February 03, 2017:  MEMORY OF A GREAT BLACK WRITER

I met James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe together in 1980. Much like Chinua’s greedy fly that follows a corpse into the grave, I skipped my class and followed the two men into the seminar they were attending on our campus. They were at the University of Florida (where I taught) attending a week-long workshop of Black Writers during the BHM observances. I literally bumped into them in a faculty elevator at lunchtime, and recognized Chinua by his photo.

Achebe kindly introduced Baldwin. But, barbarian engineer that I was, I’d never heard of Baldwin: I ignored him; I only had eyes for Chinua. (When I queried Achebe about his first name, “Chinua,” as I was wont to do with everybody, he explained: “Chinua’lim ogu” — May God fight for me. And, no, he apologized, he was unable to come to my house for dinner due to prior commitments.) I smiled at the two men and went away, missing a rare chance to get acquainted with James Baldwin.

Only last fall did I discover James Baldwin, the writer. I have read “Another Country” and “The Fire Next Time.” Boy! what a writer!! Reading Baldwin in full stride is like peering over the rim of a volcano in full wrath. His eloquent prose reminds one of the militant imagery in Julia Howe’s lyrics for The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

I never knew what I missed all those years. Concerning Baldwin I was as clueless as the proverbial nerd parodied in the following allegory:

(Jane, a coed majoring in literature): “John’s your name? Do you like Rudyard Kipling?”

(John, an engineering major): “I dunno. I never kipled in any kind of yard before.”

February 01, 2017:  WHAT CONSTITUTES A PROPER SENTENCE?

Today’s topic is prompted by a confusion regarding when a statement (i.e. a string of words) must end with a full stop (aka a “period”). Simply put, only a full sentence must end with a period, or its equivalent, such as the exclamation mark (!) or the question mark (?) as appropriate.

This blog site is dedicated to observations on the vagaries of written English in the USA. The reason for limiting it to written English is that the written form is the one used for formal communications, where ambiguities or inconsistencies degrade the meaning you wish to convey, and you get only one chance to convey that meaning and sense. One rule of formal English that has not changed over time is that you should write your prose in full sentences. So it becomes important to know when a sentence is complete, or “full.”

In what follows, explanation/elaboration from Latin is in italics. Also, we limit ourselves here to a simple sentence; in real life things get more complicated because you have, additionally, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences; let’s call the last three “non-simple” sentences.

Except for minor exceptions (which we shall consider later) a full or proper sentence is one that has basically three parts: 1. a verb (denoting action); 2. a subject (the nominative case in Latin) which performs the action indicated by the verb and which is basically a noun or a pronoun or other parts of speech playing the role of the subject of the main verb in your sentence; and 3. an object. In “She has guts,” she is the subject, has is the verb, and guts is the object; that sentence is complete. The verb and object may be lumped together and called the “predicate”: in “She has guts,” “she” is the subject and “has guts” is the predicate.

A caveat here is that in going from conversation (live or TV) to broadcast speech (on radio) to print (newspaper/magazine) the line between informal and formal English may blur or even disappear!

Besides the sentence, other important kinds of expression are, a clause and a phrase. A clause also has a verb or verbs whereas a phrase does not. The clause and the phrase can be parts of a sentence and so play subordinate roles in a sentence. It is the inclusion of a clause and/or a phrase and/or clusters of clauses and phrases that characterize the other (“non-simple”) kinds of sentences. The reason for mentioning the clause and the phrase here is that in US English there’s a tendency to confuse them with a full sentence.

As stated, only a full/complete sentence MUST end with a period. A clause or a phrase does not need to end with a period. This is important when you write a list and wonder how to end each line. That, in my opinion, is where some writers, editors and reviewers I have encountered tend to get things wrong: You write a bulleted list consisting of phrases, and an editor says you should end each line with a period. (I encountered a reviewer who inserted periods at the ends of subject headings!)

The foregoing is, of course, grossly simplified. As stated, in real life the sentence structure can get quite complicated. However, a sentence cannot be made more simple than “subject + predicate.”) Or can it? Well, there are simple exceptions. Most common exceptions are the single words used in the interrogative sense or the exhortatory sense (vocative case): i.e., used to ask a question, to urge someone to an action, or to answer a question. Examples are, respectively, “Why?”, “Go!”, “Yes.”  Each of those is considered a full sentence though it comprises only one word. Other similar but minor examples are exclamatory words (“Oh!” and “Silly!” for instance).

Finally, here is a word about phrases and especially clauses standing alone. (Note that this foregoing sentence becomes improperly constructed if we remove “here is” — because then it lacks a main verb, “is.” But that incorrect form, without “here is,” has become common or popular.)

It is incorrect English to write:

1. Because we are human.
2. Since he promises to pay.
3. While we sleep.
4. And that is bad.
5. Etc.

The reason they constitute bad English is that the first word in each case is a transitional word and so what follows it is a clause and not a sentence. A transitional word is used to connect two clause, phrases, or sentences: E.g. “She smokes, and that is bad” is correct English.

01/11/2017  SOMETIMES IT IS A MERE MATTER OF STYLE

This blog site was conceived as a forum to explore some idiosyncrasies of written English in the USA, and the unstated reference point is, of course, the British usage of English. Here we mention those differences which really amount to nothing more than what style is preferred.

Those of us who got our formal education on the English Language outside the USA, especially in a former British colony, will encounter quite a few instances when we must reorient our English to the way Americans prefer it. Sometimes the difference is a mere matter of spelling (e.g., color versus colour, labor versus labour, defense versus defence). But other times it goes beyond the choice of vowels or consonants and takes a form more subtle and, yet, perhaps more serious.

It took me a while to realize that Americans say/write “backward,” “toward,” “homeward,” etc., where the British add an “s” to those adverbs and adjectives. Employing the (familiar) British forms does less harm than one might imagine, but I have run into an editor or reviewer who took issue with the British form of the adverb!

The Chicago Manual of Style is thorough and authoritative on such differences, and it regards much of it as a matter of style. However, as noted, not all referees agree. Also, that manual is pricey for an individual writer (although most libraries will have the series). The Manual is updated from time to time, making your current issue obsolete. So it’s helpful, when one is in doubt, that there are more affordable guides like Grammar Girl, etc. And then, of course, the most accessible source is the internet. Finally, if you must rely only on the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate dictionary, it will do: it may not tell you the difference between the British and American forms (because it is not really an etymological tome), but if you should type in the wrong (i.e., “British”) form, its search will default to the American version.

It is better to refer to those sources than to rely on mnemonics and conventional wisdom. From time to time I have come across mnemonics which stress that “America prefers simplicity” or that America “likes short cuts” (and so the version with a simpler spelling or fewer letters must be the American form). Unfortunately, that is, well, simplistic—and misleading! The better caveat to remember is that English is an idiomatic language (and hence sometimes counter-intuitive!). To disprove the claim that Americans prefer shorter versions of words or expressions, I will cite a tongue-in-cheek counter-claim that I learned in the UK long ago:

“The Briton gets out of his flat, down a lift, into a car, to go watch a film; but the American will get out of his apartment, down an elevator, into an automobile, to go see a motion picture.”

So, beware!

11/08/2016

A dear old friend of mine sent me this poster to distract me from the sere inanity of the Trump-v-Clinton election brouhaha. It is a throw-back, two full decades, to my first public lecture in Cleveland, OH.

For November, 2016

To take a break from our usual focus on US English, this post is about a seasonal US Custom: HALLOWEEN

Halloween, a popular American tradition, is upon us. For children it’s all about costumes, candy, and witches. For adults it’s…What is it? Do we know its origin or meaning? Americans tend to retain only the commercial trappings of occasions and forget their provenance.

Halloween is the contracted version of All-Hallows-Evening. “Hallows” (or “shades”) is an Old English term for the soul or supposed essence of dead people, and Halloween was the occasion to remember the dead. October-31is the eve of hallows because Nov 1 is All-Saints Day, and Nov 2 is All-Souls Day, in Christian mythology. (Christians prefer “eschatology,” but there’s no difference.) The Church was serious about Halloween; it’s not clear why the American version is all about scares and horror.

Saints were in heaven; but souls were housed in “Purgatory” to be cleansed of the tarnish of “venial sin” before admission into heaven. In contrast, “mortal sin” could never be remedied: it took you straight to hell. (Infants who died unbaptised stayed permanently in “Limbo.”) So, Purgatory was really a prison for souls: If we prayed enough, or paid enough for priests’ prayers, souls could be paroled to heaven. (That was before Martin Luther denounced the whole corrupt idea of paying earthly cash to Rome to procure miracles in Purgatory!) The Church shut down Purgatory and Limbo recently, as the concept proved too hard to explain; so now, one goes directly to heaven or hell.

September 01, 2016

ORDER OF QUALIFIERS:  If I say “He is a big, strong lad,” “big” and “strong” are adjectives qualifying the noun “lad.”  If I say “I saw two blind men,” both “two” (a number) and “blind” (an adjective) are qualifying the noun “men.” In the second case, where one of the qualifiers is a counting number, it usually comes before the other qualifier; so we say “two blind men,” but not “blind two men.”

But on multi-lane highways one is more likely to see: “Trucks use right two lanes,” instead of the correct form, which is, “Trucks use two right lanes.”

HYPHENATION:  We discussed the importance of hyphens in some earlier post on these blogs. (An example was given as the difficulty of correctly understanding the sentence “We sell demand-and-supply statistics” (which may make no sense if we remove the two hyphens). In our health-conscious modern times, the absence of certain undesirable ingredients are used as strong selling points for higher-priced merchandise, or as a “bragging point.” Examples abound:

SMOKE-FREE environment

GLUTEN-FREE menu item

INTEREST-FREE loan;   etc.

Unfortunately, there is a growing tendency to omit the hyphens, and that can change the meaning of the phrase. (If the hyphen must be dropped, then it’s best to plug “free” onto the preceding word to yield SMOKEFREE, for instance, as German language does.)

WHAT’S NEXT?   Few words of English language seem as clear and simple as the word “next.” Yet, it is getting bent so far out of shape that ambiguities appear in some cases. Examples:

A highway sign that is helpful to pressed motorists says:    REST STOP 1 MILE,

But just below that message is another one that says:      NEXT REST STOP 62 MILES.

QUESTION: At this point, the two rest stops are both in front (the 1st one is a mile ahead, the other one 62 miles ahead). So, why is the NEXT rest stop not the one that is 1 mile away? “Next” means the very first instance coming up after this moment. (But the question is academic: only a motorist who is not pressed will wonder about it! If you gotta go, the message is clear: it says, “Beware: If you miss the rest stop that is 1 mile away, then the one after it is 62 miles away.”)

Similarly, is there a difference between “This Friday” and “Next Friday” It depends. If today is Wednesday, then “this Friday” and “next Friday” should be referring to the same day, which is only two days away. But if the day is already Friday, then “this Friday” refers to today, while “next Friday” refers to the day that is seven days away. We used to say “Friday week” to refer to the Friday AFTER the next one. But these days few people use that expression; instead, people use “next Friday” when they mean “Friday week.”

Needless to say, I missed a few meetings in my working days in the USA because of that needless ambiguity over “next.” (Similarly, when I see a schedule that says a train arrives 12:00 am, I have no idea whether it means 12:00 noon or 12:00 midnight — as discussed in an earlier blog. In our hurry to make messages brief we may end up making them confusing.)

THE PARTICLE, A:   A is the only one of the 26 letters of our alphabet that can stand alone as a full word in its own right. When it stands alone it functions as a particle. Wikipedia defines a particle as “a function word” that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning. (‘The’ is another particle; and “an” is an alternative to “a” when the word it refers to begins with a vowel (so we say “a man” but “an object” instead of “a object.”)

Because A can stand alone, it is sometimes used wrongly in constructions. One sees the following errors, especially in shops and on merchandise:

LAY-A-WAY DEPARTMENT (in which ‘a’ has been wrongly detached from AWAY and left to serve as a particle;

Children’s SING-A-LONG SONG (in which ‘a’ is similarly detached from ALONG).

Such detachment is a corruption induced by poor enunciation in spoken English, which carries over into written English. (We have seen other examples of this corruption in earlier posts on this blog.)

In extreme cases the “a” which is detached from a word is then further separated from that word with the insertion of another word. Thus we get the whopper:

ANOTHER becomes A NOTHER and then, for emphasis, A WHOLE NOTHER (such as in the sentence, “This is a whole nother story.”)

PUN

Subject for September 2016: PUN

Like a malapropism, a pun is a play on words, but of a different sort. It is the use of a word (or its homophone) in such a manner as to convey an idea different from, even opposite to, its meaning at face value. For instance, in the classic novel about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the determined investigator says of his elusive quarry, Mr. Hyde: “If he be Mr. Hyde, then I’ll be Mr. Seek.”

For another example, a promotional poster for Jamaica’s ultrafast sprinter Usain Bolt says, “Walk, Run, Bolt!” The use of “Bolt” as a verb is eloquent. And in the 1970s an advertisement for “Mother’s Pride,” a popular brand of breakfast bread, said “Return your MP to the kitchen cabinet.” (All four nouns and verbs here are puns, and each pun relates to England’s parliamentary election process.)

One particularly sharp pun was attributed to Ferdinand Marcos, the once dictator of The Philippines, in an interview he gave to Playboy magazine in the presence of his wife Imelda, shortly before he died. Mr. Marcos had once trained in law and liked to consider himself a lawyer still. The interviewer asked Mr. Marcos what epitaph he would like on his tombstone.

Reflecting for a while, Mr. Marcos answered, “Here lies a lawyer.”

His wife pursed her lips and said, “No. ‘Here lies a lawyer who lies no more’.”

Mr. Marcos caught the mood and said, “No. ‘Here lies a lawyer who lies still’.”

Note:

The quotes may have been a knock-off (by Playboy or by Mr. Marcos) from an apocryphal lawyer joke, but the pun is neat.

In Mr. Marcos’ first choice, “lies” is unambiguous.

In the second (Imelda’s version) the pun is on “lies” (used in two different senses).

In the third version the pun is on both “lies” and “still.”