography, so appositives are easy to understand. In history, authors spend long stretches talking about the actions of a single person, so they are ok there too (the Gibbons examples).
"Is there a metaphorical storehouse of "credits" somewhere? No. It's a silly use of the word. It's an effort to vary the vocabulary but without any spoken-word sensibility or ear for whether an unusual word is doing something worth doing. I suspect you have no ear but just look up the word in "Webster's" dictionary"
Totally missed the scolding earlier today! Mea culpa!
Anyway, I didn't realize "spoken-word sensibility" was the universal criterion for good prose, or that garner was "unusual". Happy to start the new year with proper instruction. But garner exists for a reason, and sometimes works. Yes, it often grates, but sometimes it doesn't. Irritation is just another form of linguistic confirmation bias.
Advice about writing is usually wrong.
For example, research papers authors are often advised to put the surprising/important part of the sentence at the end. The logic being that this is what's likely to enjoy elaboration next, and proximity helps with that (and perhaps that skimmers gloss over the beginning of long sentences). Is it even >80% likely that this ordering is best? No one knows.
The first-sentence apositivers are probably trying to lead w/ interesting detail to get you interested in the man before boring you with his name. I had the same thought that as Gerda - you had better know to expect a description of someone if you're going to be untroubled by apositive-first.
Ice9 is right about 'garner', obviously. Perhaps 'accumulated' would be a less triggering substitute for things earned in small chunks over time.
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