Editorial Tip of the Week: Lost in the Perilous Thicket, Part 2

Last week's tip followed Susan Bell's advice, editing away our prose to "see how the scene plays spare."

There may be a writer who gets it right with the first draft. The rest of us have to look at our work later, preferably when the glow of creation has faded.

It helps to review the smallest book on a writer's shelf: Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. For example, here's one of the reminders in "Section V: An Approach to Style."

4. Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. This is not to disparage adjectives and adverbs; they are indispensable parts of speech. Occasionally they surprise us with their power.... In general, however, it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give to good writing its toughness and color.

I applied this reminder to last week's strangled sentence:

The intrepid explorer hacking a sinuous path with her sharp and trusty brush hook—a well-worn heirloom from her sainted mother—exhaled soft whispers of shocking profanity with every breath as she severed the stout stalks and sharp brambles that barred her way through the sinister thickets of dank green and crimson weeds.

And came up with this:

The explorer swung her brush hook as she cleared a path. "Damn," exhaled on the down swing. "Bastard!" the blade sliced through the tough stalks, "Yes," a sigh as she turned the hook to lift and pile the fallen brambles to open her way through the thicket. She paused for minute to catch her breath. She stretched her fingers, running them along the time-smoothed grain of the handle; her hand, her mother's hand.

Strunk & White’s Elements of Style at www.bartleby.com/141

Editorial Tip: Like vs. As

One of the more enduring grammar debates concerns the use of like versus as. The primary discrepancy is whether or not common usage of like, traditionally a preposition, also establishes its use as a conjunction in place of as.

A preposition joins nouns, pronouns and other words within a sentence: "This meat tastes like chicken." Notice that the preposition like introduces the noun chicken. A conjunction connects words, phrases and clauses: "Suddenly, I felt as if I was not alone." As if is the conjunction that joins the first clause, Suddenly, I felt with a second, I was not alone and is followed by the verb was. Enter the discrepancy: "Suddenly, I felt like I was not alone." This may sound correct to the average ear or in an informal conversation but following the preposition with a verb does break with grammar rules.

Several sources allow for the popular usage, citing centuries of common speech. Strunk and White firmly maintains that like is not an acceptable substitution, arguing: "If every word or device that achieved currency were immediately authenticated, simply on the ground of popularity, the language would be as chaotic as a ball game with no foul lines." Wherever one may fall along the spectrum regarding the increasingly relaxed use of like—as an inevitable evolution or a corruption of the English language—there remains a basic principle regarding the use of like versus as:

The preposition like compares unlike things and is followed by nouns and pronouns.
The conjunction as compares similar things and is followed by verbs.

Likely, the informal use of like as a conjunction will not garner a correction and there are several instances where common usage does override the use of as. Still, for the formal essay or text, defaulting to the proper usage will yield the most accurate language.

For additional examples, opinions and explanations see the Chicago Manual of Style, The Copyediting Handbook, and Bartleby.com: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/033.html and http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/012.html.

Happy Birthday, Elements of Style!

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style turns 50 today. That's 50 years of short, sweet, logical grammar rules. Thank you!

Just a few rules Strunk & White graced us with are:
1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write, Charles's friend, etc. (English teachers: You've had 50 years to get caught up with this. Please stop teaching our children to write Chris'!)
2. Logic suggests that [Junior when following a name] is, in fact, restrictive and therefore not in need of a comma: James Wright Jr. (Hallmark, can we please take the comma out of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day now?)
3. Omit needless words. (Enough said.)

Cheers to 50 years with Strunk & White, and here's to 50 more (before those pesky grammar rules change again)!