Fiske, Robert Hartwell. The Dictionary of Disagreeable English: A Curmudgeon’s Compendium of Excruciatingly Correct Grammar. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 2005.

Thank god for people like Fiske, who keep track of all the ins and outs of grammar (never grammer). And can remind us that the “l” in almond is silent (ah-mend). Or that alumnus is a male graduate, alumna a female graduate, and alumni signify male or female graduates, while alumnae = female graduates only. Fiske reminds us not to confuse mendicity (being beggarly) with mendacity (untruthfulness). To peruse material is not to give it a casual reading but a thorough one. Finally, zoology is pronounced zoh-ol-ah-jee, not with a zoo sound.

​Handy little book to keep around, but Fiske might be reminded by linguists that the people solidify usage. Some day (soon?) there will be no whom in grammar books or dictionaries. Me and my brother will be perfectly acceptable (it already is among Z’s). Some of us don’t like it, but that’s how usage works. A thing gets employed so much it becomes acceptable, nay, becomes de rigueur. Remember thee and thou? Shalt not? Gone. Simply vanished. Again, I am thankful to have such a handy little handbook, but if Fiske hasn’t already had a heart attack, he’s certainly set up for one if he can’t loosen up a bit.

​Up Next:​
TUES: A Writer's Wit | James Rollins
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Sharon M. Draper
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Annie Proulx 
FRI: My Book World | Amy Tan, ​Saving Fish from Drowning

Dreyer, Benjamin. Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. New York: Random, 2019.

This book about copyediting offers readers an excellent review if you think you already know the business pretty well, and, if you don’t, then it’s a great place to begin (Dreyer himself includes a list of fine sources). Even so, he makes something like the subjunctive mood (“mood” being a grammatical concept not always taught today) utterly clear (If I were vs. If I was)—not as rigid as, say, the Chicago Manual of Style. Dreyer nevertheless has his pet peeves and his absolutes:
 
This may be a particular peeve of mine and no one else’s, but I note it, because it’s my book: Name-dropping, for no better reason than to show off, underappreciated novels, obscure foreign films, or cherished indie bands by having one’s characters irrelevantly reading or watching or listening to them is massively sore-thumbish. A novel is not a blog post about Your Favorite Things. If you must do this sort of thing—and, seriously, must you?—contextualize heavily” (113).
 
I give Dreyer another thumbs up because he has a broad (flexible and forgiving) understanding of the English language, the concept of rhetoric being one of them. A peeve of mine (and he articulates it well) is how people misuse the term “begging the question” in common speech (especially on MSNBC or CNN) and writing, mistakenly taking it to mean “raising the question”:
 
Begging the question, as the term is traditionally understood, is a kind of logical fallacy—the original Latin is petitio principii, and no, I don’t know these things off the top of my head; I look them up like any normal human being—in which one argues for the legitimacy of a conclusion by citing as evidence the very thing one is trying to prove in the first place. Circular reasoning, that is” (151). The greatest example from my classical rhetoric text is, “When did you stop beating your wife?” An apparent single premise actually assumes two, one of which is not possible without the other. To stop beating your wife you had to begin at some point, making the question a trap.
 
At the same time, Dreyer is unusually forgiving about other concepts, some of which cause me to grind my teeth. Even a few scientists seem to forget that “data” are plural (hee hee) for “datum.” The data clearly show … (not “shows”). Same with “media.” The media are (not “is”) always talking about how the media are not to blame. Ah, so satisfying to my ear, and yet Dreyer seems to shrug it off.
 
Dreyer’s greatest talent may be as wordsmith. He makes this discussion of “continual” vs. “continuous” pellucid: “Continual” means ongoing but with pause or interruption, starting and stopping, as, say, continual thunderstorms (with patches of amity). “Continuous” means ceaseless, as in a Noah-and-the-Flood-like forty days and forty nights of unrelenting rain” (179).   
 
He tackles “epigraph” and “epigram”; he tackles “farther” and “further,” and makes their meanings clear. Most of all, Dreyer’s book seems to demonstrate that the copyeditor, far from being captain of the grammar police, exists to take a writer’s finished manuscript and style his or her words to make the final product seem more like the original than the original. In other words, the copyeditor’s work should be invisible. Well done, it seems like magic, particularly to the author.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Matt Bell's novel, Appleseed

Evans, Harold. Do I Make Myself Clear?
    Why Writing Well Matters. New York,
    Little, Brown, 2017.
 
The field of English grammar can be a pedant’s paradise (or nightmare), what with Twitter and texting divining their own rules, and for over 400 pages noted wordsmith Evans sounds off about his favorite peeves. He also, if readers take away nothing else, reminds us that the passive voice (not tense) can bloat a sentence, whereas active voice (subject+verb+object) allows for clearer and briefer writing. Evans takes governmental babble and rewrites it so that one can understand it:

The author reduces the passage’s bloat from 68 words to 46, without reducing its meaning; in fact, he clarifies its meaning. And this goal becomes his overarching purpose. As a journalist Evans hasn’t much use for other inflated language, including what he calls flesh-eaters. One should, for example, use “although” instead of the flesh-eating “despite the fact that” or “like” instead of “along the lines of.” He reiterates what every good eighth-grade English teacher tries to teach: “Don’t pad your writing.” He might have followed his own advice when explaining “flesh-eating” by reducing his verbiage from half a page (plus a photograph of Zoophagus insidians) to a sentence or two. His metaphor is self-explanatory.
 
Overall, Mr. Evans provides a fine review for persons who write or wish to. He directs his writing to the journalist, who is attempting to reach as many readers as possible, but his “Ten Shortcuts to Making Yourself Clear” (Chapter Five) alone are worth the price of the book, and could assist all writers in making themselves clearer, regardless of the genre. Kudos to Evans.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2017

_ The Eclipse gum and Nature Valley wrappers always catch my eye on the store shelves.  What is this smooth, shiny Mylar (or look-alike material) made of?  Petroleum?  We see the Styrofoam Sonic cups everywhere, if not perched on someone’s desk at the office, then flattened in the street or skittering across our lawn (there’s a Sonic two blocks over, so the trip isn’t a long one).  The Udi Bread wrapper is the same as any bread wrapper.  It’s made of plastic.  It will get caught in your tree limbs; that’s why I always tie those things in a knot before putting them in the dumpster.  Regardless, it will still take thousands of years to decompose.  If ever.

_ I wrote my three congresspersons a letter each week for six weeks, and then I missed a week.  I haven’t written since.  My congressional rep. wrote back three times, if belatedly, but, of course, it was all the same party line stuff.  Nothing new.  He probably said the same thing about my letters.  I’ll write my three congresspersons again—there’s certainly plenty of fodder for letters—but for now I’m taking a break.  The holidays always do that to me.  Time to take a break, let the old body and mind rest up.

_ The following may be a matter of choice.  Maybe not.  Why would a sportscaster on ESPN say a quarterback is the “most steady player” instead of saying he’s the “steadiest player”?  It’s a trend I’ve noted for a long time.  When I taught elementary reading years ago, we conveyed (I hope) the principle that most adjectives are “regular” and that all you have to do is add “i-e-r” for comparing two and “i-e-s-t” for representing the superlative.  You only add “more” or “most” to irregular adjectives, say, like “beautiful”.  You wouldn’t say “beautifuler” or “beautifulest”.  Of course not; your ear tells you at a fairly young age that that construction is wrong.  More and more, however, I hear more and more people treating EVERY adjective as if it were irregular.  They say things like “more steady” or “more breezy” instead of “steadier” or “breezier”.  Can anyone explain this phenom to me?  Is it because elementary readers no longer teach the difference between regular or irregular adjectives, or is there something more sinister (sinisterer?) involved?  I’d love to know.

_ Below is an excerpt from the novel I just finished, tentatively called The Operatic Scale of Desire.  It is the blog post of character Dan Wallis, chaplain of a busy teaching hospital in Wichita.  He writes about an incident that took place when he was fourteen and philosophizes further on the meaning of a holiday that comes around as regularly as a winter cold.

Some time after reaching puberty, I intuit that there exist two Christmases.  One holiday seems to begin ardently after Thanksgiving: arias you hear on the Texaco-Metropolitan Opera radio affiliate, songs you chant in the school program, songs of sentimental cheer crooned by your favorite stars on TV and the movies (‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ makes me smile and cry).  Some time between the church pageant and Christmas Eve, the season’s feverish pitch falls to a hush: by now you have exchanged gifts at school, at church; you have presented offerings to your teachers, your neighbors; in the mail you long ago placed little packages that travel to Pop’s family on the coast.  You are witness to the shared anxiety in everyone’s faces, from the postman to the woman who sells tickets at the Orpheum.

If you can’t find your money, Son, will you step aside so that others might enjoy the season.  And when I do locate my cash, the toothy woman flashes me a practiced smile and says, Say, aren’t you the boy that played Amahl several seasons ago?

No.

Well, I’m sure you are, I never forget a face.

Fuck you, I mumble under my breath. 

Her smile falls away, and she shouts through the hole in the glass.  Get out of my sight, the world has no use for your kind.

What kind is that? I rant, giving her the finger.  I then see a reflection of myself looking like Ma when she’s hopping mad, and I jump back.

You know what you are, now get out of my window so I can help these good people standing in the cold, Sonny.

The other Christmas is a parallel and unequal world of ancient hymns, the story as it is told from the Big Book on the lectern at church.  Long ago a virgin mother gives birth to a very special baby (I haven’t yet learned paradox), a baby that will save all the wretches of the world (especially and including me).  Very wise men following a star in the sky travel a long distance to be present on this very chilly night that the baby Jesus is wrapped tightly and laid in a manger.  Ma—dressed in her Christmas nightgown through which you can see her breasts—explains that for all intents and purposes Jesus was born in a barn and that his manger was little more than a cattle trough.  As she holds me close to her sweet bosom, I think of my grandfather’s barn, a place that smells of dung and car grease, and wonder, That’s where our noble savior was born?

The saddest thing is that one Christmas wars against the other like a jealous sibling.  Yes, one is crass, the other wise.  One powerful, the other weak and self-deprecating.  One encourages inane consumption, the other generosity, the former eradicating one’s desire to practice the latter.  It is a war I relive each year—fretting over what to get for whom and how much to spend or not—a case of post traumatic stress that multiplies and folds over itself year after year.  It is a war that always ends in a truce, heathen burghers smiling smugly—even as a babe coos quietly in his manger. 

_ I continue my close readings of New Yorker stories from 2011.  Only two more to go until I write about the project. 

What kind of statistics will be interesting?  The number of male authors?  Female?  Number of stories about ethnic minorities?  Gays/lesbians?  Trannies?  Average age? 

How many stories are set in New York or on the eastern seaboard?  How many are set in the boondocks, a foreign country? 

Literary issues?  Who uses the third person close point of view?  Who writes in first person? 

After January first I begin my trek through these fifty or so stories to see what the magic is, the alchemy that is the New Yorker story.

My first post (Sept. 8) drew a few comments from friends and family that I did not publish (all supportive and positive). Perhaps it was too long, though my writer friends said no (I always trust them). A number of topics have caught my fancy lately, several of which I speak of below.

On Tuesday, I belatedly sent my Texas representatives in congress a letter through the mail urging them to support the American Jobs Act. I plan to do this each Tuesday until some kind of action is taken (I don’t care if it failed to reach the floor in the Senate). Why standard mail? I know e-mails are cheap (except for that pesky monthly internet bill). But they’re also easy for clerical help to dump, and a million e-mails probably don’t equal the physical space of one piece of standard mail. Besides, if 50 million people were to write letters, the ailing postal system might be given a boost, as well.

I urge every one of my FB friends (assuming you support it) to write a letter a week to their congressional representatives. If they’re Republicans like mine in Texas, you understand the urgency. If one or more of them is Democratic, please write them anyway; it will reinforce the idea that they need to stay the course (blue dogs particularly need stiff encouragement). Then send all your FB friends (some of you have hundreds) a message urging them to write their representatives one letter a week until some form of a jobs act is passed. 

Yes, it will cost you $1.32 to send a letter a week to your three representatives, but I like to imagine the tiny offices of these tiny people filling with letters to the point that they’ll have no room to sit in their tiny chairs.  And no stationary is needed. No computers.

Scrawl your letters on the back of used paper (sift through your recycling bin at work).

Write your urgings on the back of an unpaid bill (better yet, a copy of the unpaid bill).

Write your urgings on a copy of your mortgage bill.

Write with your kid’s crayon, an old marker, a Sharpie, chalk.

Send it in a used envelope and tape it shut.

If you’re short on time or words, write it big: PASS THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT, five words every week until it is passed. Even if it fails, we continue write: PASS A JOBS BILL NOW. All the Republicans want to talk about right now is depriving a woman of her right to choose. Let’s keep them focused on jobs until they’re so sick of hearing from their constituents they’ll do SOMETHING.

On numerous occasions President Obama has declared that he cannot do this alone (and we see that it is true). I know we may feel helpless, but if we do the things we are capable of doing, perhaps, in the aggregate (imagine millions of letters flowing out the windows of the office buildings in Washington and down the streets, K Street in particular), we can succeed. Washington offices could soon be filled with stationery, scraps of paper, all screaming for congress to pass a jobs bill. Now.

Due to congress failing to pass a long-term budget, the issue will surface again, and again members will want to slash funds from necessary programs. I could take people in Washington seriously about cutting costs if they were willing to cut or even freeze their precious salaries (which receive an automatic annual raise) and if they were willing to pay a larger co-pay on their health insurance policies. If all budgets are on the table, they should offer no objection.

Cut back one staff member.
Cut back to one less trip home, one less vacation.
And while we’re cutting, why not cut that second mortgage deduction on federal income tax.

Who says members of congress must own property in one of the most historical and expensive real estate markets in the country? The people who claim to serve us should be willing to live in federal housing (i.e. grown-up dormitories of 2-3 bedrooms). More and more of them are leaving their families back home during congressional sessions anyway (so as to protect their offspring from the scourge of life inside the beltway), so why not assist them in their finer instincts?

Congress will continue to call on 98% of Americans to sacrifice, particularly those who don’t have or can’t find a job (all except their billionaire friends sans the honorable Mr. Buffett). Members of congress should be willing to do their share. Of course, 550 legislators freezing their salaries would not add up to much in savings, would largely serve as a symbolic gesture, saying, “We share your pain,” something that most in congress have not been willing to do—but it would be a start. Right now most Americans view people in congress as an elite group whose self-regard rivals that of nineteenth-century royalty—people who will eventually leave Washington (if you can drive them out) richer than when they arrived—people who continue to see that they and their friends and associates get richer and richer year after year. Is this really what writers of the constitution had in mind (is capitalism a concept meant to work well with democracy)? If so, they must be rejoicing in their graves.

I watch local TV news largely because I detest the idea of giving patronage to the local paper. (Even online, I only read the obits; if I comb the list and fail to see my name of a morning, I get dressed and go to work.) I use other sources for news and editorials: the online edition of the New York Times; The New Yorker for belated but in-depth analyses of important issues written by urbane and erudite writers (mostly). I appreciate how they use the term “e-mail” instead of “email,” how they use “ë” in words like reëstablish, and write Web site instead of website. I’m not sure why.

As I observe the ambulance-chasing news being delivered by ever younger and younger people, I cringe at the grammatical errors I hear. Nothing catches my ear faster than if someone in the news says the word “bust.” Now, to be fair, the word is listed in the most comprehensive of dictionaries as being informal or slang. So context is important. But is the local TV news an informal context? If the anchor is reporting a drug bust or busting a drug ring by the cops (and whatever happened to using the word police or officer?), it is probably an honest use of bust. In some ways law enforcement people (with the help of TV cop shows) have made “bust” their own. No, where I become irritated is when the anchor or reporter uses the word “bust” to mean “to burst” or “to break.” A major water main busted today at Main and Avenue Q. Eek. If you are reading, local TV news people, use “burst” or “broke” to indicate breakage. You’ll garner the respect of educated and genteel followers among your audience.

Another error that creeps me out is the confusion over “lie” and “lay” (and often the speaker doesn’t even realize s/he is confused). Each is a discrete verb with its own conjugation (sorry this looks so English booky):

Present         Past                     Past Participle_____________________________
Lie                            Lay                     Have Has or Had Lain = TO REST OR RECLINE

Lay                           Laid                    Have Has or Had Laid = TO PUT/PLACE AN OBJECT

We see that “Lay” is the ONLY word held in common by each conjugation and obviously the two have separate meanings.

Some well-considered examples of the verb lie (TO REST OR RECLINE):

Present Tense

I lie down to take a long-deserved nap. I’m lying down now, kids, so knock off the noise.

You lie down this instant. You’re lying down when there’s all this trash piled up?

S/he lies down for a long winters’ sleep. S/he is lying down to quiet her nerves.

They lie down after a long day on the road. They are lying down after getting in late.

Past Tense

Last night I lay down after supper. When the phone rang, I was lying down.

You lay down after supper because you were sleepy. You were laying out your clothes.

Now comes the form you may never in your life have heard used or used correctly.

Past Participle

I have/had lain down before taking a shower.

You had lain down as soon as you got in from your date.

S/he has/had lain down with a bad headache.

Some well-considered examples of the verb lay (TO PUT OR PLACE):

Present Tense

I lay or am laying the blanket on the bed.

You lay or are laying the blanket on the bed.

S/he lay or is laying the blanket on the bed.

Past Tense

I laid the blanket on the bed last night.

You laid the blanket on the bed last night.

S/he laid the blanket on the bed last night.

(Often “laid” is used incorrectly as part of the conjugation for “lie.” The only exception allowable is if you got laid last night or any other time.)

Past Participle

I had laid the comforter on the bed before it was laundered.

You had laid the comforter on the bed before having it laundered.

S/he had laid the comforter on the bed before she lay down to take a nap.

It might take ten minutes to memorize these conjugations, but once you do, you will distinguish yourself among educated people. Perhaps your listeners will mimic you, thus perpetuating the language we so love. A hundred years from now the two verbs may have merged as one, but for now (as long as I have breath) they most certainly have not.

“The Dictionary of Errors” is but a continuing series that I shall reprise when I see/hear other linguistic issues that stick in my craw (informal).

The (meta)morph(iz)ing of English. R we dvlpng a ntion of bby tlkrs? Will texting dictionaries replace Webster or Random House?

Self publication. Is it only a way of bypassing stuffy commercial publishers, or is it a rebirth of an old tradition?

How to write a successful New Yorker story—secrets not yet revealed by anyone. Late novelist John Gardner says in his 1983 work On Becoming a Novelist: “The New Yorker, for instance, ( to mention one of the best), has from the beginning been elegant and rather timid, a perfect magazine for selling expensive clothes and fine china, and its fiction editors, probably without knowing they do it, regularly duck from strong emotion or strong, masculine characters, preferring the refined and tentative.” [italics mine]

Still true in 2011? We shall see. I am currently re-reading every New Yorker story published in 2011. At the end of the year, I shall make an analysis and reveal what it takes to be one of the 50 stories published each year. There must be a formula.