Writing: A Guide (Part III)
I am repeating the introduction for those readers who haven’t seen part I, which is here. Parts II and IV are here and here.
This series is aimed at writers of non-fiction works, but writers of fiction may also find it helpful. There are four parts:
I. Some Writers to Heed and Emulate
A. The Essentials: Lucidity, Simplicity, Euphony
B. Writing Clearly about a Difficult Subject
C. Advice from an American Master
D. Also Worth a Look
II. Step by Step
A. The First Draft
1. Decide — before you begin to write — on your main point and your purpose for making it.
2. Avoid wandering from your main point and purpose; use an outline.
3. Start by writing an introductory paragraph that summarizes your “story line”.
4. Lay out a straight path for the reader.
5. Know your audience, and write for it.
6. Facts are your friends — unless you’re trying to sell a lie, of course.
7. Momentum is your best friend.
B. From First Draft to Final Version
1. Your first draft is only that — a draft.
2. Where to begin? Stand back and look at the big picture.
3. Nit-picking is important.
4. Critics are necessary, even if not mandatory.
5. Accept criticism gratefully and graciously.
6. What if you’re an independent writer and have no one to turn to?
7. How many times should you revise your work before it’s published?
III. Reference Works
A. The Elements of Style
B. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
C. Follett’s Modern American Usage
D. Garner’s Modern American Usage
E. A Manual of Style and More
IV. Notes about Grammar and Usage
A. Stasis, Progress, Regress, and Language
B. Illegitimi Non Carborundum Lingo
1. Eliminate filler words.
2. Don’t abuse words.
3. Punctuate properly.
4. Why ‘s matters, or how to avoid ambiguity in possessives.
5. Stand fast against political correctness.
6. Don’t split infinitives.
7. It’s all right to begin a sentence with “And” or “But” — in moderation.
8. There’s no need to end a sentence with a preposition.
Some readers may conclude that I prefer stodginess to liveliness. That’s not true, as any discerning reader of this blog will know. I love new words and new ways of using words, and I try to engage readers while informing and persuading them. But I do those things within the expansive boundaries of prescriptive grammar and usage. Those boundaries will change with time, as they have in the past. But they should change only when change serves understanding, not when it serves the whims of illiterates and language anarchists.
III. REFERENCE WORKS
A. The Elements of Style
If you could have only one book to help you write better, it would be The Elements of Style. Admittedly, Strunk & White, as the book is also known, has a vociferous critic, one Geoffrey K. Pullum. But Pullum documents only one substantive flaw: an apparent mischaracterization of what constitutes the passive voice. What Pullum doesn’t say is that the book correctly flays the kind of writing that it calls passive (correctly or not). Further, Pullum derides the book’s many banal headings, while ignoring what follows them: sound advice, backed by concrete examples. (There’s a nice rebuttal of Pullum here.) It’s evident that the book’s real sin — in Pullum’s view — is “bossiness” (prescriptivism), which is no sin at all, as I’ll explain in part IV.
There are so many good writing tips in Strunk & White that it was hard for me to choose a sample. I randomly chose “Omit Needless Words” (one of the headings derided by Pullum), which opens with a statement of principles:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine to unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all of his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. [P. 23]
That would be empty rhetoric, were it not followed by further discussion and 17 specific examples. Here are a few:
the question as to whether should be replaced by whether or the question whether
the reason why is that should be replaced by because
I was unaware of the fact that should be replace by I was unaware that or I did not know that
His brother, who is a member of the same firm should be replaced by His brother, a member of the same firm [P. 24]
There’s much more than that to Strunk & White, of course, (Go here to see table of contents.) You’ll become a better writer — perhaps an excellent one — if you carefully read Strunk & White, re-read it occasionally, and apply the principles that it espouses and illustrates.
B. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
After Strunk & White, my favorite instructional work is Lynne Truss‘s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I vouch for the accuracy of this description of the book (Publishers Weekly via Amazon.com):
Who would have thought a book about punctuation could cause such a sensation? Certainly not its modest if indignant author, who began her surprise hit motivated by “horror” and “despair” at the current state of British usage: ungrammatical signs (“BOB,S PETS”), headlines (“DEAD SONS PHOTOS MAY BE RELEASED”) and band names (“Hear’Say”) drove journalist and novelist Truss absolutely batty. But this spirited and wittily instructional little volume, which was a U.K. #1 bestseller, is not a grammar book, Truss insists; like a self-help volume, it “gives you permission to love punctuation.” Her approach falls between the descriptive and prescriptive schools of grammar study, but is closer, perhaps, to the latter. (A self-professed “stickler,” Truss recommends that anyone putting an apostrophe in a possessive “its”-as in “the dog chewed it’s bone”-should be struck by lightning and chopped to bits.) Employing a chatty tone that ranges from pleasant rant to gentle lecture to bemused dismay, Truss dissects common errors that grammar mavens have long deplored (often, as she readily points out, in isolation) and makes elegant arguments for increased attention to punctuation correctness: “without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.” Interspersing her lessons with bits of history (the apostrophe dates from the 16th century; the first semicolon appeared in 1494) and plenty of wit, Truss serves up delightful, unabashedly strict and sometimes snobby little book, with cheery Britishisms (“Lawks-a-mussy!”) dotting pages that express a more international righteous indignation.
C. Follett’s Modern American Usage
Next up is Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage: A Guide. The link points to a newer edition than the one that I’ve relied on for about 50 years. Reviews of the newer edition, edited by one Erik Wensberg, are mixed but generally favorable. However, the newer edition seems to lack Follett’s “Introductory” which is divided into “Usage, Purism, and Pedantry” and “The Need of an Orderly Mind”. If that is so, the newer edition is likely to be more compromising toward language relativists like Geoffrey Pullum. The following quotations from Follett’s “Introductory” (one from each section), will give you an idea of Follett’s stand on relativism:
[F]atalism about language cannot be the philosophy of those who care abut language; it is the illogical philosophy of their opponents. Surely the notion that, because usage is ultimately what everybody does to words, nobody can or should do anything about them is self-contradictory. Somebody, by definition does something, and this something is best done by those with convictions and a stake in the outcome, whether the stake of private pleasure or of professional duty or both does not matter. Resistance always begins with individuals. [Pp. 12-3]
* * *
A great deal of our language is so automatic that even the thoughtful never think about it, and this mere not-thinking is the gate through which solecisms or inferior locutions slip in. Some part, greater or smaller, of every thousand words is inevitably parroted, even by the least parrotlike. [P. 14]
(A reprint of the original edition is available here.)
D. Garner’s Modern American Usage
I also like Garner’s Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner. Though Garner doesn’t write as elegantly as Follett, he is just as tenacious and convincing as Follett in defense of prescriptivism. And Garner’s book far surpasses Follett’s in scope and detail; it’s twice the length, and the larger pages are set in smaller type.
E. A Manual of Style and More
I have one more book to recommend: The Chicago Manual of Style. Though the book is a must-have for editors, serious writers should also own a copy and consult it often. If you’re unfamiliar with the book, you can get an idea of its vast range and depth of coverage by following the preceding link, clicking on “Look inside”, and perusing the table of contents, first pages, and index.
Every writer should have a good dictionary and thesaurus at hand. I use The Free Dictionary, and am seldom disappointed by it. There also look promising: Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster.