Is there really an optimal way of writing well for everyone?

In time, each one of us develops a uniquely personal way of putting our thoughts in writing, whether in simple compositions like e-mails, memos, and letters or in creative work like short stories, plays, or  novels. But many of us sometimes can’t help asking ourselves this question: Is the way we write correct and optimal? Or are there better and more efficient ways of getting the writing task done?

Theoretically, there should be an optimal way of writing well, and scores of books have been published over the years making all sorts of prescriptions to achieve this. Knowing how idiosyncratic writers and the writing craft are, however, I really don’t think it’s advisable to prescribe a specific approach to writing for everyone. Obviously, what works best for the writer personally is the best approach for him or her, and I believe that a much better measure of the effectiveness of that approach is the quality of the written output along with how fast it is completed.

In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in October last year, “Should writers finish their compositions first before editing?”, I articulated my thoughts about the writing craft along this line. It was in response to an e-mail I received from a member of Jose Carillo's English Forum who wondered if she was on the right track with the way she  writes. I am now posting that essay here as food for thought for everyone who writes, particularly those similarly beset with doubts about how they do it. (February 26, 2011)    

Should writers finish their compositions first before editing? 

We write the way we write, of course, and that unique way—for better or for worse—often becomes integral to what we might call our personal writing style. But are certain ways to write better than others?

Forum member Miss Mae was wondering if she was on the right track with the way she writes, so she sent me the following note by e-mail:

“One writing quirk I had was that I cannot write without writing down first. That is, literally penning my thoughts on paper before producing a final copy. It was laborious, all right, but what can I do? It was what worked for me in my high school and college years.

“I have had to adjust, though, when I began working. I was able to, but I developed another problem. Mindful of my grammar incompetence, I can’t help fussing over what I’ve just written. I learned somewhere that that should not be the case. Writers must finish their compositions before editing. Is that always true?”

My answer to Miss Mae probably would also apply to many others in a similar predicament:

Oh, Miss Mae, don’t you fret about your tendency to fuss over what you’ve just written! It’s a perfectly normal thing to fuss over your prose whether you are supremely confident or somewhat doubtful of your grammar competence. So long as you don’t obsessively and perpetually fuss over every little detail to the point of not making any progress at all—like the neurotic Mr. Monk, the hilariously perfectionist private detective in that TV series—you are OK. This is because when we write, we’re actually attempting to capture and share some of our thoughts for an audience, whether for just one reader or—in the case of writing for publication—a few thousands or millions of them. And we obviously want our writing to be not only grammatically and semantically flawless but clear, concise, readable, and convincing as well. Writing for an audience is nothing less than a public performance, so it’s but natural for us to put our best foot forward when doing so.

I must also tell you that except perhaps for short, pro-forma memos, letters, or instructions, it simply isn’t the norm for writers to be able to finish writing a composition first before editing it. From what I’ve seen over the years, in fact, most writers are like you and me—they correct or edit themselves along the way as they write. I don’t know of any writer who can complete a full-fledged essay, feature article, or opinion piece of sizable length in his or her mind before sitting down to write it, much less put it to paper or word processor without letup from beginning to finish. Anybody who tells you that he or she can routinely do this is either not telling the truth or is nothing less than a genius with photographic memory and total recall to boot.

I think it’s the lot of most writers, whether amateur or professional, to write in fits and starts. They first take down notes about their impressions and initial ideas, juggle and juxtapose them into tentative statements in their heads or on paper, then start organizing and logically linking them into sentences, paragraphs, and entire compositions. Experienced writers are able to do this at a faster clip, of course, but they generally do so in the same way that you described your own writing process: literally pen thoughts on paper first and fuss over them before producing a final draft. In short, Miss Mae, your writing process isn’t quirkish at all but is actually the norm for most writers. And with more experience and practice, you’ll find this writing process becoming much easier, simpler, and faster—sometimes even a joy—to execute. (October 9, 2010) 

-------------------

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 9, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

How the perfect tenses situate events as they unfold in time

We all know that in tandem with the past participle of a verb, the auxiliary verb “have” inflects or changes into the forms “has” or “had” or pairs off with the auxiliary verb “will” to denote the present perfect, past perfect, or future perfect. But precisely when should a sentence be constructed in a particular perfect tense, and what are the specific timelines for the three perfect tenses?

In the essay below that came out in my English-usage column in The Manila Times last February 19, 2011, I discuss those timelines for the perfect tenses along with the various ways that these tenses can be used to describe events and occurrences as they unfold in time. I trust that these discussions will be a welcome review for those who need to fortify their mastery of this very important aspect of English grammar. (February 21, 2011)

  

The specific timelines for the perfect tenses

Last week, to help dispel a reader’s lingering confusion over their usage, I discussed the role of the auxiliary verbs “has,” “have,” and “had” in forming the present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect tenses. Now I’ll discuss the specific timelines for the perfect tenses to show how these auxiliary verbs actually work to denote them.

The present perfect. This tense, which uses the auxiliary verb “has” (singular) or “have” (plural) with the past participle of the verb, works in at least six ways to define events and occurrences as they unfold in time:

 (1) To express a state or condition that began in the past and leads up to the present: “The accomplices have kept their vow of silence for decades.”

 (2) To express habitual or continued action: “She has worn anklets since she was ten.”

 (3) To indicate events occurring at an indefinite time in the past (used with the adverbs “ever,” “never,” and “before”): “Some people have never gone to college due to poverty.”

 (4) To indicate that an action happened only recently (used with the adverb “just”): “My brother has just finished college.”

 (5) To indicate that an action happened more than once, but it’s not important or necessary to know exactly when: “She has seen that movie a dozen times.”

 (6) To indicate that something that happened in the past continues to influence the present: “The El Niño phenomenon has altered weather patterns very seriously. “

The past perfect. This tense, which uses the auxiliary verb “had” with the past participle, is used to describe (1) an action completed before another past event, and (2) an action that began and ended at some unspecified time in the past.

In case 1, the past perfect component is paired off with at least one other past action in the simple past tense, as in “Rowena had left to work in Dubai when her scholarship was approved.” Note that this past perfect sentence consists of two separate actions, one in the past perfect and the other in the simple past.

In case 2, the present perfect doesn’t require the explicit use of another action completed before another past event, as in “Rowena had left” and “ The heavy rains had lasted a month.” In such past perfect sentences, precisely when the action took place is unspecified or unknown. When it is known, the sentence takes the simple past tense, as in “Rowena left yesterday” and “The heavy rains stopped last night.”

The future perfect. This tense, which pairs off the past participle with the auxiliary verbs “will” and “have,” is used in sentences that consist of an action that continues into the future and another action or point of time—expressed in the simple present tense—in which the action culminates or ends. There are four possible scenarios for this:

(1) A future action that will be completed before another time or event in the future, as in “I will have taken the board examinations by 2012.

(2) An action or condition that will continue up to a certain point in the future, as in “The nurse will have worked in Bahrain for six years by the time she retires.”  Take note that in such sentences, an existing condition remains unchanged until a specific future time.

(3) A future event that will occur before a specific time or action in the future. “By the time the irrigation project is completed, its original cost estimate will have ballooned almost five times.”

(4) A future event whose completion is more important than how long it will take to complete it. “By the time she finishes high school, her parents will have spent a little fortune for her tuition fees.” This use of the future perfect dramatizes the importance of the end-point or result of a process rather than the process itself. (February 19, 2011)

-------------------

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 19, 2011 © 2011 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The proper way to construct sentences for reported speech

Constructing sentences for reported speech or indirect speech, which is what most everybody does to tell other people about what someone has said, might seem like a very simple thing to do, but it isn’t. Indeed, except when direct quotes are used or when the reporting verb is in the present tense, it requires some grammar savvy and quickness of mind to put the reported clause—the action we are talking about—in the proper tense and form. We need to apply what’s known as the normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech, and this rule needs thorough mastery before we can put reported clauses in the proper tense and form correctly all the time and with minimum effort.

A few months ago, I had occasion to discuss the normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech when a Forum member expressed perplexity over the particulars of its use in a movie dialogue. The discussion was in a two-part essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in August last year, “The normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech.” I am now posting that essay here in my blogspot for the benefit of those who might likewise need a refresher on the subject. (February 12, 2011)

The normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech 

Part I:

The following very interesting question about reported speech—admittedly a grammar Waterloo for not a few English-language writers and speakers—was e-mailed to me by Mark L. last weekend:

“Just one question on a grammatical concept that I find so difficult to answer:

“In the movie The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock sees this guy walking. She stops her car and asks, ‘Where are you going?’

“The boy replies, ‘To the gym.’

“And the boy continues walking.

“Sandra gets out of the car, catches up with the boy, and says, ‘You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?’

“Was she right using ‘were’ instead of ‘are’?”

Here’s my reply to Mark:

Yes, the Sandra Bullock character in that movie was right in using “were” instead of “are” when she said, “You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?”

To understand why the past tense “were” has to be used instead of the present tense “are” in that line of dialogue, we need a reacquaintance with the grammar of reported speech. What’s at work here is the so-called normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar. 

Reported speech or indirect speech is, of course, simply the kind of sentence someone makes when he or she reports what someone else has said. For instance, a company’s division manager might have told a news reporter these exact words: “I am resigning to join another company.” In journalism, where the reporting verb is normally in the past tense, that statement takes this form in reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join another company.” 

Depending on the speaker’s predisposition or intent, the operative verb in utterances can take any tense. However, when an utterance is in the form of reported speech and the reporting verb is in the past tense, the operative verb of that utterance generally takes one step back from the present into the past: the present becomes past, the past usually stays in the past, the present perfect becomes past perfect, and the future becomes future conditional. This is the so-called normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar. 

Now let’s review how this rule applies when that division manager’s utterance is reported in the various tenses: 

Present tense to past tense. Utterance: “I am resigning to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join another company.” 

Past tense to past tense. Utterance: “I resigned to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he resigned to join another company.” (The past tense can usually be retained in reported speech when the intended act is carried out close to its announcement; if much earlier, the past perfect applies.) 

Present perfect to past perfect tense. Utterance: “I have resigned to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he had resigned to join another company.”        

Future tense to future conditional tense. Utterance: “I will resign to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he would resign to join another company.” 

We can see that the reported speech for the utterance of the Sandra Bullock character falls under the first category above—from present tense to past tense. So it’s correct to use the past tense “were” instead of “are” in that reported speech: “Sandra gets out of the car, catches up with the boy, and says, ‘You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?’” 

Now, having explained the workings of reported speech and how the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies in that utterance of the Sandra Bullock character, I’ll be discussing in the next essay a slight grammatical wrinkle in that line of dialogue. (August 21, 2010)

Part II:

In the preceding essay, I explained the workings of reported speech and how the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies in this reported speech of the Sandra Bullock character in the movie The Blind Side: “Sandra gets out of the car, catches up with the boy, and says, ‘You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?’”

In answer to the question of reader Mark L. on whether the Sandra Bullock character was right in using “were” instead of “are” in her directly quoted utterance, I said yes, she was right. I explained that under the normal sequence-of-tenses rule, when the reporting verb for an utterance is in the past tense, the operative verb of that utterance generally takes one tense backward from the present to the past—in this case from “are going” to “were going.”

I qualified my answer, though, by saying that there’s actually a slight grammatical wrinkle in the tense usage of that line of dialogue, and this is what I’ll be discussing now in this week’s column.

Here, again, is that directly quoted utterance of the Sandra Bullock character:

“You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?”

The first sentence, “You said you were going to the gym,” is definitely reported speech, with the reporting verb “said” in the past tense. So it’s definitely correct for the operative verb “are” in Mike’s original utterance to take one tense backward to the past tense “were.” From the Sandra Bullock character’s standpoint, Mike made that statement in the past and she is, in effect, reporting his statement. The normal sequence-of-tenses rule should then apply to Mike’s action—it should be rendered one tense backward (from “you are going” to “you were going”) in the reported speech.

But the use of “were” is a little bit problematic in the third sentence of the Sandra Bullock character’s utterance, “Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?” This is because unlike the first sentence, this third sentence doesn’t have a reporting verb. In fact, it’s not really reported speech but an interrogative statement, so it’s not grammatically valid for Mike’s action to take one tense backward in that sentence; another thing, Mike’s statement is reported just a few seconds after it was uttered (the intent of “going to the gym” is therefore still very much in Mike’s mind). Strictly speaking, then, the verb “are going” shouldn’t take one tense backward but stay as is, “Tell me, Mike, why are you going to the gym?”  

The scrupulously correct rendering of that utterance should therefore be as follows: “You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why are you going to the gym?"

Why then did the dialogue use “were” in that third sentence?

Well, in real life, people can’t be expected to be so scrupulously grammatical when they talk, unlike the grammarian in me doing this grammar analysis. Indeed, we really shouldn’t expect people to be so finicky with their English grammar as to shift from reported speech in the first sentence to simple declarative in the third when referring to precisely the same statement. The normal thought process of people in day-to-day situations is actually much more linear and uncomplicated than that, so it’s likely that the scriptwriter of that movie (and probably Sandra Bullock herself while delivering her lines) thought it best to use “were” in both sentences for naturalness and consistency’s sake.

We should keep in mind, though, that when our English is being formally tested and our future might well depend on our score in an exam, we need to be much more exacting with our grammar than that movie dialogue. (August 28, 2010)

-------------------

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, August 21 and 28, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The bare infinitive solution to some intractable sentence constructions

When composing sentences in English, we will sometimes encounter situations when our desire to be scrupulously grammatical in every respect could actually result in a stilted, awful-sounding sentence. This is particularly true when we use infinitive phrases in conjunction with perception verbs like “hear” and helping verbs like “make.” As we know, an infinitive phrase is an infinitive—a verb in the present tense that’s preceded by “to”—together with its modifiers, objects, or complements. But consider what happens when we use the infinitive phrase “to confess her guilt during the preliminary investigation of the murder case” with the perception verb “hear,” as in this sentence: “We all heard her to confess her guilt during the preliminary investigation of the murder case.”

From the looks of it, that sentence is grammatically perfect, but it certainly doesn’t read and sound right! The preposition “to” in the infinitive phrase “to confess her guilt during the preliminary investigation of the murder case” sticks out like a sore thumb in that sentence and spoils it structurally. Indeed, the best way to make that sentence read and sound right is to drop the “to” from the infinitive phrase altogether, as in this revised construction: “We all heard her confess her guilt during the preliminary investigation of the murder case.”

The dropping of the “to” in such sentences is what’s called the bare infinitive solution. In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in October last year, I discussed the specific instances when the bare infinitive becomes a must for straightening out certain types of sentences that just won’t read and sound well otherwise. (February 5, 2011)

When to use the bare infinitive and the full infinitive 

Take a look at these two sentences:

(1) “This section covers a breadth of important information that will help you tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam.”

(2) “This section covers a breadth of important information that will help you to tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam.”

Which of them is constructed properly—Sentence 1, which uses the bare infinitive “tackle” in the subordinate clause “that will help you tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam,” or Sentence 2, which uses the full infinitive “to tackle” instead in that same subordinate clause?

A member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum who calls herself Jeanne was curious if there’s a general rule for using the bare infinitive or full infinitive, so I made the following analysis of the two sentences as a basis for making that choice:

To simplify the analysis, let’s begin with Sentence 2. In that sentence, the italicized phrase “to tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam” is what’s called an infinitive phrase. We will recall that an infinitive phrase is simply an infinitive—a verb in the present tense that’s normally preceded by “to”—together with its modifiers, objects, or complements. In Sentence 2, that infinitive is “to tackle” and its modifier is the phrase “any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam.”

In Sentence 1, on the other hand, the italicized phrase “tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam” is what’s called a bare infinitive phrase. A bare infinitive phrase is one where the infinitive—“tackle” in this case—has dropped the “to.” The bare infinitive “tackle” in Sentence 1 works in conjunction with the helping verb “help,” and you can see that it has dropped the “to” from “to tackle” without messing up the grammar and semantics of the sentence. In fact, you must have noticed that Sentence 1 with the bare infinitive even reads and sounds better than Sentence 2 with the full infinitive.

But the big question is this: Is there a general rule for using bare infinitives or full infinitives?

To work properly or at least sound right, some sentence constructions using the infinitive phrase need to drop “to” or have the option drop it. This happens in two specific instances:

(1) When the infinitive phrase works in conjunction with such perception verbs as “see,” “feel,” “hear,” and “watch”; and

(2) When the infinitive phrase works in conjunction with such helping verbs as “help,” “let,” and “make.”

Sentence 1 with the bare infinitive “tackle” belongs to the second category, and it just so happens this sentence reads and sounds better than Sentence 2 with the full infinitive “to tackle.” Even with the full infinitive, though, take note that Sentence 2 also works properly and sounds perfectly.

But certain sentence constructions absolutely need to use the bare infinitive to work properly, like this one: “We saw the building collapse like a deck of cards.” When the full infinitive is used, the sentence sounds very awkward: “We saw the building to collapse like a deck of cards.” This construction should be avoided.

The bare-infinitive construction is also called for in the following sentence where the infinitive “to rise” works in conjunction with the perception verb “watch”: “They watched the young man rise spectacularly in the organization without making any effort at all.” Now see how awful and stilted that sentence becomes when it uses the full infinitive “to rise”: “They watched the young man to rise spectacularly in the organization without making any effort at all.”

Indeed, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for making the choice between using a full infinitive and a bare infinitive in a sentence. We ultimately just have to play it by ear. (October 2, 2010)

-------------------

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 2, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.