www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

FISKE'S GRAMMAR

8/16/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
I can honestly say I feel like I have the best job in the world! At the moment I'm writing the next book, and every time I sit down to start a new Tom Gates book it's really exciting to think, “What can I do now?”
Liz Pichon
Author of The Brilliant World of Tom Gates
​Born August 16, 1963
Picture
L. Pichon

MY BOOK WORLD 

Picture
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:​
T
UES: 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

0 Comments

Dreyer's English Is Not Dry

3/26/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
It’s dark. You exhale a fist of memory. I love you like weathering wood in a room of empty pianos. When you return to something you love, it’s already beyond repair. You wear it broken.
​James L. White
Author of The Salt Ecstasies
​Born March 26, 1936
Picture
J. L. White

My Book World

Picture
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

0 Comments

To Be Clear

8/18/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren't allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.
​Ma Jian
Born August 18, 1953

Picture
M. Jian

My Book World

Picture
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:

​White House:
“Despite these opportunities and multiple intelligence products that noted the threat AQAP could pose to the Homeland, the different pieces of the puzzle were never brought together in this case[,] the dots were never connected, and, as a result steps to disrupt the plot involving Mr. Abdulmutallab were not taken prior to his boarding of the airplane with an explosive device and attempting to detonate it in-flight” (374). [passages written in passive voice appear in bold font]
 
Evans’s rewrite:
“CT staff never connected the dots, so no one attempted to prevent Mr. Abdulmutallab boarding the plane with an explosive device” (375).
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
0 Comments

My Book World

3/24/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Flannery O'Connor
Born March 25, 1925

Gray's Monumental Project

Picture
Gray, James. Teachers at the Center: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Writing Project. Berkeley: National Writing Project, 2000.

James Gray, founder of the National Writing Project, writes of his many experiences with teachers who are also writers. The idea he develops is to send teacher/writers back to their classrooms to teach writing, not just English grammar. The earlier part of the book—filled with personal anecdotes about his own development as writer, anecdotes about teachers—seems more interesting than later sections about the political nuts and bolts of the organization’s formation.

Some nuggets from James Gray:

“I had thrived in Miss Popham’s class because she was in charge of her own curriculum. She had a wonderful idea and freedom to teach as she wished. I still think hers is the best way to organize a literature class in high school if the goal is to encourage wide reading and the love of books. My own best teaching in high school reflected my attempts to replicate the spirit of that 1943 class” (2).

“When teaching or learning new skills like reading Shakespeare or writing well, a teacher needs to keep at it. One way we learn to read and write is by reading and writing regularly and frequently” (15).

“This was a teachers-teaching-teachers idea, rare for its time [1961] and transparently sensible. Effective and experienced classroom teachers, rather than professors, did the job of teaching and supervising beginning student teachers. I accepted, and every year for the next fourteen years I taught fifteen beginning English teachers how to teach and visited them in their student teaching classes. Year after year, I had groups of gifted young teachers who, I always thought, could have chosen any career, but chose teaching because teaching is what they had always wanted to do” (25).

“I was thinking that I should have listened to my parents and gone to law school. The thought of facing thirty-four sixth-grade students on Monday without the slightest notion of what I was going to teach was terrifying. In frustration, I kicked at a rock partially buried in the mud. Out scurried several small green crabs. One half-dollar-size specimen picked the edge of my shoe as its next hiding place. I carefully kneeled down without moving my foot to take a better look. The obtuse angle of the setting sunlight caused the crab to light up. She was blowing phosphorescent bubbles from her gill slits. I crouched in the mud absolutely transfixed. Each cell of that animal was illuminated in flame. I momentarily lost my breath . . . as if I had been jolted to consciousness. I knew then that if I could share this type of feeling with my students, I would be teaching them something worthwhile” (74).

“During the summer institutes, BAWP [Bay Area Writing Project] works to maintain a balance between knowledge gained through practice and knowledge gleaned through research and literature in the field. As teachers prepare for their demonstrations, they are asked to describe not only what they do but why they do it” (95).

“From the outset, the writing project adopted a different take on inservice. We believed that if school reform was to be effective, inservice programs must be conducted by the folks on the ground. Classroom teachers are the linchpin of reform. School reform can’t happen just by passing laws, publishing mandates, requiring courses, or reading one more book. But real school reform can happen when teachers come together regularly throughout their careers to explore practices that effective teachers have already proven are successful in their classrooms. Inservice of this sort equals professional development, two terms that, alas, have not always been synonymous” (103).


I was heartened by this book even though I left teaching some time ago. Gray helps to reinforce the idea that I may have done a fairly good job of teaching. If nothing more, his book helps me to see that teaching composition was not a waste of time. Instead, it may be the most important thing that I did with my life, topping, in terms of consequence, anything that I’ve ever written.

WEDNESDAY: MORE PHOTOGRAPHY FROM YELLOW HOUSE CANYON


Dictionary Revisited

2/19/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him.
Ellen Gilchrist
Born February 20, 1935

A Dictionary of Errors

Picture
When Porter Cresswell thinks of the vast number of mistakes that we speakers of English make each and every day of the year—for how can we help it, we’re only human, after all—there are a few that stick in his craw like a toothpick caught crossways in his throat. And he writes a letter to the editor of his local newspaper. Online, no less.

Dear Fellow Citizens,

You would do well to recall that grammar books are written based on usage. Yes, through the long lineage of our language, crafters of such books have discarded that which no longer works (thee and thou, for example) and accepted or transformed a former mistake into something that is now acceptable usage. Over time, after humans insist on melting the “h” out of a certain word or making one agree with a verb that it didn’t in the beginning, the writers of the Great Grammar Book of Inviolate Rules often acquiesce to the hoi polloi . . . and change the rule. Still, I think we should uphold certain rules of grammar, as long as we can.

I or Thou. I hear people of all ages violate this inviolate rule, but mostly it is the young, and such usage is appalling. Appalling, I tell you!

Me and my friends went to the store.

Yack!

Me and coach decided I should pass the ball off instead of trying to take the entire game on my back.

What makes either of these sentences unacceptable is that the speaker has chosen to use the wrong pronoun, indeed the wrong type of pronoun. Me is an object pronoun. Not in a million years can it really serve as the subject of a sentence (well, we could wait around and see). One can put it before the verb and pretend, but no no no, I protest. Me cannot ever be the subject of the sentence. I is the subject pronoun one wishes to use.

My friends (to be polite) and I went to the store.

Coach and I decided (equally) that I should pass the ball off instead of trying to take the entire game on my back.

The rule is so simple. I performs the action; only me can take it up the you know what. (Or is it Only I can take it . . .?)

FRIDAY: END OF PORTER CRESSWELL'S "Dictionary of Errors" RANT



See Ken Dixon's most recent post at kendixonartblog.com. In it he talks about his latest show at the William Campbell Gallery in Fort Worth. Exciting stuff!

Season's Grittings

12/13/2011

 

Items That Won't Recycle

_ 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.

_Politics

_ 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.

A Dictionary Of Errors

_ 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.

Xmases Past

_ 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. 

Current Reading

_ 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.

A Call For Submissions

10/13/2011

 
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.

A Call for Submissions

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.

Congressional Inaction

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.

A Dictionary of Errors

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.

Future Topics

“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.
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Aging
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Biography
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cancer
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Humor
    Idaho
    Iowa
    Journalism
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Theater
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    True Crime
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2025
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG