CAN YOU TRANSLATE THIS? 16 Real Examples of Very Bad Writing

     

Is Ferris Bueller a better writer than his teacher? Probably.

       In my previous post (January 28, 2011), I discussed my third rule of good writing: Be precise.

      The example of imprecise writing I gave sounded a lot like a teenager: “My teacher is incredible. Her teaching methods are awesome. We can relate to stuff in her class, though sometimes she does weird things.”

      As I said before, young people sometimes write this badly not because they lack a more precise vocabulary, but because they lack the time or motivation to think about more precise, specific, and concrete ways of expressing themselves. In my experience, young people actually write pretty well when they care about what they’re writing.

      That’s not true of some adults. In fact, much of the worst writing you’ll read comes from the best-educated grown-ups. The sixteen sentences highlighted in red below use language taken from real documents in the world of government, business, and even, sad to say, education. I didn’t make any of this up. You have to work hard to write as badly as what you’re about to read.

[Note to teachers: It’s fun to ask your classes to try to translate these sentences into precise, understandable language. They’re usually pretty good at it and seem to enjoy trying. Then you can discuss what makes each sentence so bad and why people might write this way.]

EXAMPLES OF BAD WRITING

1) “Our company experienced a fourth-quarter equity retreat.”

2) “Two thousand employees underwent a career alternative enhancement program.”

3) “An intellectual property broker was engaged as a strategy to actualize greater positivism about the region.”

4) “Let’s revisit that issue to align our end-state visions.”

5) “Cascade this to your people and see what the push-back is.”

6) “He experienced a sudden deceleration trauma as the consequence of a system failure in his aerodynamic personnel decelerator.”

7) “The soldier was discovered with a ballistically-induced aperture in the subcutaneous environment. He had experienced a terminal episode.”

8) “The village was pacified.”

9) “The library has been liberated.”

10) “An expenditure of $35 was initiated for a hundred wood interdental stimulators.”

11) “Your son shows optimal positive emotive response to peer interaction during nonclassroom recreational-agenda time periods.”

12) “Our fixed-wing aircraft visited and acquired the objective. There was minimal incontinent ordnance and therefore acceptable levels of collateral soft-target damage.”

13) “Gridlock occurred due to failure of an electronically adjusted, color-coded vehicular-flow control mechanism.”

14) “The Engineering Department experienced advanced downward adjustments”

15) “Our company produces social-expression products.”

16) “Single-purpose agricultural structures can generate geographically magnified olfactory stress.”

Only someone with a decent education and a broad vocabulary can write as badly as the sentences you’ve just read. Here, in more precise language, is what the writers were actually trying to say (or, in many cases, intentionally not saying):

Choose words carefully, so your writing doesn't land with a splat.

EXAMPLES OF CLEAR WRITING

1) “Our company lost money in the fourth quarter.”

2) “We laid off two thousand employees.”

3) “Pittsburgh hired a public relations expert to promote the city.”

4) “Let’s come back to that problem later and see if we share the same goals for solving it.”

5) “Please inform your employees about this and see what they say.”

6) “Your son’s parachute didn’t open, and he died when he hit the ground.”

7) “The soldier was shot and killed.”

8) “We bombed the village until nothing was left alive.”

9) “We burned books, broke windows, and destroyed furniture in the library.”

10) “The Pentagon paid $35 for a hundred toothpicks.”

11) “Your child enjoys playing with other children during recess.”

Want to hear honest language? Listen to children.

12) “Our plane reached the target and dropped bombs on it. Few bombs fell where they weren’t supposed to, and not too many innocent civilians were killed.”

13) “There was a traffic jam because a stop light malfunctioned.”

14) “The Engineering Department has laid off ten employees.”

15) “Hallmark makes greeting cards.”

16) “Pig farms can make a large area smell bad.”

     These “translation” sentences are clear, precise, and informative. The original sentences are foggy, imprecise, and confusing. They break all the rules of good writing: they have no specifics, no concretes, imprecise wording, passive-voice verbs, and mushy facts.

      Were the people who wrote the original, foggy sentences simply incapable of writing better? I doubt it. They knew what they were doing. While pretending to reveal the truth, they were intentionally hiding it inside a cloud of pretentiously imprecise language.

      In some cases, the intent may have been well-meaning: Who wants to tell a mother that her son died in a parachute accident or was killed by a bullet? Sometimes we use imprecision as a kindly form of euphemism to inflict less pain on our reader. (But her son is still dead, and she knows it, so what have we achieved by euphemism?)

      In most cases, however, the intent of the badly written sentences was more self-serving. A company doesn’t want to admit it lost money or fired employees. An executive hopes his jargon will mask his confusion about a business decision. A general doesn’t want to come right out and say that his planes bombed a village and killed civilians. A student protestor wants to make it seem that burning books and breaking windows is somehow a “liberating” act. A city wants to justify spending lots of money to hire a PR person by making what he does sound important. A teacher wants her students’ parents to think she’s well educated. An industrial farm corporation doesn’t want to admit that its pig farms stink. And so on.

Imprecise, intentionally foggy writing smells like pig manure.

     Some of the foggiest, least precise writing I’ve ever read was in a few of the books of literary criticism I was forced to read as an American literature graduate student. Most literary critics write well, but some are simply pompous poseurs; they use imprecise, big-vocabulary words to hide the weakness of their ideas. And these are people trained to study language.

     Good readers, of course, can see through a writer’s smoke screens. The result is that the writer not only confuses the reader at the start, but, after the reader figures out what he’s saying (or failing to say), the writer loses his credibility. After that, he’s lost all power to persuade.

       One of the great essays on this subject is George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” (Here's a link.) Orwell makes the point that imprecise, clichéd, jargon-filled, wordy, and pretentious language is not just ugly, but in many cases downright immoral. Good writing is honest. It does its best to reveal the truth as the writer sees it. The bad writing in the original befogged sixteen sentences above is not just a mess, it’s a lie.

George Orwell was a first-rate writer who hated dishonest language.

ESCAPE FROM THE KINGDOM OF FOG: BEING PRECISE

Imprecise language leaves your reader in the fog.

Here, once again, in a return engagement, are my Five Rules of Good Writing:

1. Be specific.

2. Be concrete.

3. Be precise.

4. When you can, use action verbs in the active voice.

5. Rely on hard facts.

I’ve written in depth about the first two rules on this blog before (see posts of January 17 and 18, 2011). Now I’ll tackle rule number 3: 

Be precise. 

I didn’t mention this before, but, as you may have noticed, Rule Number One, “Be specific,” applies primarily to nouns: “poodle” is more specific than “dog”; “cell phone” is more specific than “electronic device”; “tennis” is more specific than “sport.” These are all nouns. To use a mathematics term, a more specific word encompasses a smaller "set" of things than a more general word. “Things” in English are nouns.

“Be precise” is a lot like “be specific,” but it applies to words that are not nouns—especially verbs and adjectives. Consider this paragraph:

“My English teacher is incredible. She communicates through fantastic methods that all her students can relate to. She has a special way of getting us to interact with each other on a regular basis so that our educational literary and communicative goals are achieved. She has one awesome teaching technique that involves redesignating us so as to bring about a truly weird configuration in the classroom, leading to unique interpersonal growth.”

      Of course, nobody really writes this badly. Well, actually, they do.

      The problem is pretty obvious: Not only does the writer have no specifics or concretes in the paragraph, but he also relies on words that mean either nothing at all or something different from what he’s trying to say. “Incredible,” for example, has a precise meaning: “not believable.” If his English teacher is “incredible,” does that mean I shouldn’t believe anything she says? Or maybe I shouldn’t believe she even exists! “Fantastic” and “awesome” likewise have precise meanings that the writer chooses to ignore or warp. “Incredible,” “fantastic,” and “awesome” are simply this unfocused writer’s way of saying “I like my teacher’s method of teaching” or “she teaches effectively.”

Other adjectives are equally abused here. “Weird” conveys no information at all—it’s a popular catchword that, used imprecisely, means “I’m not willing to try to describe what I’m talking about.” “Unique” literally means “one of a kind,” but most careless writers, like this one, twist it to mean “special” or “unusual” or just “different.” “Interpersonal growth” could mean almost anything at all: a growing list of twitter followers? The shared organ of conjoined twins? And what does “on a regular basis” mean? Daily? Once a week? Every 15 minutes?

I "relate to" both Pluto and Angelina Jolie.

The paragraph also uses imprecise verbs. What does “communicates” mean here, for example? Does it mean “lectures,” “runs class discussion,” “texts,” “telephones,” “writes on the blackboard”? The problem is, “communicates” is so imprecise that it could mean any of those things. “Relate to” is likewise imprecise. In fact, I “relate to” everything in the universe in some way—I even create a small gravitational pull on Pluto and feel a distinct gravitational pull toward Angelina Jolie. There are innumerable ways to “relate” to people. “Interact” is just as imprecise. If I “interact” with you, that could mean I send you a message on Facebook, or it could mean I give you a big French kiss. By “redesignating,” the writer could mean “has us sit in different seats,” or he could mean “calls us different names.” When the range of possible meanings is that wide, you know you’re in the foggy kingdom of the imprecise.

That’s enough. You can no doubt point to the other examples of imprecise language here.

The sample paragraph above sounds as if it had been written by a teenager. Young writers often resort to imprecise language, not because they lack a more precise vocabulary, but because they’re in a hurry or they’re lazy or they just don’t care enough about what they’re writing to spend the time to search out more meaningful words. Any teenager could just as easily say his teacher’s methods are “effective”—a word that he almost surely knows and that is far more precise than “fantastic” or “incredible.” (Even better: “Miss Platocrates teaches well. We learn from her without being bored. She has us change seats once a week and chat one-on-one with each other about the book we’re reading.”)

Would you want to be graded by a teacher who walks like this?

In fact, however, it is not just immature writers who use words imprecisely. People with vast vocabularies and graduate degrees by the fistful are often the most imprecise of writers. In my next post I’ll give you examples of befuddlingly imprecise writing by supereducated writers—writing that uses fancy language to convey almost no meaning.

Precision, after all, is about meaningfulness. To repeat: More precise verbs and adjectives, like more specific nouns, contain more information.

Consider this sentence:

The thin teacher walked into the room.

Now think of all the alternatives you can for the verb “walked.” [Note to teachers: This is a useful and enjoyable exercise to do in the classroom. Have your students call out all the synonyms they can think of, as fast as they can, while someone writes them on the board. Even poor students can do it. I once got 25 synonyms from an 8^th grade class in less than 5 minutes.]

Here’s a beginning list of more precise alternatives to “walk.” Some are synonyms, some simply other ways to describe the teacher’s entrance:

ambled

strolled

marched

staggered

sauntered

waltzed

tip-toed

creeped

slid

stumbled

strode

lumbered

waddled

Note that although most of these are officially “synonyms” for “walk,” they each mean something different. I often ask students which teacher they would rather be graded by—the one who “marched” into the room or the one who “ambled” into the room. You can predict their answer. That’s when I point out two things:

1) The more precise word, like the more specific word, contains more information. In this case, “marched” and “ambled” tell me not just how the person walked, but what kind of person it is!

2) The verb is the engine of the sentence. Change it, and you change everything else in the sentence. Here, going from “marched” to “ambled” changes the very personality of the subject. (More on verbs in the future.)

You can do the same exercise with the adjective “thin.” Think of all the possible synonyms (svelte, slender, skinny, anorexic, scrawny, lean, emaciated, and so on). Each suggests something different. That’s because words, of course, come clothed in their connotations. Good writers are aware of every connotation, every nuance of meaning in a word. Note how “The thin teacher waddled into the room” doesn’t seem right somehow, because “thin” and “waddle” seem contradictory. There was, however, one famous little thin comic actor who did waddle. I’ll bet you can name him. He was funny precisely because "thin" and "waddle" don't normally go together.

A word of warning: If you’re a teacher, be sure to tell your students that always combing the thesaurus for “special” precise words can lead to overwriting. “The engine stormed into the station vomiting clouds of smoke and bellowing its arrival as Patty perambulated on the platform ” is an example of overwriting. If you don’t want to draw attention to how the teacher came into the room, just use the more neutral word “walked.” Some good students will, at first, tend to overwrite when they learn the power of precise verbs. Not a problem: They can always be reined in later. In any case, I'd rather see them overwrite for a while than vomit clouds of imprecision.

THE SHORT, SWEET, STRONG VERB

     In previous posts, I’ve encouraged you to give specific examples to support and clarify your general statements, and concrete illustrations to support and clarify your abstract statements. If you do this, you’ll be adding words to your writing. After all, “I enjoy sports that focus on bashing spheres, such as tennis, baseball, and golf” uses more words than “I enjoy sports.” 

Strong verbs have more power.

     But aren’t we also told to “Be concise”?

     Yes.

     By “concise,” however, we don’t mean “use as few words as possible.” If that were the case, an opinion column about gun control laws might contain only three words: “I’m for them” or “I’m against them.” That’s concise, but not very persuasive.

    The real rule, obviously, is this: Use as few words as necessary to achieve your writing purpose.*

     This post is about one kind of weak, wordy writing: using a long phrase where a single strong verb will do—specifically, replacing a strong verb with a weak phrase centered on an abstract-noun version of that verb. This is one form of something called a “nominalization” (from the Latin for “name” or “noun”).

     More simply, here’s the rule: When you can, use a single strong verb instead of a long noun-based phrase.

     I can explain this best with (what else?) specific examples:

DON’T WRITE                                   INSTEAD, WRITE

give consideration to                              consider

have respect for                                      respect

made a decision                                      decided

had hope                                                 hoped

made the suggestion                               suggested

engaged in the act of

    (running, cooking, typing)                 ran, cooked, typed

made a movement                                  moved

was a success at                                      succeeded at

were involved in food preparation         prepared food, cooked

“I feel regret that I made a meal of

the clams.”                                             “I regret that I ate the clams.”

Pompous writers in the corporate, academic, and political worlds often try to inflate their documents with nominalizations. Don’t do that.

Now there is a necessity that this post comes to a conclusion.
Oops.

I mean, now I need to finish this post.

________________________________

*What is the purpose of writing? There’s no one answer to that. Words can be used for as many purposes as wood. Beginning on p. 466 of the great, massive, profound, and hilarious novel The Sot-weed Factor, author John Barth lists about 250 words for “prostitute,” half in French, half in English. The list goes on for five pages. Nobody in his right mind would call this list “wordy.” Why not? Because it achieves its purpose: to leave the reader rolling on the floor like a galleywench.    

John Barth writes long novels that don't waste words.

THE SINCERE VACUUM CLEANER: CREDIBILITY AND GOOD WRITING

 Sincerity has everything to do with the reasons for writing well.—Donald Hall, Writing Well

Sincerity [in writing] is the absence of “noise” or static—the ability or courage not to hide the real message.—Peter Elbow

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.—George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

A few years back, my lady and I were shopping for a vacuum cleaner. We found one at Target that was the right price and, at first glance, seemed pretty much what we needed. Then I began reading the details on the box it came in. The vacuum was still the right price and still had all the right features, but the writing on the packaging exaggerated the product’s virtues; it also had typos and grammar errors. We bought a different vacuum—one that was properly proofread, fully grammatical, and sincere. It works fine.

      The message sent by the packaging on that first vacuum was not the one the writer intended. Instead of “this is a good vacuum cleaner,” the message sent was “the people who make this vacuum cleaner are manipulative and either careless or incompetent.” I couldn’t trust an insincere, ungrammatical, poorly proofed vacuum.

Buy only a sincere, grammatical, well-proofed vacuum cleaner.

      To be effective, writing must establish trust. That is, it must make the readers believe in the writer. They must believe that the writer is honest, sincere, and free of ulterior motives. They must believe that the writer is competent, intelligent, and reasonable. They must believe that the writer has their best interests in mind—whether that be to entertain them, enlighten them, instruct them, or tell them truthfully why they’re being fired. In other words, the writer must, on many levels, be credible. This is true of the personal essay, the business letter, the corporate report, the news article, the magazine ad, the poem, and even, I believe, the short story and the novel.

      To achieve that necessary credibility, you can’t fake it as a writer. You have to be honest, sincere, competent, and so on. You must trust your own motives, you must believe in what you’re saying (and the importance of saying it), and you must try to find the most honest way to say it. You can’t hide the real message behind the noise of pretension, pomposity, or manipulation.

      Here are some ways to establish and protect your credibility:

DO believe in what you’re saying and the importance of saying it.

DO have the courage to seek and speak the truth as you best can understand it. (Finding that truth is sometimes the hardest work in writing—and usually the most rewarding.)

DO get your facts correct.

DO argue rationally and honestly.

DO acknowledge, respect, and answer counterarguments and admit weaknesses in your own position.

DO use proper grammar and helpful punctuation. Otherwise, you’ll seem both incompetent and inconsiderate.

DO use clear, plain, precise language. Otherwise, your reader will think you’re trying to hide something.

DO give relevant examples, concrete illustrations, and hard facts to support your claims.

DO look for your own fresh way to say things.

Abe's honesty helped make him a good writer.

    

DON’T write just to fill space or fulfill someone else’s expectations. (Even an assignment for English class should be as honest as a heartfelt love letter.)

DON’T use jargon or inflated language. (Note “use,” not “utilize.”)

DON’T manipulate your readers’ emotions dishonestly.

DON’T warp the meaning of words. (Bombing a village is not the same as “pacifying” it, and a person isn’t a “fascist” just because he disagrees with you.)

DON’T exaggerate, except for humorous effect.

DON’T use exclamation points, except for rare instances of sincere strong emotion.

DON’T hide behind unsupported generalities, foggy abstractions, empty claims, feckless clichés, or the passive voice.

Follow these rules, and you have a chance to be a credible writer—the only kind of writer worth reading. You might also sell a lot of vacuum cleaners.

__________________________

Aristotle claimed that ethos, logos, and  pathos were the key elements of effective rhetoric.

(Note: The idea that a writer or speaker must have credibility to be persuasive goes back at least as far as Aristotle. He called the concept “ethos.” If you’re interested in his other advice, look up “logos” and “pathos.” More on those in future posts.)

(Second note: Don’t confuse “sincere” with “solemn.” You can be perfectly sincere while trying to make your readers laugh.)

       

SOME COMMA RULES, BLESS US ALL

 

Okay, it's time to get serious on this bloody blog. My prior posts about being specific, being concrete and such are the larky part. That's just talk about style--the frolicking on horseback to learn the woods. Let us now confront one of the dragons in those woods: punctuation. Gird yourself.

Punctuation: The dragon in the woods.

     Below are six basic comma rules. These are not all the comma rules, but they are essential. Understand them, and you'll avoid 90% of the common comma errors.

      I know, I know: You already know where to put the commas because once upon a time your high-school teacher told you just to stick a comma wherever you pause or drop your voice in a sentence. Not bad advice, but it doesn't always work. The problem is, you can pause anytime you want, and what happens if you write a sentence just as your voice hits adolescence?

      It's better to learn the rules. Most punctuation rules are not purely arbitrary. They're there to help the reader. Remember: Punctuation is information. Consider the following sentences:

"I love my girlfriend, who lives in New York."

"I love my girlfriend who lives in New York."

That comma changes the number of girlfriends I have, and girlfriend number one better not read sentence number two!

Bad punctuation can lead to violence.

And consider these sentences:

"I didn't marry her because I like good cooking."

"I didn't marry her, because I like good cooking."

That comma took the wedding ring right off my finger and libeled my lady's culinary ability, to boot.

Well-cooked sentences require a dash of unspoiled punctuation.

So forget pauses and adolescent voice drops. Learn the following comma rules.

1. Put a comma after an introductory clause or phrase that says where, when, how, why, or under what conditions the sentence takes place. (These are sometimes called “introductory adverb clauses and phrases” because they act like adverbs).

   Where: “In the forest behind the house, Hans painted all the trees bright red.”

   When: “After the path grew over with brush, no one ever again cut through the forest.”

   How: “With only a pencil and a piece of paper, Einstein came up with the theory of relativity.”

   Why: “In order to learn the location of the ship, we sailed far into the Atlantic.”

   Conditions: “If you ever remember that girl’s name, please call me immediately.”

                    “Unless it rains before October, all the grass in my yard will die.”

Note: You do NOT usually need a comma when the adverb phrase or clause comes later in the sentence:

   Correct: “Einstein came up with the theory of relativity with only a pencil and a piece of paper.”

   Correct: “We sailed far into the Atlantic in order to learn the location of the ship.”

Punctuation isn't nuclear physics.

2. Put a comma between independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction. These conjunctions are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. The mnemonic device "FANBOYS" might help you remember them. Put the comma before the conjunction. (Note: It's an independent clause if it can stand alone as a sentence.)

   Correct: “My mother cares most about my brother, and my father cares most about me.”

   Correct: “The Goodyear blimp can fly only thirty miles per hour, but it can stay in the air all day.”

   Correct: “Either you will study for this grammar test, or you will lose your entire inheritance.”

Note: Be sure the second part of the sentence is really an independent clause before you use a comma before the coordinating conjunction. The following sentences do not need commas:

   Correct: “My mother cares most about my brother and not so much about me.”

   Correct: “The Goodyear blimp can fly only thirty miles per hour but can stay in the air all day.”

3. Put something stronger than just a comma between independent clauses. If you don’t, you will have a bad mistake called a “comma splice.”

   Comma splice (incorrect): “The survivors tried to swim to shore, many of them died in the effort.”

   Correction: “The survivors tried to swim to shore. Many of them died in the effort.”

   Also correct: “The survivors tried to swim to shore; many of them died in the effort.”

   Comma splice (incorrect): “The survivors tried to swim to shore, however, many of them died in the effort.”

   Correction: “The survivors tried to swim to shore; however, many of them died in the effort.”

   Also correct: “The survivors tried to swim to shore, but many of them died in the effort.”

4. Use commas to set off nonrestrictive elements (nonrestrictive clauses, phrases, and appositives). Nonrestrictive elements add extra information that is not necessary to identify or limit the thing described. The following sentences are correctly punctuated:

   Nonrestrictive clause: “Our engineering professor, who is from India, brings us Indian desserts.”

   Nonrestrictive phrase: “My new cat, sleeping in the laundry basket, loves warm clothes.”

   Nonrestrictive clause: “Our shed, which is located in our backyard, attracts skunks.”

   Nonrestrictive appositive: “My oldest brother, Terry, lives in California.”

Note: Do NOT put commas around restrictive elements. Restrictive elements are necessary to identify or limit the thing described.

     Correct: “The cat sleeping in the laundry basket loves warm clothes.”

     Correct: “A professor who doesn’t listen to his students will not be a good teacher.”

     Correct: "My brother Terry lives in California." (In this case, the lack of commas tells the reader I have more than one brother, and I need the word "Terry"--an appositive, by the way--to narrow down which Terry I'm talking about.)

Stay awake when punctuating.

5. Place a comma after an introductory participial phrase. I won't try to explain "participial phrase" here. The two examples below should give you the idea.

    Correct: “Waiting for the bus, Chloe decided to write a complaint to the Math Emporium staff.”

    Correct: “Hunted by wolves, the young caribou walked five miles down the creek.”

Do you put commas around a participial phrase that doesn’t come at the beginning of the sentence? It depends on whether the participial phrase is nonrestrictive or restrictive!

   Correct: “Professor Larraby, teaching zoology for the first time, should plan to bring a rat to class on the first day.”

   Also correct: “A professor teaching zoology for the first time should plan to bring a rat to class on the first day.”

 

6. Place commas between items in a list. This one is easy, no?

    Correct: “Cain’s favorite weapons included the bow, the spear, and the club.”

    Correct: “Jerome loved fattening foods such as tortilla chips, cheesecake, Ding-Dongs, and Twinkies.”

    Correct: “I have never played high-contact sports like rugby, football, or soccer.”

Note: The last comma in each example above is optional. Newspapers and magazines often leave that last comma out. Why? To save ink.

Extra note: Notice that there is no punctuation after the words “included,” “such as,” and “like” in the examples above. Some students try to put a colon after those words, but that is wrong. In the following sentences, no punctuation at all should follow "included" or "such as."

   Incorrect colon: “My 18 hours of classes included: biology, math, and music appreciation.”

   Incorrect colon: “I spend most of my money on tennis equipment such as: racquets, balls, and headbands.”

Here’s a sentence where the colon is correct. Can you see why?

    Correct: “I have five classes: biology, math, music appreciation, sociology, and composition.”

Notice how in many of these rules, the commas also help the reader see where they are in a sentence. "Ah," says the reader, "I suspect I've just finished an independent clause and am ready for another one." Or "Ah, that comma tells me I've come to the end of a nonrestrictive clause."

In other words, not only is punctuation information. Punctuation is also a tool of navigation.

Thoughtful punctuation helps the reader navigate your writing.

That's enough coma-inducing comma commentating for one blog post. Beware the fire-breathing dragons.

Below is one of my all-time favorite Dilberts.

DIAGRAMMING IS FOR FREAKS (LIKE ME)

     The famous writer Gertrude Stein once said, "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences."

      Of course, Gertrude Stein was strange. She also once wrote, "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle." This makes no sense whatsoever--maybe because she was smoking marijuana at the time with a strange little woman named Alice B. Toklas.

     Nevertheless, Gertrude Stein and I agree about diagramming sentences: It's at least as exciting as watching NASCAR races. And a lot easier on the ears.

     No, I'm not smoking anything.

Gertrude Stein (left) and Alice B. Toklas (right). I don't know who the writer is in the middle--probably an editor.

     In order to have a solid grasp of English grammar and punctuation, you need a thorough understanding of the architecture of English sentences. The two best ways to get this are 1) to master a foreign language like German or, even better, Latin and 2) to learn to diagram sentences. Everyone in my generation did both those things, a million years ago, in the 1960s.

      A foreign language you'll have to find a way to learn on your own. As for diagramming, here's an amusing website devoted to it.

      A while back, a friend also gave me a delightful book about diagramming called Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. I recommend this funny book if you're a grammar goofball like me. 

      Of course, you can learn to punctuate well and use proper grammar without knowing how to diagram or how to read Latin. Not wishing to be a freak, you're probably glad to hear that. I'll explain some basic punctuation rules in future posts.

THE SECOND RULE OF GOOD WRITING: BE CONCRETE.

    In my post of January 17, 2011, I discussed the First Rule of Good Writing: Be specific.

   Today I’ll discuss the Second Rule of Good Writing: Be concrete.

   Consider these two sentences:

           1) “The admiral conveyed to John an air of experience and aggressive authority.”

           2) “The white-haired admiral, deep creases in his cheeks, stood mast-straight and stared at John with blue eyes that burned a hole through the wall of his defenses.”

    Which sentence is more vivid? More memorable? I believe any reader would say the second. Why? Not because it has more words, but because it has more effective words. It replaces three vague abstractions (experience, aggressive, authority) with many concrete images (white hair, creased cheeks, straight mast, blue eyes, a hole in a wall).

[Note: An argument could certainly be made that, in certain contexts, the second sentence lays it on a bit too thick—it “overwrites.” But it serves our purposes here. More on overwriting in future posts.]

    In writer-speak, a “concrete” word or phrase is one which causes readers to see, taste, hear, smell, or feel something in their minds. In other words, it is language that appeals directly to the physical senses. Writers call such words or phrases “images.” That’s why the part of the mind where such physical sensations seem to occur is called—what else?—the “image-ination” or “imagination.” You’ll sometimes hear the phrase “concrete image.” That’s technically redundant even though I used it in the previous paragraph. Oops.

    The opposite of “concrete” is “abstract.” Unlike specific/general, the concrete/abstract divide is not so much a continuum; a word or phrase is either concrete or it’s abstract. Examine the following list of words and phrases. Which ones are abstract? Which ones concrete?

professional     bacon     bicycle     hope     resentful                     

tennis shoe     litter box     anticipation     skilled     angel

turnip      wind chimes     psychology     logical     cockroach

chocolate     earmuffs      wool     dream    love     green

Here’s the same list with the concrete words highlighted in red:

professional      bacon     bicycle    hope    resentful                     

tennis shoe      litter box     anticipation     skilled    angel

turnip      wind chimes     psychology    logical     cockroach

chocolate      earmuffs       wool     dream      love     green

    “But wait!” you might cry. “I certainly can feel love. Why isn’t love concrete?” Well, yes, you can feel love emotionally, but you can’t literally taste, smell, see, feel, or hear it, so it’s not concrete. What you can sense physically are the concrete manifestations of love. The following sentence relies on abstractions:

“Whenever Jack walked into class, it was clear Jill was in love. She filled with emotion and grew all confused. ”

      Can you imagine how a good writer might convey this abstract idea with concrete images? (Before reading on, take out a piece of paper and try it. I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . .)

  

      Okay, here’s a passage full of “love” images my students have come up with over the years:

            “Whenever Jack walked into class, Jill’s heart began to pound. Her eyes grew bright, her cheeks flushed, and the fingers of her right hand fluttered against her thigh out of sight under her desk. Her left hand, meanwhile, drew hearts on the cover of American History Today. Inside the hearts she scribbled ‘J&J.’”

      A rather more memorable way to show love, no? All without ever even mentioning the abstraction.

      Nearly all great writing relies heavily on concretes. When creative-writing students are told, “Show, don’t tell,” they’re really being told to replace abstractions with concretes. Those of us who love Shakespeare love him in part because he was a master of the concrete. Remember the scene in Macbeth when, late at night, having engineered several murders, Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking through the castle? She is violently rubbing her hand and mutters the famous line, “Out, damned spot!” In the speech that follows, she tries to clean her hand of dripping blood that she alone can see. She even smells the blood. Then she hears a foreboding knocking outside the castle and runs off.

      What has Shakespeare done here? He has taken a vague abstraction (guilt, obviously) and made it concrete, in memorable language, full of vision, scent, and sound. Imagine how unmemorable the scene would have been if Lady Macbeth had simply walked in, put the back of her hand to her forehead, and said, “Oh, I feel so guilty.”

      Why are concretes so much more memorable than abstractions? That’s complicated. I believe it is in part because we experience the world through our senses, and the best writers give us a chance, through sensory images, to experience a new world, of near-equal vividness, on the page.

      Having said all this, I should add that there is a place for the abstract in good writing. Abstractions, like generalities, often prepare the way for what’s to come or summarize the concretes that precede them. (One kind of intelligence is the ability to move easily from concrete to abstract, specific to general, and back again.)

      So feel perfectly free to use abstractions. But when you do, consider the following advice: Whenever you use an abstraction, follow it with at least one, and preferably three concrete illustrations.
      Here are two examples:

            Abstraction: “Julia was expert in the kitchen.”

            Follow-up concretes: “She could rice potatoes, chop onions, and braise a pork chop before you could count to sixty.”

            Abstraction: “Mr. Forbes demonstrates excellent interaction on first meeting customers.”

            Follow-up concretes: “He shakes each customer’s hand, gives them the choice of sitting in the plush chair in front of his desk or on the sofa by his office window, and offers them hot tea or coffee.”

    

           Poets and other creative writers often take pleasure in hitching abstractions directly to concretes. Perhaps the most famous example of this is “Happiness is a warm puppy," from Charles Schulz, of "Peanuts" fame. 

There are also other ways to connect abstractions to concretes. For example:

            “The conformist broccoli sits, chilly, next to the rebellious stalks of asparagus.”

            “Poverty, brown and gaunt, squints at you through broken windows.” 

            “In New Orleans, disappointment smells like mold and tastes like flat beer.”

            “An airplane is just aluminum with an education.”

     One final word about specifics and concretes: You will find whole books written in almost nothing but abstractions and generalities. Some of these books are written by people who are considered great thinkers—philosophers, literary critics, even educators. I won't name names, but I will say this: I don’t like these books. I think they are badly written and would be improved by the addition of specifics and concretes. So there.