Jose Carillo on the English Language

Sunday, October 6, 2013

How to bring compositions to a proper, satisfying close

The following question was raised by a reader after I posted a four-part essay entitled “Basic and advanced techniques for doing paragraph transitions” in this blog last September 22, 2013: “If there can be ways to keep paragraphs flowing, how can writers properly stop them?”

I must say that this question puts the cart way, way before the horse. We really can’t talk meaningfully about how to end an article—much less take up specific techniques for such endings—unless we know the kind of article we are doing and how to go about writing it. I therefore replied to the question with an extended essay that takes up the four general forms of composition, namely description, narration, exposition, and persuasion; the six basic composition tools, namely definition, restatement, example, comparison, contrast, and cause and effect; various paragraph composition techniques; and options for bringing expository or persuasive compositions to a proper, satisfying close. I’m sure that everyone aspiring to write better, more readable, and more compelling compositions will find the posting instructive and greatly benefit from it. (October 7, 2013)

The craft of organizing and clarifying our thoughts in writing

I – The four general forms of composition

To put things in perspective, let’s first recall that the activity of organizing and clarifying our thoughts in writing is formally called composition, and that composition can take four general forms: description, narration, exposition, and persuasion. These are not mutually exclusive forms, of course; a particular composition can use any or all of them in combination.

As we all know, descriptive and narrative compositions are the simplest to do. It’s because they only require us to write about the things we have seen, heard, or felt and to just present them in a straightforward way to the reader. Falling under this category are written eyewitness accounts, testimonies, news stories, general feature articles, and travelogues. Our primary objective in writing them is simply to convey our information and our impressions to the reader. Once this task is done, we can stop without a formal conclusion; we can simply say “I’m done” or say nothing further. (In straight news stories, for instance, the inverted pyramid type of reporting allows the narrative to just trail off without a formal closing.)

In contrast, expository and persuasive compositions are much more complicated to do. To these categories belong essays, masteral or doctoral dissertations, interpretative or investigative reports, editorials and opinion pieces, court pleadings, advocacies, and position papers on debatable or controversial issues. In these types of writing, we need to explain more rigorously what’s in our mind, which could be a new idea or concept, a proposition, a theorem, or a stand on a raging issue. Our objective is not only to let the reader know what we know and think about the subject but to influence him or her to think or act about it our way. This is definitely a more exacting kind of writing, so we need to draw not only from our own stock of knowledge but also from the collective wisdom of other thinking minds—the familiar process that we know as research. Our goal is not only to make our point clearly understood and appreciated but, even more important, to make the reader accept that point and make it part of his or her own repository of stock knowledge and beliefs.

II – Writing the body of the composition

Even up to this point, it’s still too premature to talk about how to keep the paragraphs flowing in the composition and how to finally stop the flow. These are still a universe away, so to speak, for we still have to do the main business of writing the body of the composition. Indeed, ending it should be the least of our worries at this stage.

Now, if we are any good in our writing ability, we should be able to make short shrift of most descriptive and narrative compositions; competent newspaper writers, for instance, manage to come up with news and feature stories day in and day out despite their punitive deadlines. But coming up with readable and convincing expository or persuasive writing is an altogether different matter. This is because it requires the writer not just to share information and impressions with the readers but also to convert their lack of knowledge or their reservations or doubts about the subject under discussion into certainty, understanding, and belief. This is a much more demanding writing enterprise, one that requires most, if not all, of what I’d call the primary arsenal for doing compositions, namely definition, restatement, example, comparison, contrast, and cause and effect.

Let’s do a quick rundown of these basic composition devices:

Definition. This composition device clarifies or explains a concept or term for the reader, depending on our assessment of the level of knowledge or understanding of the reader about that concept or term. If the concept or term requires an extended definition, we may use the following methods to clarify it: (a) comparison-contrast, (b) description, (c) exemplification, and (d) negation.

Example:

Definition of psychology by the American Psychological Association (APA)

Restatement. This composition device states an idea in another way to heighten the reader’s understanding of it.

Example 1:

Excerpt from “Locating an Arabic Translator” by Donald D. Groff, Salon.com Travel and Food Advisor

Example 2:

Quoted from a newspaper story

Comparison. This composition device examines similarities between two subjects to enhance perception and understanding about them.

Example:

Excerpted from “Powering Up for an Important Merger,” Accenture.com

Contrast. This composition device examines differences between two subjects to enhance perception and understanding about them.

Example:

From “Image Makers” by Michael Imeson, The Banker, February 5, 2007 issue

Cause and effect. This composition device examines particular effects or outcomes in relation to their possible causes. Generally, since causes are not always easy to identify, we often will need to speculate about causes rather than offer absolute answers when we use this composition device.

Example:

Excerpt from “Looks do Matter” by Daniel Akst, from Wilson Quarterly

Experimental exposition using the six composition tools. To give you an idea of how to use all six composition tools, I am posting in the Forum “On the Trail of Serendipity,” an essay that discusses an experimental essay that I developed based on this topic sentence: “Serendipity has shaped the life of the schoolteacher’s son more than he will admit.” Click this link now to read that essay.

III – Paragraph transition techniques

To ensure the smooth and cohesive flow of the ideas that we are presenting in an expository or persuasive piece, we need an adequate mastery of paragraph transitions—the craft of bridging a succeeding paragraph with the paragraph preceding it. I posted a four-part essay on this subject in the Forum last week, “Basic and advanced techniques for doing paragraph transitions,” and I presume that reading that essay was what prompted you to describe those techniques as “ways to keep paragraphs flowing.” If you still haven’t fully read or if you need to review the paragraph-transition techniques presented in that essay, click this link now; otherwise, you can proceed to the matter of properly stopping the flow of paragraphs—in short, how to end an expository or persuasive composition.

IV – When the time has come to conclude your composition

Let’s assume that your expository or persuasive article is now almost a done thing. You’ve been able to effectively bridge your paragraphs into a cohesive and convincing argument in support of your thesis, so you now think it’s time to end or conclude the article. Unlike a descriptive or narrative composition, however, you can’t leave an expository or persuasive composition on a lurch. You’ll surely infuriate and alienate your readers if you just say “I’m done” and blink off the page all of a sudden. Indeed, a good and effective expository or persuasive composition is one that its writer is able to bring to a compelling and satisfying close.

To get a good feel of compelling and satisfying closes, I suggest you do a focused, attentive reading of two full-length articles by two exemplars of the expository writing craft. The first is Joseph Epstein’s “I Dream of Genius” in Commentary Magazine and the second, Deborah Solomon’s “Inside America’s Great Romance with Norman Rockwell” in Smithsonian Magazine.

Here’s the one-paragraph conclusion to Epstein’s “I Dream of Genius”:

And here’s the two-paragraph conclusion to Solomon’s “Inside America’s Great Romance With Norman Rockwell”:

There are really no hard-and-fast formulas or firm rules for doing conclusions, but I’ll list below some often-suggested options for doing them:

1. Restate the thesis or the main points of your essay.

2. State the broader implications or significance of your thesis.

3. Present a culminating example that pulls all of your arguments together in support of your thesis.

4. Make an educated prediction or outcome based on the arguments you presented.

5. End with a well-stated, satisfying flourish that echoes the soundness of your conclusion.

For a comprehensive discussion of these options, I suggest you read and study the “Concluding Paragraphs” page of the Capital Community College Foundation’s Guide to Grammar and Writing. It covers most of basic things that writers need to know about the subject, so there’s really not much I can add to it without sounding repetitive. Take time to study and internalize its prescriptions. Once you’ve done so, you’ll be on your way to developing the knack for knowing precisely when to stop your paragraphs from flowing and for bringing your articles of whatever kind to a satisfying close for your readers.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Basic and advanced techniques for doing paragraph transitions

By this time most of us should already be familiar with the English paragraph and could whip up one or several of them with great ease. The general concept for the paragraph that we normally follow is, of course, that it’s a collection of sentences that all relate to one main idea or topic and that have unity, coherence, and adequate development. This particularly applies to the typical expository paragraph, which starts with a controlling idea that the exposition then explains, develops, or supports with evidence.

As we all know, however, not all paragraphs need a topic sentence; they could simply be indicators of breathing or structural pauses in narratives, dialogues, and explanatory statements that are marked for the purpose by a new, usually indented line (digital word processing, of course, now provides a stylistic device to even get rid of indentions, as in this very exposition that you’re reading now). Either way, paragraphs no doubt serve as functional transitions from one set of thoughts to another, and this is where many people—whether beginning writers or professionals who just want to set their thoughts down clearly and logically—get confused as to precisely how transitions between paragraphs should be done.

In “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions,” a four-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2006, I extensively discussed the various techniques that a writer can use to effectively bridge a succeeding paragraph to the one preceding it—a process that I explained works in much the same way as logically bridging adjoining sentences in an exposition. In this week’s edition of the Forum, I am all four parts of that essay for the benefit of those who wish to gain much greater competence and confidence in the paragraphing craft. (September 22, 2013)

Making effective paragraph transitions

Part I – Basic forms of paragraph transitions

Contrary to what some people think, making effective paragraph transitions is really not that difficult. This is because most of the familiar devices we use for linking sentences can serve as transitional devices for paragraphs as well. For instance, such linking words as “besides,” “similarly,” “above all,” and “as a consequence” can effectively bridge a succeeding paragraph to the one preceding it in much the same way that they can bridge adjoining sentences. It’s true that some experienced writers make it part of their craft to minimize the use of these highly visible paragraph “hooks,” but to the beginning writer, they are indispensable for interlocking paragraphs into logical, cohesive, and meaningful compositions.

Choosing a paragraph transition is largely determined by which of the following major development tasks the new paragraph is intended to do: (1) amplify a point or add to it, (2) establish a causal relationship, (3) establish a temporal relationship, (4) present an example, (5) make an analogy, (6) provide an alternative, or (7) to concede a point. Once a choice is made, it becomes a simple matter to find a suitable paragraph transition from the very large body of conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases in the English language.

Before discussing the major types of task-oriented paragraph transitions, however, let us put things in better perspective by first looking into two of the most basic forms of paragraph transitions. One way is to simply repeat in the first sentence of a succeeding paragraph the same operative word used in the last sentence of its preceding paragraph, as the word “process” does in this excerpt from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well:

The other basic paragraph transition form is substituting a synonym or similar words for the chosen operative word. For instance, in the passage above, we can use the similar phrase “this kind of review” instead to begin the second paragraph: “This kind of review can be done just as well over the phone as in person…” This transition may not necessarily be better than the first one, but it has the advantage of giving more variety to the prose.

Now we are ready to discuss the task-oriented paragraph transitions.

Amplifying a point or adding to it. If we need to elaborate on an idea at some length, we can effect the transition to a succeeding paragraph by using whichever of the following transitional words and phrases is appropriate: “also,” “moreover,” “furthermore,” “in addition,” “similarly,” “another reason,” and “likewise.”

Establishing a causal relationship. When we want to discuss the result of something described in a preceding paragraph, we can achieve a logical transition by introducing the succeeding paragraph with any of the following transitional words or phrases: “so,” “as a result,” “therefore,” “consequently,” “then,” and “thus.”

Establishing a temporal relationship. This is the easiest paragraph transition to make. We can make the desired chronological order by simply using the following adverbs or adverbial phrases to introduce the succeeding paragraph: “as soon as,” “before,” “afterward,” “after,” “since,” “recently,” “eventually,” “subsequently,” “at the same time,” “next,” “then,” “until,” “last,” “later,” “earlier,” and “thereafter.”

Presenting an example. For this purpose, we can achieve a quick transition by using the following words or phrases to begin the succeeding paragraph: “for instance,” “for example,” “in particular,” “particularly,” “specifically,” and “to illustrate.”

Making an analogy. By using such words as “also,” “likewise,” “similarly,” “in the same manner,” and “analogously,” we can make an effective transition to a succeeding paragraph that intends to make a comparison with what has been taken up in a preceding paragraph.

Providing an alternative. When alternatives to an idea presented in a preceding paragraph need to be discussed, we can introduce them in a succeeding paragraph by using the following transitional words: “however,” “in contrast,” “although,” “though,” “nevertheless,” “but,” “still,” “yet,” “alternatively,” and “on the other hand.”

Conceding a point. An effective strategy to demolish a contrary view is to quickly concede it in a paragraph introduced by such transitional words as “to be sure,” “no doubt,” “granted that,” “although,” and “it is true.” The rest of the paragraph can then present arguments to discredit the wisdom of that contrary view.

For more complex compositions such as essays and dissertations, however, we will usually need more sophisticated paragraph transitions than the conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases we have already taken up above. We will discuss them in detail in Part II of this essay.

Part II – Extrinsic and intrinsic paragraph transitions

Because of its nuts-and-bolts approach to the subject, Part I of this essay must have given the impression that making paragraph transitions is simply a mechanical procedure, a matter of just tacking on a familiar conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase between adjoining paragraphs. This, as we shall soon see, is not the case at all. It just so happens that conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases are the best starting point for discussing the subject, for they have a built-in and overt logic in them that can apply to a very wide range of situations. As we progress to the more complex types of compositions, however, we will need much less obtrusive and more elegant ways of bridging paragraphs into cohesive and meaningful compositions.

There are two general categories of transitions for bridging paragraphs: extrinsic or explicit transitions, and intrinsic or implicit transitions.

Extrinsic or explicit transitions primarily rely on such familiar introductory words as “however,” “therefore,” and “moreover” to show how an idea that will follow is related to the one preceding it. The various conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases that we already took up in the previous essay belong to this category.

Transitions of this type are very handy and give paragraphs very strong logical interlocks, but when overused, as in legal documents that employ long strings of “whereases,” “provided thats,” “therefores,” and “henceforths” to drive home a point, their prefabricated logic can become very distracting, annoying, and unsightly. This is why it is advisable to minimize their use in formal compositions. For academic essays and dissertations, in particular, the usual suggested limit is no more than one extrinsic transition for every paragraph and no more than three for every page.

Intrinsic or implicit transitions, on the other hand, make use of the natural progression or “flow” of the ideas themselves to link paragraphs logically. Instead of using the usual conjunctive adverbs or transitional phrases, they effect paragraph transitions through a semantic play on key words or ideas in the body of the exposition itself. A sentence that performs an intrinsic paragraph transition usually:

(1) repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph and makes it the takeoff point for the succeeding paragraph, or else

(2) uses a synonym or words similar to that key word or phrase to do the transitional job. Part I of this essay already gave examples of this type of paragraph transition.

At this point, we will now complete the picture by adding the pronouns “this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” and “it” to the list of basic implicit transitional devices, for these pronouns can often bridge adjoining paragraphs as effectively while minimizing the distracting overuse of the same nouns in the composition.

To better understand how intrinsic paragraph transitions work, let’s assume that we have already written the following first paragraph for an essay:

Now how do we make an intrinsic transition to the next paragraph of this essay?

The task, of course, basically involves constructing an introductory sentence for that next paragraph. We will now look into the various intrinsic transition strategies for doing this, from the simplest to the more complex ones.

Strategy 1: Use a summary word for an operative idea used in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

Strategy 2: Use the pronoun “this” for an operative idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

Strategy 3: Use the pronoun “that” for an operative idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

Strategy 4: Use a more emphatic transition by using “that” to intensify an operative word or idea used in the preceding paragraph.

Part III – “It,” “such,” and “there” as paragraph transitions

We have already looked into several extrinsic or implicit strategies for making a transition to a new paragraph from the one preceding it. All of these strategies begin the new paragraph with a sentence that either repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph, or else substitutes a summary word or pronoun such as “this” or “that” for that key word or phrase. This time we will look into the use of the words “it,” “such,” and “there” as devices for similarly making such paragraph transitions.

To illustrate how these words work as transitional devices, we will use the same prototype first paragraph that we used in the previous column, as follows:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”

Strategy 5: Use the anticipatory pronoun “it,” otherwise known as the expletive “it,” to begin the new paragraph. We know, of course, that many teachers of writing frown on this usage, claiming that it seriously robs sentences of their vigor. As the two examples below will show, however, this device can be very efficient as a paragraph transition:

or:

It’s true, however, that too many expletives in a composition can be very distracting, so we must use this paragraph transition device very sparingly.

Strategy 6: Use the pronoun “such” in the first sentence of the new paragraph to echo an operative idea in the preceding paragraph.

We must take note, though, that some grammarians find this use of “such” as a noun semantically objectionable. They would rather use “such” as an adjective or adverb to make such transitions:

or:

or:

For the same reasons that they shun the expletive “it,” however, many teachers of writing strongly caution against this usage, arguing that it encourages lazy writing. Thus, as a rule for short compositions, more than one paragraph beginning with “there” would probably be too much.

We will now go to another type of paragraph transition, one that exhibits both extrinsic and intrinsic properties. The most common transitional devices of this type are the prepositional phrases used to begin the first sentence of paragraphs that set off events by order of occurrence, or to indicate changes in position, location, or point of view. Typically, these prepositional phrases are introduced by a preposition, but unlike such usual stock transitional words or phrases as “before,” “after,” and “as a result,” they carry specific information about the subject being discussed.

Some examples:

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking the sequence of events: “At 8:00 in the morning…”, “By noon…”, “At 6:00 in the evening…”

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes in position: “At sea level…”, “Below sea level…”, “Above sea level…”

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes in location: “In Manila…”, “In Rome…”, “In London…”

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes of point of view in the same composition: “As a private citizen…”, “As a professional…”, “As a public official…”

To conclude our discussions on paragraph transitions, we will take up in Part IV the so-called “deep-hook” paragraph transitions—the type that blends so effortlessly and so unobtrusively with the developing prose that we hardly notice that the transition is there at all.

Part IV – Deep-hook paragraph transitions

We will now discuss “deep-hook” paragraph transitions—the type that subtly works out its bridging logic by making itself an intrinsic part of the idea being developed. Unlike the usual conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases such as “but,” “however,” and “as a result,” deep-hook paragraph transitions don’t call attention to themselves. They do their job so unobtrusively that readers hardly notice they are there at all.

To show what they are and how they work, we will use the same prototype first paragraph that we used to illustrate the other types of paragraph transitions:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”

Strategy 8: Use the last word or phrase of the preceding paragraph as the first word or phrase of the next paragraph, then make it the takeoff point for developing another idea. This is the simplest of the deep-hook paragraph transitions and is most effective when limited to two or three words, such as “Palawan” in this example:

When it uses too many words, this type of paragraph transition may still work but it tends to be repetitive and clunky.

Strategy 9: Use an earlier word or phrase in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph as the first word or phrase of the next paragraph, then make it the takeoff point for developing another idea.

Strategy 10: As the next paragraph’s takeoff point for developing another idea, use a word or phrase in a sentence other than the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. To establish its logic, however, this type of paragraph transition usually needs a multiple hook—perhaps two or more operative words or phrases from the preceding paragraph:

Here, the multiple hooks are “friend,” “several vacation resorts,” and “Visayas” from the second sentence of our prototype first paragraph, and “Palawan” from its last sentence.

Strategy 11: Use an “idea hook,” one that distills into a single phrase an idea expressed in the preceding paragraph, then use it as takeoff point for developing the next paragraph. This is the subtlest and most sophisticated form of paragraph transition of all, and its skillful use in compositions often indicates how good a writer has become in the writing craft.

Here are two idea hooks for a paragraph that will follow our prototype first paragraph:

or:

In practice, however, deep-hook paragraph transitions should not be used to the total exclusion of the conventional conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases. In fact, compositions that use a wide variety of paragraph transitions flow better and are generally more readable than those that use only one type.

This ends the four-part essay on “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions.” I hope that the discussion has clarified whatever lingering doubts you might have had about how to properly bridge paragraphs in your expositions.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

A trusty dictionary to build a zone of comfort around our word choices

We nonchalantly turn to our English dictionary for guidance when in doubt about our word choices and their meanings, grammatical function, spelling, pronunciation, origins, variants, or idiomatic and stylistic usage. This way, our trusty dictionary builds a comfort zone around our everyday word choices for our spoken and written English. In time, however, we might get a rough shock when told that we had misused, misspelled, or mispronounced a word or had used it to mean the exact opposite of what we wanted to say—like unconsciously using the verb “salvage” in the Philippines to mean “eliminate violently,” which, of course, is poles apart from its regular meaning of “rescue or save especially from wreckage or ruin.” It’s only then that we become aware that the English lexicon or the English dictionaries for particular parts of the English-speaking world could be using different English standards, the most common being American English and British English. And these different English standards happen to be significantly divergent in many aspects of the language—not enough to make us sound like a stranger among our own contemporaries perhaps, but just enough to make us painfully realize that we’ve been using a lexicon or dictionary in the wrong English standard all along.

This is the point of a true-to-life cautionary essay about English dictionaries that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2003. That essay later formed part of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge (Manila Times Publishing, 2009), and this time, I am posting here for the benefit of those intending to buy a new English dictionary or a replacement for one that happens to be in the wrong English Standard. (September 1, 2013)

Looking More Closely at Our Dictionaries

Several years ago, when I was still managing an English-language service, I chided one of my English-language tutors for insisting on using her 1980-vintage Webster’s Desk Dictionary as reference. The day before that, I had the 11th edition of The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in compact disc loaded on the computers in our office, and had asked my staff to delete from their hard drives all old dictionaries, particularly the British-English ones—the venerable Oxford English Dictionary included. I had also asked my staff to put away all of their print copies of the British-English Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture and the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, both of which had long ago been bought inadvertently for our use.

These acts may sound like that of an Anglo-hater gone mad, but I assure you that there was rhyme and reason to them: I wanted to thoroughly bring the small company’s English usage to the American English standard. I was therefore a bit miffed that one of my staff should cavalierly resist the standardization effort, claiming that she was more comfortable using her fading but trusted Webster’s. So, not entirely in jest, I gave her an ultimatum: keep that dictionary out of sight, or I would throw it into the dustbin myself.

My reason for banning British-English dictionaries and outdated American-English dictionaries from our office was dictated not by a sudden anti-British feeling or spite for things old, but by a very pragmatic consideration: the business depended greatly on the consistency of our English grammar, form, and semantics with American English as the standard. We could ill afford even the slightest variation in the spellings, meanings, and usage of the language, in our understanding of its idioms, and in its punctuations, prepositions, and conjunctions.

It had become clear to me that our mixed used of British-English and American-English dictionaries was responsible for not a few of our gaffes—some innocuous, some serious—like spelling the word “center” as “centre,” “check” as “cheque,” and “aluminum” as “aluminium”; thinking of corn” as “grain” instead of “maize”; using the wrong prepositions in sentences like “We live in a quiet street in the city and stay in a farm cottage at weekends” (that’s how the British say and write it, while Americans put it this way: “We live on a quiet street in the city and stay in a farm cottage on weekends”); and worse yet, using the wrong quotation marks and putting commas at the wrong places in quoted material.

A few months back, in particular, when a new editor of ours made a final copyreading pass on a long manuscript, she methodically replaced all of the double quotes with single quotes and took out all of the commas inside them and put them outside the quotes, British-style, like this: ‘This was the title of Paul Zindel’s book, “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds”, and I thought it rather queer.’ Before that, the sentence used American-English punctuation, like this: “This was the title of Paul Zindel’s book, ‘The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,’ and I thought it rather queer.” We were already way past our deadline, so we had to undo her well-meaning but ruinous work in white-hot haste.

Using a dictionary in the wrong English standard could, in fact, not only wreak havoc on our English but trigger needless controversies as well. Once, when a Filipino-Canadian reader of my English-usage column in The Manila Times used the word “miniscule” in a letter that I quoted in that column, the newspaper’s editor in chief told me in good-humored ridicule that I was foisting the wrong spellings of English words on readers. “‘Miniscule’,” he said, “should be spelled ‘minuscule’—with a ‘u’ and not an ‘i’.” When I stood my ground, he opened the Oxford English Dictionary for me and for all of the other editors who were present to see. To my dismay, it confirmed “minuscule” as the official spelling, making only a passing reference to “miniscule” as a variant.

Checking the online Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary later, I discovered that it was even harsher on “miniscule”: “a common spelling of ‘minuscule’ that is not correct.” To my relief, though, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language accepts the variant without comment, and I also took comfort in my electronic Merriam-Webster’s assurance that while “miniscule” continues to be widely regarded as an error, it now commonly occurs in published writing.

Most of the English dictionaries we had on hand, of course, whether using the American or British English standard, were products of great scholarship, but in that former language business of mine, there was a screaming need for only one English standard and only one English-language authority. We simply had to be scrupulously consistent and current in our English, and it just so happened that in the Philippines and in many parts of Asia, the standard for English is American English. We really had no choice then but to begin to live up to that standard by getting a good, up-to-date American English dictionary—and that, I am happy to say, was precisely what I had done.
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From Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Six informal prescriptions for better writing in English

Over the past 11 years, readers of my English-usage column in The Manila Times and, from May 2009 onwards, members of this Forum as well would ask me for advice on how to write more convincingly and readably in English. As might be expected, it wasn’t possible for me to give them a simple, easy-to-apply formula for achieving that goal. All I could really offer were bits and pieces of good-writing techniques—most of them I learned on the job as writer and editor—on top of a continuing stream of self-improvement lessons in English grammar and usage.

Looking back now, however, I find that I have already come up with at least six essays that perhaps could pass muster as an informal primer for improving one’s English writing. All of these essays first appeared in my column in the Times, with two of them later forming part of my book English Plain and Simple (2003) and two others of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge (2009).They are, in their order of posting below, “One Man’s Meat,” on books to read to help develop one’s communication skills in English; “The Fireside-Chat Technique,” on how to combat the fear and mental paralysis that often set in when one sets out to write; “Editing Oneself,” on how good writing is really the art of refining and doing a finer assembly of one’s own raw thoughts; “Giving a Touch of Authority to Our Prose,” on the crucial need to speak or write and act in keeping with who we think, presume, or pretend we are; “Is there really an optimal way of writing well for everyone?”, a reassurance that it’s perfectly normal to write in fits and starts and to fuss over and revise one’s work even if it’s still in progress; and “Writing to Hook the Reader,” on the writer’s primal obligation to catch attention and to keep the reader reading from beginning to finish. (August 24, 2013)

1 – One Man’s Meat

Dear Jay:

You asked me last week to give you advice on what books to read to help you develop your communication skills. I will tell you at the very outset that you will need to read and talk a lot to become a good communicator. Of course, to become one doesn’t mean that you have to be a certified bookworm or a fiery interscholastic debater. You could, in fact, be worse off aiming to be either. Many of the certified bookworms I know became so detached from reality that they started to talk to themselves, to plants, and later to things you couldn’t touch or see. And not a few of the spellbinding college debaters in my time had metamorphosed into lawyers who would argue anything and everything to death, or into politicians who are horribly long on rhetoric and promises but woefully short on tangible results.

I take it that you are probably a high school or college student or a professional having some difficulty in your written or spoken English. I would therefore presume that you still don’t have The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. It is a very slim, spare, but eminently useful book on the basic rules of English usage. My old third edition is always near me on my desk and I always consult it when I am suddenly seized by doubt about my English. (And there is a great bonus in reading the two co-authors, both consummate stylists of the English language: Strunk, a veteran newspaper editor, taught English 8 as a Cornell University professor, and White was one of his students. White went on to become one of the finest essayists in the English language. Many years later he updated his mentor’s English stylebook, which by then had already become a classic, and on the side wrote fascinating animal stories like The Talking Swan and—would you believe?—Stuart Little the mouse.)

But if you want your English prose to be more methodical, forceful, and stronger in logic, I would suggest you buy yourself a copy and read The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne. I discovered this highly instructive book only after college, and it is much to be regretted that, at a time that I needed it most, I did not have its nuts-and-bolts wisdom in doing the essay. I have yet to see another book on English writing that matches Payne’s very forceful and lucid discussion of “the hooks of language,” and how your increasing mastery of them can actually mark your progress as a writer.

Now, if you are already confident of your English but simply wish to develop a practical and saleable prose style in your business or career, get yourself On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Non-Fiction by William K. Zinsser. Many years ago this book knocked some sense into my head when I was rushing headlong on a purely literary route in my writing. Zinsser showed me that you need not be a Dylan Thomas or a William Faulkner to be understood, get published, and get income from English prose. The book, now on its 25^th edition, will be a great companion volume to The Elements of Style and The Lively Art of Writing. They are all you’ll really ever need for basic equipment to confidently navigate the terrain of the English language and travel in comfort with it.

These three basic readings in English writing will, of course, not be enough to make you an accomplished or great writer. They will only provide you with a wealth of devices to focus your thoughts and to edit and rewrite yourself. You can be sure that once you have read them and taken their prescriptions for good English prose to heart, you will already have won half the battle. To win the other half, of course, you will need further instruction on the writing craft. But you don’t have to go far to get that instruction. To me, the best English writing teachers have been—and still are—the masters of the writing craft. If you are serious about your English, I suggest that you seek them out every now and then, maybe just one at a time, for good measure.

Begin with Loren Eiseley. I have not found a better than this consummate stylist in showing the great lyric power that can be achieved with English prose. Try The Immense Journey, his maiden collection of essays about animal and human evolution, and make it a point to read his other works later. Then go back to E. B. White and read his very lucid and compelling essays on city life and its frustrations, such as One Man’s Meat and The Essays of E. B. White. After that, get a little bite (but not too much) of H. L. Mencken, that savage American iconoclast who, with incomparable wit and style, had mastered the art of taking the blinkers off people’s eyes. And then, to round off your readings on great English prose, read The Lives of the Cell by Lewis Thomas. This microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the essay can explain the intricate workings of life clearly and magically by getting under our skins with pleasure instead of pain.

This, Jay, is essentially the road I have taken to arrive where I am in English prose. It is admittedly just one man’s meat. It may be poison to some academics who may howl and rant against the poverty and eclecticism of my reading suggestions. Well, let them. I am too delighted to mind. You have asked me a question that I have wanted to answer for many years, except that nobody asked until you did. For this reason, I hope you will have as much pleasure in reading my answer as I am having now in writing it.

Joe Carillo

2 - The Fireside-Chat Technique

One major reason why even highly intelligent, well-educated people find it difficult to write is that they have not learned to get into the proper frame of mind for it. They stare at the blank paper or the blank computer screen with dread, wracking their brains to find that voice that can make their writing sparkle and become more persuasive, more convincing, perhaps more impressive. But more often than not, even the first line of what they want to say eludes them. This is because they cannot even form a clear mental picture of who they are writing to. The same people who can effortlessly carry on lively, brilliant conversations with their associates or deliver spellbinding speeches to huge audiences suddenly develop imaginary stage fright when writing, browbeaten into inaction by a faceless audience in their minds.

There is actually a very simple, straightforward technique to combat this mental paralysis. Just imagine an audience of one—only one. Forget about all the others who may have an interest in what you have to say; you will have time to bring them into the picture much, much later. Just focus on this audience of one—your boss, your staff, a critic, a lover, in fact anyone in particular—and imagine that he or she is right in front of you beside a nicely burning fireplace. For a reason that I will tell you later, make sure that it is a fireplace and not a living room sofa or dining table. Once this becomes clear in your mind, state your case gently, carefully answering every possible objection from your audience of one, clarifying when necessary but never arguing. When you are through, simply stop, then quietly ask your audience of one what he or she thinks. That’s all. No verbal pyrotechnics or literary flourishes. Just plain and simple talk.

You will be surprised by what the fireside-chat approach can do to your English writing, no matter what form it takes—memo, letter, essay, speech, or feature article. It will be virtually impossible for you to use legalese, gobbledygook, or wordy phrases. You will know it in your bones how ridiculous it is to use them. Just imagine how a sensible, intelligent person facing you will react to gobbledygook like this: “Sir, urban life in the context of the worsening population problem and traffic situation has taken its toll on me and my family. This realization has compelled me to make a major decision that I realize may affect the operations of the division whose management you have so kindly entrusted to me. Much to my regret, however, I am taking this occasion to inform you that my family and I have reached a decision to move...”

This is often the way memos on such sensitive subjects are written, but if you spoke this way during a fireside chat, your listener obviously will conclude that you have gone out of your mind. He may just decide to fire you ahead of your resignation, or shove you into the fireplace to put you back to your senses. Now you know why we need that fireplace there: it is not only for intimacy but for a quick reality check as well.

More likely, of course, when your thoughts are suitably tempered by the fireside ambiance, you will get rid of your legalese, gobbledygook, and wordy phrases and speak in plain and simple English, probably in this manner: “Sir, city life has become very difficult for me and my family. We can no longer bear the congestion and the traffic. I like my job and I am grateful to you for making me a division manager, but my family and I have decided to move...” Isn’t this the tenor of thought that you have been looking for all along? Imagining a fireside chat with an audience of one will not only make it possible but inevitable! This authentic human voice is really the only sensible way to talk about things that really matter to people. It is, believe me, also the most sensible and effective way to write to anyone other than yourself.

The fireside-chat technique actually uses the same formula that works so well in public speaking. You know the routine. Speak to only one person in the audience at any one time. Fix that person in the eye and imagine that you are speaking only to her and no one else, and once you have made your point, do the same to another person in the audience, and so on. Addressing all of the audience at the same time will require you to shift your eyes like crazy and focus on no one, making you look ridiculous.

So next time, when you find it difficult to write, simply use the fireside-chat technique. It may not make you a great writer, but it surely will make you a much better communicator than you are right now.
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From the book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language by Jose A. Carillo © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

3 - Editing Oneself

Like most people, it took me a long time to discover that what matters more in writing is not so much what we want to say but what the readers want to know. This, I think, is the biggest single reason why most of the writing we see around us is stiff, obtuse, and uncommunicative. Many writers forget or don’t even think about who their readers or listeners are. They do a secret monologue to themselves.

No wonder then that so many articles for academic journals just end up talking to the paper they are written on, and why many of the speeches we hear are so obtuse they might as well be delivered before an empty hall. Most of the writing that comes my way to be edited, in fact, shows very little evidence of honest-to-goodness effort to connect to the reader or listener. The research is often competent, but the prose almost always suffers from the dead weight of piled-up, undigested, and impersonally expressed information.

Take this lead sentence of a draft speech that I edited sometime ago: “Aldous Huxley wrote brilliantly about hallucinogens and their effect on creativity.” Of course, only someone who has read several books about Huxley, about hallucinogens, and about creativity can legitimately make such an audacious thesis—and the writer in this case obviously had not done so. What I did then was to recast the passage so the author could more modestly say it in the first-person singular and make the proper attributions: “A few days ago, I came across this brilliant but disturbing idea by Aldous Huxley, who wrote about hallucinogens and their effect on creativity. Let me share it with you and comment about it as I go along …” By doing so, I saved the writer from the embarrassment of making a tall claim totally outside his level of expertise.

This is actually a simple paradox: you become authoritative only when you write or speak as yourself. You can comfortably talk only about the things you really know, and only after you have declared the limits of your knowledge. Readers and audiences have a sixth sense for claimed authority that’s not really there, no matter if you have an MA or PhD tacked to your name. I therefore suggest you try this approach if you already have a draft of anything that’s bothering you for its dryness and stiffness, or for not being entirely original. See how this personal approach can perk up your prose and make it sound more interesting.

One final thought about self-editing: no draft is ever sacrosanct and final. There’s always a better way to say what you have written. With today’s word processors, it’s so much easier now to clarify prose that would otherwise mystify or confuse, or to support abstract concepts with telling details and picture words. You can easily transpose whole sentences and paragraphs, even turn your draft totally upside down until it captures precisely what you have in your mind. The mechanical constraints against total rewrites are gone.

And just when everything seems to be already in place, go over your draft once more. Knock off any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that doesn’t contribute to the idea or mood you want to convey. Stop only when you have whittled down your manuscript until it’s in danger of collapsing if you attempted to excise another word. In time, you will discover what many successful writers already know but rarely publicly admit: that good writing is really the art of rewriting, the art of doing brutal surgery on one’s own thoughts.
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From the book Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose A. Carillo © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

4 – Giving a Touch of Authority to Our Prose

“What a pair we make,” whispered the Prince of Wales to the pilloried presumptive royal knight William in the riotously charming 2001 film A Knight’s Tale, “both trying hard to hide who we are, both unable to do so.”

For those who have not seen the movie, the prince was constrained to shed off his disguise as a monk among the lynching mob to save the disgraced knight, who a few days earlier had spared him from the ignominy of certain defeat by refusing to joust with him in a tournament. The knight, through the machinations of a villainous duke, was thereafter unmasked as a lowly thatcher’s son masquerading as a member of royalty, thus leading to his arrest and humiliation on the pillory.

This medieval morality tale gives a powerful insight into the crucial need to speak and act in keeping with who we think, presume, or pretend we are. When we write, in particular, we must use language that conveys our thoughts in ways that validate and support our own self-concept or projection of ourselves. The wife of the Caesar must not only be chaste but must look and sound chaste. The professor must really look and sound professorial. The presidentiable must really look and sound presidentiable. To fail to do this in both civilized and uncivilized society—or not to have the wisdom or guile to at least sustain the charade—is to invite catastrophe, which is precisely what brought the presumptive knight to the pillory for public lynching.

Be that as it may, our most potent tool for becoming credible is what the linguists call suasive diction. This is using language to persuasively convey facts and the speaker’s feelings toward those facts. No instrument is more potent for doing that, of course, than the writer’s or speaker’s vocabulary. Our words define us. Whether armed with excellent research or dubious information, whether motivated by good or bad intentions, we can turn off the audience with awkward or leaden words, or hold it in thrall with engaging words and well-turned phrases. It is largely through word choice, in fact, that we establish our credibility and rapport with our audience. Short of coercion or the force of arms, rarely can persuasive communication take place without this credibility and rapport.

The most basic technique for suasive diction is the proper use of the pronouns of power, namely “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them.” These innocent-looking pronouns can confer a sense of authority—the illusion of authority, if you may—to our written or spoken statements far beyond what the first-person singular can give. The first-person “I” and “me” speak only for the solitary communicator; on the other hand, the collective “we” and “us” speak for an entire group or institution, which people normally take for granted as less fallible and less prone to vainglory than the individual—hence presumed to be more credible, more authoritative.

This, for instance, is why newspaper editorials routinely use the institutional “we” although they are usually crafted by a solitary writer not so high on the paper’s editorial totem pole; it’s also why tyrants and despots of every stripe and persuasion always invoke “the right vested in me by God/ law/ the sovereign people” to seize power or hold on to it, and why candidates of paltry qualification and virtue invariably invoke “the people’s great desire for change” or “divine signs in the sky” as their passport to public office.

Of course, “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them” work just as well as pronouns of solidarity. They foster a stronger sense of closeness and intimacy with the audience, and can more easily put audiences at ease with what the speaker has to say. In contrast, the first person “I” often comes across as too one-sided and self-serving, particularly in writing, while the second person “you” can sound too pedantic and intimidating. We stand a much greater chance of getting a fair hearing from those antagonistic to our position by making them think that we are actually on their side.

Even if we are good at using the pronouns of power and solidarity, however, we must not for a minute believe that they are all we need to achieve suasive diction. The facts supporting our contention must be substantial and accurate. Our opinions must be truly informed, not half-baked, and our logic must be sound and beyond reproach. Otherwise, we may have to put on an act like that of the seemingly enlightened prince in A Knight’s Tale, lying to the lynching mob about the parentage of William the thatcher’s son, then justifying that lie by nonchalantly invoking royal infallibility: “He may appear to be of humble origins, but my personal historians have discovered that he is descended from an ancient royal line. This is my word, and as such is beyond contestation.”

A big lie indeed, but said with the confidence of a true royal. (March 16, 2004)

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5 – 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 Forum member who wondered if she was on the right track with the way she writes. I am now posting that essay in the Forum as food for thought for everyone who writes, particularly those similarly beset with doubts about how they do it.

Should writers finish their compositions first before editing?

We write the way we write, 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)

6 - Writing to hook the reader

In an essay that I wrote about the language of the Philippine national election campaign in 2004, I briefly discussed the classic advertising acronym AIDA, which I said was an opera of sorts in four acts: A for “Attention,” I for “Interest,” D for “Desire,” and a different A for “Action.” It struck me at the time that like advertising people and propagandists, all communicators in general—and that, of course, includes fiction and nonfiction writers and writers for the mass media as well—must do their own unique performance of AIDA to get their message across and get people to think things their way. And that, of course, wouldn’t happen at all if they didn’t perform the very first of the four acts of the writing opera: the “Attention” cue, or getting the reader interested to read them in the first place.

I am thus tempted to begin discussing AIDA’s first A by saying that writers should come up with a creative opening that will hold readers by their lapels and never let go, but that would really be begging the point. Creativity is an elusive thing. It worked for the American novelist Herman Melville when he began his classic Moby Dick with this disarming three-word opening, “Call me Ishmael.” It worked for the Austrian writer Franz Kafka with this intriguing opening of The Metamorphosis, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” And it worked for American legal-thriller writer Scott Turow in this compelling first paragraph of his novel Personal Injuries, “He knew it was wrong, and that he was going to get caught. He said he knew this day was coming.”

But what’s creative and interesting to us may either be too simple and too inconsequential to some, or too complex and too high-flown to others. There really is no single, fixed formula for it. The only mandatory thing is that whatever the chosen approach and style, the writer must be keenly aware of his or her primal obligation to keep the reader reading from beginning to finish.

I remember very well a consummate master of the “Attention” cue, but he was actually not a nonfiction or fiction writer; he was a noted Filipino industrial designer who used to ply the lecture circuit many years ago. His subject during a seminar-workshop I attended one hot summer afternoon was—if my memory serves me well—advertising communication, with focus on AIDA. We were just through with lunch after a hectic morning schedule, so most of us in the audience were naturally fagged and inattentive.

At that point, there came this bemoustached, bespectacled gentleman in his mid-forties carrying a tall stack of books, lecture notes, marking pens, boxes of marbles and paper clips—all those many little things you’d expect an intense university professor to haul into a classroom. He bellowed “Good afternoon!” to us, then promptly stumbled halfway to the lectern on the farther side of the room. As he made an effort to check his fall, all the things he was carrying flew helter-skelter over to us in the audience. That startled everyone, of course, so everybody’s impulse was to help the seemingly hapless and goofy lecturer gather his things. We were scampering all over the place picking them up, while he quietly took his time to regain his lost dignity and compose himself behind the lectern.

And when we had retrieved most of his things and had returned them to him, the sly fox spoke to us as if nothing untoward at all had happened: “Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen! And now that I have your attention, I think you are now all ready for my lecture.” As might be expected, despite the ungodly timeslot, he and his talk turned out to be the most interesting and illuminating part of that seminar-workshop.

Of course I’m not saying that we should emulate that lecturer’s guts in pulling off such a messy attention-getting caper; I find it too high-handed and I simply can’t imagine myself doing it in any situation. Still, I think it drives home my point very well. Whether we are selling a presidential candidate, hawking a consumer product, writing a feature story or newspaper column, perhaps writing literary fiction, we simply can’t escape the need to get the reader’s attention. If we can’t get it, the whole writing effort is wasted. That’s where performing our little “Attention” act from AIDA comes in. Call it showmanship, call it skill, call it art, call it creativity, call it by any other name—but do it, and give it the best you can. (April 19, 2004)
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Sunday, August 11, 2013

What to do when a simple indicative sentence can’t drive home your point

What is the secret of writers who can make their point more forcefully without resorting to imposing words, inflammatory statements, or thunderous rhetoric? Their secret, as I discussed in an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2003, is the judicious use of the emphatic forms and of inverted sentence construction. These simple grammatical devices have the power to make bland assertions more forceful or to add an emotional tug to otherwise plainspoken indicative sentences. (August 11, 2013)

The emphatic forms and inverted sentences

Every language develops modes not just to share information but to convey thoughts and ideas more forcefully. In English, verbs evolved two special forms—the emphatic tenses—to provide emphasis to the actions they describe. The present emphatic emphasizes actions or conditions happening in the present, and the past emphatic emphasizes those that occurred in the past. More commonly, however, the emphatic forms are used in two types of sentence constructions where emphasis is not intended: to work with the adverb “not” in negative sentences, and to form questions or the interrogative mode, in which the normal sentence construction is inverted. We must understand this distinction clearly to avoid mistakes in using the emphatic tenses.

The present emphatic tense of verbs is formed by putting the present-tense verb “do” or “does” ahead of their basic present form. Here are examples of the present emphatic tense used for emphasis: “I do like apples.” “She does think fast.” “They do act slowly.” The intent is to express the action or state more forcefully. In contrast, here are examples when emphasis is not intended: “The group does not agree.” (forming a negative sentence) “Does the jury have a verdict?” (forming a question).

The past emphatic tense of verbs is formed by putting the past-tense “did” ahead of their basic present form. Examples of the past emphatic tense used for emphasis: “I did write that letter.” “She did come as expected.” “They did pay on schedule.” Examples when emphasis is not intended: “He did not deliver as promised.” “Didn’t you finish the work last night?”

Sentences that use the emphatic tense for emphasis are either affirmative or negative responses to an apparently persistent question, whether stated or only implied. See what happens when this question is asked: “Did you really write that letter?” The emphatic answer would either be “I did write that letter” or “No, I didn’t write that letter.” This is the situational context for using the emphatic forms. It conveys the sense of the speaker either explicitly owning or denying an act, or claiming to be correct in his or her belief regarding the action of others.

Another device for emphasis in the English language, one that is often misunderstood and much maligned, is the inverted sentence. This grammatical form, in which the verb comes ahead the subject, does present agreement problems and possible confusion when used too often. Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “Away from light steals home my heavy son /And private in his chamber pens himself...”

Note that it is the verb “away” that starts the sentence, with the subject “son” far removed from it. The normal-order sentence would go as follows: “My heavy son steals home away from light...” A heightened emotional state can be felt in the first, a dry forthrightness in the second. That difference comes from the change in the form, order, and rhythm of the language itself.

It is, of course, not only in poetry where inverted sentences find excellent use. They can give prose much-welcome variety and punch when used judiciously in a sea of normal-order sentences. Feel the emotional difference between the following normal-order sentences and their corresponding inverted sentences: (1) “Her behavior could be explained in no other way.” “In no other way could her behavior be explained.” (2) “I saw only then the possibilities of the new business.” “Only then did I see the possibilities of the new business.” (3) “She didn’t realize that he had deceived her till she got the letter from a total stranger.” “Not until she got the letter from a total stranger did she realize that he had deceived her.”

When using inverted sentences, however, we must make an extra effort to double-check agreement of the verb with the subject. This subject always follows the number of the verb and not of the nouns or pronouns that come before it: “In the grassy plains lives the last antelope.” It would seem that the singular verb “lives” should be the plural “live” instead to agree with “grassy plains,” but this proves to be not the case; the true subject is not “the grassy plains” but the singular “the last antelope.” See also what happens if the sentence were written another way: “In the grassy plain live the last antelopes.” In this case, the subject “the last antelopes” is plural, so the verb must also take the plural form “live” to agree with it.

Take note, too, that sentences beginning with “there” or “here” are actually in the inverted form: “There is a can of corned beef in the cupboard.” “Here comes the parade.” “There” and “here” are, of course, not the subjects. It is “corned beef” in the first, and “parade” in the second. The two sentences are actually emphatic forms of the normal-order “A can of corned beef is in the cupboard” and “The parade comes.”
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From the book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn the Global Language by Jose A. Carillo © 2004 by the author © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Jose Carillo on the English Language

Sunday, October 6, 2013

How to bring compositions to a proper, satisfying close

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Basic and advanced techniques for doing paragraph transitions

Sunday, September 1, 2013

A trusty dictionary to build a zone of comfort around our word choices

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Six informal prescriptions for better writing in English

Sunday, August 11, 2013

What to do when a simple indicative sentence can’t drive home your point

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