| You are here: | About>Education>Grammar & Composition |
![]() | Grammar & Composition |
Growing Up With an Editor"What most writers need," said long-time New Yorker journalist Lillian Ross, "is not another writer but an editor--someone to talk to about their work, someone capable of giving guidance and help without getting in the writers' way." If you're lucky, you may have the opportunity to be guided by a professional editor--that is, an experienced wordsmith who communicates with writers honestly and patiently to help them do their best work. Most of us, however, have to recruit our editors from among the ranks of good-hearted amateurs--colleagues, teachers, family members. Regardless of our editor's experience and professional status, knowing how to work with her and not against her is one of the most valuable lessons an aspiring writer can learn. In his article "Let Us Now Praise Editors" (Salon.com, July 24, 2007), Gary Kamiya says that learning how to be edited is just as important as learning how to edit. It "teaches you a lot about writing," he says, "about distance and objectivity and humility, and ultimately about yourself." Kamiya's experience as both a writer and an editor has taught him that both jobs are demanding, sometimes exasperating, but in different ways. In a particularly memorable passage, he compares "the exchange between writer and editor" to the "process of growing up": The act of writing is godlike, omnipotent, infantile. Your piece is a statement delivered from on high, a pronouncement ex cathedra, as egotistical and unchecked as the wail of a baby. Then it goes out into the world, to an editor, and the reality principle rears its ugly head. You are forced as a writer to come to terms with the gap between your idea and your execution--and still more deflating, between your idea and what your idea should have been. In a similar spirit, biographer Charles J. Shields says, "You can’t be thin-skinned when a wiser, more experienced writer or editor shows you how to make a sentence stronger, or how to cut the fat from a page." For Shields, the notion of growing up with an editor is more than a figure of speech. As he tells us in "The Editor of the Breakfast Table," his first editor was his own father, a journalist who wanted him to learn how "to accept being edited . . . because everyone who succeeds as a writer gets edited." Both Kamiya and Shields remind us that a demanding yet sympathetic editor (teacher, colleague, parent, or professional) deserves our gratitude. Shields says, "Someone taking the time to give you the benefit of their expertise isn’t (as I thought my father was doing) finding fault with you, or proving that you’re not a good writer. It’s a rite of passage into the profession. Be glad--you’re on your way." In Kamiya's words, "Someone is noticing. Someone is reading. Someone cares." More About Editing: Wednesday May 7, 2008 | permalink | comments (0) Exercising at Grammar & CompositionWith final exams approaching, a little exercise may be in order. Here at About Grammar & Composition, tucked away among the ads (also known as "sponsored links" and "offers"), you'll eventually find several review exercises and quizzes on a variety of topics. Here are some of our more popular pages:
And here's a tip for instructors who would like to share these exercises with their students--or for anyone who would like to cut through the site's promotional clutter. Near the top of almost every page on About Grammar & Composition, you'll see a small printer icon with the message "Print" or "Print this Page." If you click on it, a fresh version of the exercise or quiz should appear--one that contains no ads, sponsored links, or offers. Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate all of life's distractions so simply? Monday May 5, 2008 | permalink | comments (0) Why Should We Study English Grammar?
If you're reading this page, it's a safe bet that you know English grammar. That is, you know how to put words together in a sensible order and add the right endings. Whether or not you've ever opened a grammar book, you know how to produce combinations of sounds and of letters that others can understand. After all, English was used for a thousand years before the first grammar books ever appeared. But how much do you know about grammar? And, really, why should anybody bother to learn about grammar at all? Knowing about grammar, says David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Cambridge University Press, 2003), means "being able to talk about what it is we are able to do when we construct sentences--to describe what the rules are, and what happens when they fail to apply." In the Cambridge Encyclopedia (one of our Top 10 Reference Works for Writers and Editors), Crystal spends several hundred pages examining all aspects of the English language, including its history and vocabulary, regional and social variations, and the differences between spoken and written English. But it's the chapters on English grammar that are central to his book, just as grammar itself is central to any study of language. Crystal opens his chapter on "Grammar Mythology" with a list of six reasons to study grammar--reasons perhaps worth pausing to think about.
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language." If that sounds a bit too lofty, we might return to the simpler words of William Langland in his 14th century poem The Vision of Piers Plowman: "Grammer, the ground of al." More About Grammar:
Image: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, second edition, by David Crystal (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Friday May 2, 2008 | permalink | comments (0) First Aid for Writers: Jargon BustingSome refer to it as gobbledygook. Others call it gibberish, drivel, claptrap, nonsense, or mumbo jumbo. Almost a century ago, in his lecture series On the Art of Writing (reprinted by Dover in 2006), Arthur Quiller-Couch called it "sham prose"--or jargon. "Jargon stalks unchecked in our midst," the British author said to his Cambridge University students in 1913. "It is becoming the language of Parliament: it has become the medium through which Boards of Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms, express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought and so voice the reason of their being." And this pompous and hollow language is still the enemy of good clear prose. The two main vices of jargon, said Quiller-Couch, are "that it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech" and "that it habitually chooses vague woolly abstract nouns rather than concrete ones." Fortunately, in lecture five of what he called his "course in First Aid to writing," he offered a few "rough rules" for combating jargon. Worst Offenders For further instruction in first aid for writers, visit "Murder Your Darlings": Quiller-Couch on Style. More Advice for Writers: Wednesday April 30, 2008 | permalink | comments (1) Language Facts & Figures: Writing, Technology, & TeensThis month's roundup of facts, figures, and wild hunches is based on a study, released on April 24, of the effects of electronic communications on the writing habits of teenagers. Conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in partnership with the College Board’s National Commission on Writing, the study is based on a recent survey of 700 "nationally representative children," ages 12 to 17, and their parents. Here are the statistical highlights.
You'll find the full report at the website of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Do you think any of the survey's findings reveal anything that we didn't already know? Please share your thoughts by clicking on the comments button below. And please visit our Grammar & Composition Forum for past editions of Language Facts & Figures. Monday April 28, 2008 | permalink | comments (0) Horrible Words (British Edition)"Words that are horrible to one writer may not be horrible to another," says John Grimond in The Economist Style Guide (Profile Books, 2005). "But if you are a writer for whom no words are horrible, you would do well to take up some other activity." You know the kinds of words he means. Not "bad" or insensitive or politically incorrect words, but those that are thoughtlessly used, abused, and overused. Words that may sound fresh at breakfast but by supper time have gone stale. Included on my list of horrible words are absolutely (as a synonym for yes) and transparent (in its trendy managerial sense). Also the verb reinvent, the interjection whatever, and the noun parameter (when used by anyone except a mathematician). As Grimond says, "No words or phrases should be banned outright from appearing in print," but we should recognize that some words are likely to annoy at least some of our readers some of the time. Though intended for a British audience, Grimond's list may include a horrible word or two of your own:
By clicking on the comments button below, tell us which horrible words appear on your list. Advice About Writing: Friday April 25, 2008 | permalink | comments (8) Thingamabobs and WhatchamacallitsWhen the Fairy Godmother casts her spell in Disney's Cinderella (1950), she sings: It will do magic,Forget "Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo." Our magical word of the day is "thingamabob"--a Swiss Army knife of a word that means, well, just about anything we want it to mean. Not very helpfully, The American Heritage Dictionary defines "thingamabob" as (no joke) a "thingamajig." Some call the "thingamabob" (or "thingamajig" or "whatchamacallit") a placeholder; others prefer the term tongue-tipper. Regardless of the label, it's a word used by speakers to signal that they don't know or can't remember a more precise word for the thingie--whatever it may be. Some placeholders, such as "doodad" and "whatsit," are widely known. Others carry a more regional flavor: "gubbins" is favored by the British, "yoke" by the Irish. And some of the most peculiar tongue-tippers fall into the mysterious realm of family slang. Here, for your delectation, is a list of placeholders that we've collected over the years:
More Words About Words: Wednesday April 23, 2008 | permalink | comments (3) Bow Wow, Ding Dong, & Yabba Dabba Do: The Origins of LanguageWhat was the first language? How did language begin--and where and when? Until recently, a sensible linguist would likely respond to such questions with a shrug and a sigh. (Many still do.) As Bernard Campbell states flatly in Humankind Emerging (Allyn & Bacon, 2005), "We simply do not know, and never will, how or when language began." It's hard to imagine a cultural phenomenon that's more important than the development of language. And yet no human attribute offers less conclusive evidence regarding its origins. The mystery, says Christine Kenneally in her new book, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Viking, 2007), lies in the nature of the spoken word: For all its power to wound and seduce, speech is our most ephemeral creation; it is little more than air. It exists the body as a series of puffs and dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. . . . There are no verbs preserved in amber, no ossified nouns, and no prehistorical shrieks forever spread-eagled in the lava that took them by surprise.The absence of such evidence certainly hasn't discouraged speculation about the origins of language. Over the centuries, many theories have been put forward--and just about all of them have been challenged, discounted, and often ridiculed. Each theory accounts for only a small part of what we know about language. Here, identified by their disparaging nicknames, are some of the oldest and most common theories of how language began.
As Peter Farb says in Word Play: What Happens When People Talk (Vintage, 1993), "All these speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of present knowledge about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species." But does this mean that all questions about the origin of language are unanswerable? Not necessarily. Over the past 20 years, scholars from such diverse fields as genetics, anthropology, and cognitive science have been engaged, as Kenneally says, in "a cross-discipline, multidimensional treasure hunt" to find out how language began. It is, she says, "the hardest problem in science today." In a future article, we'll consider more recent theories about the origins and development of language--what William James called "the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought." More About Language: Monday April 21, 2008 | permalink | comments (2) Fifty Classic Essays
"Read, read, read," was novelist William Faulkner's advice to young writers. "Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it." Though some might question the merits of absorbing "trash," what's indisputable is Faulkner's injunction to read voraciously--to learn the craft of writing by studying how professional writers "do it." The one bit of advice we might add is to read the old as well as the new. Old writers (and yes, even dead writers) can teach us some new tricks. With this thought in mind, we've collected 50 classic essays and speeches from such well-known British and American writers as Jonathan Swift, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Orwell, Zora Neale Hurston, and Robert Benchley. Each is a "classic" in the sense that the writer's words live on both for what they have to say and for the way they say it. Here are just a few of the enduring essays in our collection:
Read, read, read these classic essays--and then, as Faulkner also advises, "write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window." Image: William Faulkner (1897-1962) Friday April 18, 2008 | permalink | comments (0) A Time for MetaphorsIf you put any trust in proverbs, you already know that time heals, steals, and flies. And you're equally aware that time is something we all make and take, keep and save, spend, waste, and lose. Habitually, almost without thinking, we explain our relationship to time through metaphors--lots of different metaphors. In More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (University of Chicago Press, 1989), George Lakoff and Mark Turner remind us that "Metaphor isn't just for poets; it's in ordinary language and is the principal way we have of conceptualizing abstract concepts like life, death, and time." So whether we're spending it or running out of it, we deal with time (and time deals with us) metaphorically. Here, if you have the time to spare, are a dozen timely metaphors.
Time is indeed a "versatile performer," as Franklin P. Jones once observed. "It flies, marches on, heals all wounds, runs out, and will tell." More About Metaphors: Wednesday April 16, 2008 | permalink | comments (0) Display Latest Headlines | powered by WordPress |
|
All Topics | Email Article | Print this Page | | ![]() |
| Advertising Info | News & Events | Work at About | SiteMap | Reprints | Help | Our Story | Be a Guide |
| User Agreement | Ethics Policy | Patent Info. | Privacy Policy | ©2008 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. |


