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CURSUS SCRIPTORUM:
WRITING WITH HONORS
CONTENT DESCRIPTION
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COMMON SENSE
MINIMUM REQUIREMENT: NONE (DISCIPULUS)
This level is about getting the basic grammatical terms of discussion on the table. We
talk about the pieces that are put together into written English.
The model here is the Twelve Tables of Roman law. (In fact they were not much like
these, but let that go.) You need to master each of the twelve before you’re suited to
become a citizen — a Civis Romanus. At any time your CS score drops below 90, you’ll
need to bring it back up before you can go on.
The CS score is the product of the scores for each of the “Twelve Tables” — mastery
of twelve subjects that you need to know about, in broad terms, before we can really
talk about anything else. Each of those scores is assessed on a range between zero and
two. Consequently, the highest you could theoretically achieve would be 212, which is
4096. On the other hand, in order to achieve a score of 90, you need to have an average
of at least. You will note that a zero in any category will zero out the total, and a very
low score in any category will make it very hard to achieve outstanding scores across
the board. A score of 1 in every category will get you a total score of 1. In order to cross
the threshold of 90, you’ll need an average score of 1.455 in every category without a
great deal of deviation on the lower side.
1. Parts of speech
The basic building-blocks of English are the eight kinds of words we call parts of
speech. Most of you probably have learned them already, but it’s worth knowing what
they all are so that we can refer to them unambiguously in the future. The division of
English into exactly eight parts of speech is probably not as absolute as you might
initially have learned, but the terms are convenient and reasonably exact most of the
time. We’ll go over them here, and you’ll know them and recognize them before we
move on.
Your goal in this section is to learn to identify each of the eight parts of speech
correctly. (Some words can appear as several different parts of speech, but we’ll try to
avoid those that are ambiguous.)
NOUN
Nouns are names of persons, places, or things. A noun may be proper (designating a
particular individual, like “John” or “The United States of America”) or common
(designating something by class, like “man” or “country”). The same thing may in fact
be described by nouns of each type: John may be a man, as The United States of
America may be a country. Nouns can refer to concrete things (things one could touch
or see, like “John” or “rock”) or abstract things, which are generally immaterial (for
example, “love” or “parallelism”).
ADJECTIVE
Adjectives apply to things, but aren’t the things themselves. Normally in English, we
say that an adjective modifies a noun. Hence adjectives tend not to appear on their own.
Words describing characteristics are typically adjectives — “grey” or “big” are
adjectives you could apply to something concrete like a house. In some cases, the noun
to which the adjective applies is understood, so that it can be left out, and its place taken
by the adjective alone — “The good die young,” or “Land of the free and home of the
brave.” In such a case, the good, the free, and the brave are understood to be people. In
other situations, they might be other things. “Slow”, “thoughtful”, and “strong” are all
adjectives.
Adjectives attach to nouns in one of two ways, which we’ll explore in more detail
later. They can be attributive, which is to say that they’re just attached to the noun in
passing, like the word “big” in the sentence, “The big house slid down the hill.” They
can also be predicative, which means that they’re the main point of the sentence. We’ll
get to what predicates are shortly, but an example is, “The house was big.”
ARTICLE
Articles are really special-purpose adjectives used to flag words we’re talking about.
We have a total of three articles in English — “the”, “a”, and its variant form “an”.
“The” is said to be the definite article, because when we use “the”, it’s generally assumed
that the hearer or reader knows what we’re talking about. “A” or “an” are two forms of
the same word, really; we call this one the indefinite article.
VERB
Verbs are the words that contain the action part of the sentence. Verbs are of two
kinds — action verbs and state of being verbs. Action verbs talk about what something
does, while state of being verbs talk about what something is. There are some important
distinctions between them, but in general both kinds are capable of driving a sentence.
Every sentence needs to have at least one verb. “Run”, “walk”, and “is” are all verbs.
Verbs can be varied to show the time when something happened or existed, and in
various other interesting ways — for example, “ran”, “walked”, and “was”.
ADVERB
Adverbs are modifiers like adjectives. Unlike adjectives, however, they modify not
nouns but other kinds of words. They can modify verbs, in the first place, talking about
how something is done or exists; in the second place, they can modify adjectives; in in
the third, they can modify other adverbs. The kinds of adverbs required for each for
each these three functions are the same. Many adverbs are related to adjectives, and
marked by a “-ly” ending — for example “slowly”, which is built from “slow”. Not all
adverbs are of this sort, however.
PREPOSITION
Prepositions are particular words that were (historically) originally adverbs, but they
are specifically those that have come to take objects that are nouns, but they’re not
themeslves verbs. They are such words as “into”, “by”, “from”, “with”, and so on. They
always (and only) occur in combination with those objects, forming what are called
prepositional phrases. Examples are “into the woods”, “from the door”, “under the rock”,
and so on.
CONJUNCTIONS
Conjunctions are sentence fasteners that attach words or groups of words to each
other and to the larger structures of a sentence. There are two kinds that are important
in the big picture of sentence construction — coordinating conjunctions, which join two
things that can otherwise stand on their own, and subordinating conjunctions, which
join something that could not stand on its own to something that could. The
coordinating conjunctions are very few — “and” and “but” being the most common.
There are more subordinating conjunctions — “while”, “when”, “if”, “although”, and so
on.
INTERJECTION
Interjections are thrown-in words that really stand on their own. They are neither
strictly part of the subject or the predicate of the sentence (of which more later), but are
flavoring-words that express the attitude of the speaker toward what’s going on.
“Wow!”, “Hey!”, and the like are interjections.
2. Types of sentence
While there are many things sentences can do along the way, any given sentence can
have as its most fundamental goal one and only one of three things. It can make a
statement, ask a question, or give a command. All sentences do one of these things; no
legitimate sentence can do more than one of these things. The rules are pretty simple,
but getting this point down is important.
STATEMENTS
Statements are by far the most common kind of sentence. They provide information
about something. Statements can be either true or false: “The moon is made of rock,” vs.
“The moon is made of green cheese”. Compound or complex sentences, of course, may
be partly true and partly false, if one breaks them down into pieces. The individual
statements are wholly one or wholly the other.
Whether true or false, however, a sentence does not normally validate its own truth
or falsehood. Statements are all, on their own internal terms, claiming to be true: that is,
they are claiming to be the truth. A small class of disputed sentences involving selfreference is philosophically and logically problematic, since they open the door to
logical paradox (e.g., “This statement is false,” which can be neither true nor false, since
if it’s true, it’s not, and if it’s not, it is.). Even if you as a reader may know that a given
sentence is not true, what is not true is the external truth of the sentence — its
application to the real world.
QUESTIONS
Questions are the next most common kind of sentence. Questions ask about the truth
or falsehood of something, or for some particular missing information about something.
They are not statements, they cannot properly be combined with statements in a single
sentence, and they cannot be either true or false. A sentence may, if it asks something
irrational (“Was the chair happy?”), be construed to contain a category mistake, but it’s
not true or false as such, since it makes no assertion.
ORDERS
An order, like a question, is not capable of being true or false, though what is
ordered may be possible or impossible. It may be circumstantially impossible (if the
order is given to someone incapable of carrying out the instruction) or intrinsically
impossible (“Construct a square circle”).
3. Subject and predicate
Every sentence, whether a statement, a question, or a command, must do two things.
First, it must be about something, and name or refer to it in some way; second, it must
say (state, ask, or command) something about it. All sentences work that way all the
time. Sometimes parts of sentences do that too — but every sentence has at least one
such pairing.
We call what is being talked about the subject of the sentence. What we say about it is
what we call the predicate. “Subject” and “predicate” have philosophical meanings that
we can talk about later. For now, just remember that the subject is what the sentence is
about, and it’s always represented by some word or words in the sentence. The
predicate is what you’re saying about the subject, and it’s always represented by some
other word or words in the sentence.
Strictly, every time you join a subject and a predicate, what results is a clause. Every
sentence has one or more clauses. The simplest sentence has just one — with one subject
and one predicate.
Every word in every sentence, with the exception of interjections (which have little
or no syntactic connection to any of the rest of the sentence), is part of either the subject
or the predicate. It cannot belong to both.
The subject of a sentence that is a statement or a question can be almost anything.
The subject of a command, in contrast, is (at least in English, and also in many other
languages) invariably “you” (either singular or plural). Becuase that’s so much an
understood part of a command, it’s sometimes left out.
4. Subject-verb agreement
It’s a simple rule but an important one. The predicate you attach to the subject of a
sentence has to fit with it grammatically. For the most part, that’s pretty simple in
English — we have different kinds of verbs to go with different subjects. With relatively
few verbs, there are different forms to go with different subjects:
"
"
"
"
"
I am." "
You are."
He is.
She is.""
It is.
We are.
You (all) are.
They are.
For most verbs, there are fewer forms. What we call weak verbs usually have only
one form that’s different from the rest, an that’s the one reserved for the third-person
singular subject — he, she, or it.
"
"
"
"
"
I walk."
We walk.
You walk." You (all) walk.
He walks.
She walks." They walk.
It walks.
It is nevertheless important to make sure that the predicate (here represented simply
by the verb) fits the subject. It’s seldom a problem for native speakers in simple sentence
like the ones above, but when sentences get longer and more complicated, it’s possible
to lose track. We’ll work witih simple examples first, and then move on to more
complicated ones.
5. Adjectives and adverbs
In conception, adjectives and adverbs are not very hard to tell apart. Sometimes in
the heat of writing, however, or (yet more commonly) in speaking, people get them
mixed up.
Just remember that adjectives can modify only nouns. Consider the word “good” in
the following sentence:
Tom was a good man.
Here we have an attributive adjective of a fairly normal form. Adjectives may
sometimes be treated as nouns themselves — but that’s going to be where there is an
unexpressed noun (usually of a fairly general sort — “things” or “people”) to which
they apply:
The good die young.
Here we are understanding the unexpressed referent, “people”: it means “the good
[people] die young.” We call this “substantivizing” the adjective. That’s a big fancy
word for something you probably do without thinking all the time.
What we can’t do in proper English is to use the adjective as an adverb:
He ran good.
That’s considered an error (though there are other languages much more tolerant of
such things). Here we need rather the adverb corresponding to “good”, namely “well”:
He ran well.
Complicating all this is the fact that in English, “well” may function as an adjective
too — with the peculiar result that people occasionally correct what they think to be a
mistake, thereby generating a new one:
I am well.
is a perfectly legitimate thing to say; here “well” is an adjective, meaning “free of
disease” or the like. The sentence with the form that is just the adjective:
I am good.
is a perfectly legitimate sentence, too, but it does not mean the same thing at all — it’s a
claim to peculiar expertise or moral superiority — goodness and wellness are not quite
the same thing in our lexicon. It’s worth noting that if you can attach “-ness” to a word
and have the result be a noun (like “goodness” or “wellness”), the word itself must be
an adjective.
Adverbs are more liberally applicable, though they are not able to modify nouns
directly. They can modify adjectives that are modifying nouns, as well as verbs and
other adverbs. Adverbs are commonly thought of as the “-ly” words, and certainly
many adjectives can be turned into adverbs by the addition of “-ly” — for example,
“quick”, “quickly”; “smart”, “smartly”. It’s not universal, however, and there are many
adverbs that do not have a “-ly” at the end.
6. Cases — subjects and objects
Latin and Greek and other inflected languages tend to talk about cases more than
English does, but in fact there are case-based relationships in the English language, even
if the words themselves don’t have special form on that account. The Indo-European
languages (of which Latin and Greek and English are all examples) came from an
ancestral language that had a number of cases. In English, we really have two forms left,
and three or four functions that could be characterized as cases.
In English we usually talk about a subjective and an objective case. With pronouns, the
form of the word can show the case. Otherwise, it’s a matter of the placement of the
word in the sentence. The subjective case is the one used for the subject of a sentence;
the objective case is one used for objects of verbs, prepositions, and so on. Hence “I” is
the subjective first-person pronoun, and “me” is the objective first-person pronoun. One
uses the subjective form only for the subject of a sentence:
I went to the market.
One uses the objective form for objects.
The market came to me. (object of preposition)
He annoys me. (direct object of the verb)
He gave me a book. (indirect object of the verb)
One does not use the objective form form for the subject:
Me went to the market.
Nor does one use the subjective form for the object:
The market came to I.
He annoys I.
He gave I a book.
All of those are wrong. Very few native speakers would make mistakes of this order in
simple subjects. When one is dealing with compound subjects or objects, however,
mistakes suddenly become very common. You will fairly commonly run into the likes of
these, especially in speech.
Me and Tom went to the market.
The manager came to talk to Tom and I.
He annoys Tom and I.
He gave Tom and I a book.
All of those are wrong as well.
These are errors that are easy to make, because they’re what you hear frequently in
common speech. but they’re also easy to avoid. The simple rule of thumb — which is
remarkably reliable for a rule of thumb — is to use in any compound subject or object
(one made up of two or more names) exactly the same form one would use if it were
appearing by itself. Remember that simple rule to avoid all the many mistakes one can
make in this situation.
A simple test for the subjective/objective case distinction is the sentence “___ likes
___.” Only subjective pronouns will appear in the first position; only objective pronouns
in the second.
He likes me.
She likes them.
They like her.
We like them.
It likes us.
We like it.
Who likes us?
You like whom?
7. Predicate noun and adjective
Most verbs report on what the subject of the sentence or clause is doing. A small
number of them, however, have to do with what something is. These are generally
known as “state-of-being” verbs. This category includes the obvious words like “is”, but
also others like “becomes”, “looks”, “smells”, “sounds”, or “seems” (especially where
“seems” or one of the other verbs of perception is a short form for “seems [looks, smells,
sounds, etc.] to be”.
In point of fact, most of the time, state-of-being verbs aren’t reporting on the mere
existence of something or someone (though they can do that). Mostly they serve as
connectors (known to linguists as the copula) to join the subject to some other thing that
we want to say about the subject.
Those things may be either nouns or adjectives, or, sometimes, both. For example:
His car is a classic. (noun)
My house is blue. (adjective)
Bill is a good man. (noun with adjective)
In general, these things tend to accomplish fairly few distinct functions.
When one is dealing with a noun in the predicate, they can report either a category or
class to which an individual subject belongs, or the identity of the subject:
His car is a classic. (category)
A noun is a kind of word. (category)
The snark was a boojum. (category)
Jimmy’s favorite movie is “Star Wars”. (identity)
The man who fixed the furnace was Tom Smith. (identity)
That’s about it. You will note that in these cases, the category type of predication
creates a one-to-many linkage. That is, the class is at least potentially larger and more
inclusive than the subject. Accordingly, these predications are not reversible. We can say,
“His car is a classic,” but not, “A (i.e., any) classic is his car.” His car may well be a
classic, but that doesn’t grant him ownership of all other classic cars, of which there are
many.
The identity type of predication creates a one-to-one linkage, and accordingly it
generally is reversible, though it will usually work some kind of changes in emphasis
on what you’re writing. You will choose which form to use depending on what kind of
information you are trying to convey. Usually the part of the sentence that’s the news
value of the sentence is the predicate; the subject is the known thing. Hence:
The man who fixed the furnace was Tom Smith.
There we know someone fixed the furnace; this is telling us who it was.
Tom Smith was the man who fixed the furnace.
Here we presumably know who Tom Smith is; this is telling us another perhaps useful
fact about him.
Those are all forms of the predicate noun (sometimes called the predicate
nominative, in English grammar, though strictly when it’s relevant, the adjectives
would also be nominative in case).
The other thing you can attach in this way is an adjective, as illustrated above:
My house is blue.
Effectively an adjective functions more or less like a class name, in that it creates an
irreversible predication. But there are really several reasons for that; while a house, as a
noun, can receive the modification of an adjective like “big” or “blue”, the reverse is not
true. It would not even really be meaningful to say
Blue is my house.
with the understanding that “blue” was the subject. In fact, one can say that, but the
logical pressure on the language is so strong that we’d still understand “house” as the
subject. Sometimes fancy or lofty diction has that kind of sentence structure. The subject
is still invariably the noun, no matter the order.
One interesting thing about these predicate nouns and adjectives is the fact that they
all assume the nominative case, where relevant. In English, our nouns are not marked
for case, but our pronouns are. Accordingly:
It is I.
is correct;
It is me.
is not (though it remains a colloquial standard).
8. Independent clauses
An independent clause is one that can stand alone as a complete sentence. It has a
subject and a predicate, as does any other clause; it is, moreover, not marked by any
subordinating conjunction that renders it incapable of standing on its own. An
independent clause conveys a complete idea that can be understood independently.
9. Dependent clauses
Unlike an independent clause, a dependent clause cannot stand on its own as a
sentence. Normally it is marked by some kind of subordinating conjunction, though
there are other marks as well.
There are in fact three kinds of dependent clauses, and each defined according to the
part of speech it most resembles.
The most common are adverbial clauses, which act as adverbs, modifying the whole
of the predication or specifically the action of the verb. They are virtually always set off
by subordinating conjunctions (“when”, “if”, “although”, and so on).
When the cows came home, one of them was missing.
If you are unhappy, please let the management know.
He chopped down the tree in order to clear his view.
The next most common are adjectival clauses, which can only modify nouns. These
are also called relative clauses. A relative clause pivots on what is called a relative
pronoun, and this will be a pronoun that refers to some noun outside the clause, which is
called its antecedent. It’s important for the antecedent to be unambiguous, lest the reader
or hearer be confused about what the relative clause is modifying. The predominant
relative pronouns are “that”, “who”, “whom”, or “which”. We’ll talk later about which
of those is correct in any given situation.
The doctor who recommended this treatment was a mysterious
fellow.
The ship from which he brought the crate ashore had begun to
sink.
The army of terracotta soldiers, which had been buried for nearly
two thousand years, was an impressive sight.
Finally, there are noun clauses, which stand in for nouns as a whole, and are not
terribly common. These are often introduced with a “that”, though not the same kind of
“that” as in a relative clause:
I resented [the fact] that he had emptied the bank account without
my permission.
He told me that you killed him.
All three of these kinds of clause are important in managing your English writing
properly.
10. Simple sentences
A simple sentence is more or less what it seems to be: a sentence with a subject and a
predicate. Most authorities will consider compund subjects and compound predicates
possible for simple sentences, as long as there is only one predication going on:
Tom and I went to the store.
or
Tom went to the store and bought some milk.
Arguably one could even have under the general umbrella of the simple sentence:
Tom and I went to the store and bought some milk.
The point is that there is still only one clause — the compound predicate applies to the
compound subject uniformly. As soon as we launch into separate clauses, however:
I went to the store, but Tom had his milk delivered.
we are dealing with something different. That’s what we’ll take up when we talk about
compound sentences.
An independent clause is one that can stand alone as a sentence. It is not dependent
upon anything else. Other things may be dependent on an independent clause, but they
won’t occur in a simple — or even a compound — sentence.
11. Compound sentences
Compound sentences, theoretically, are those that contain two or more independent
clauses. Grammarians tend to talk about compound sentences as those that contain only
independent clauses, but more than one.
The independent clauses that make up compound sentences are stitched together
with what are called coordinating conjunctions. There are not many of these — “but” and
“and” are chief among them. Most conjunctions are subordinating conjunctions, and
they only make their appearance in complex sentences, which we’ll take up with the
next table. (One could make a case that a sentence with two independent clauses joined
by only a semicolon is, from a grammatical point of view, really two sentences. These
boundaries are somewhat pragmatic.)
One of the most common errors in modern writing is to join independent clauses
"
without any conjunction at all. Often signalling their intentions only by a comma,
writers will barge ahead without any further indication that they’ve moved from one
predication to another. These are often called “comma splices” — and they’re the most
common cause of what we call “run-on” sentences. A comma splice is always a mistake,
and will be penalized severely.
12. Complex sentence
A complex sentence is one in which there are one or more subordinate or dependent
clauses. A dependent clause is one that cannot stand alone, but modifies some other
clause. that clause in turn can be either dependent or independent, but eventually all
clauses owe some allegiance to a “top-level” clause.
Subordinate clauses — which we’ll discuss at greater length in the next level —
come in three basic varieties, as has already been pointed out.
It should be (and in fact is) possible to have a compound complex sentence — that is,
one that has at least two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction as
well as at least one subordinate clause attached to one of them. Grammarians don’t
comment on those particularly very often, but they should round out your
understanding of what these are about.
SAVOIR FAIRE
MINIMUM REQUIREMENT: CIVIS ROMANVS
This level is about getting the more sophisticated grammatical terms on the table.
We talk about the pieces that are put together into written English. You must have
mastered the terms of the Discipulus level in order to undertake these tasks here, and
must have amassed 10 denarii.
Here you need to show that you are in command of four basic subject areas,
fundamental to the Republic of Rome, which we have for convenience abbreviated as S,
P, Q, and R — SPQR being the abbreviation for Senatus Populusque Romanus.
This level is overseen by the Comitia Curiata. Rewards here are generally 2-3
sestertii, with 3-6 for some special tasks.
S: Types of subordinate clause
In the last unit, we talked about dependent or subordinate clauses. Now we get to
look at them in more particular detail. Overall, they fall into three basic types,
depending on the function they accomplish. There are adverbial clauses — the most
common, which fulfill the function of an adverb by adding information about the
circumstances or situation surrounding the action of the verb. Adjectival clauses are less
common, but modify a noun. Least common are noun (or nominal) clauses, which fulfill
the function of a noun. We’ll look at these in turn.
ADVERBIAL CLAUSES
There are many kinds of adverbial clauses. All of them modify the sense of the
predication of the clause to which they’re attached. That is most often going to be the
main clause of the sentence, but it need not be. Theoretically, these clauses can be nested
to an indefinite depth, though it’s very unusual to see one more that two or three layers
deep.
Clauses of purpose, result, and cause
These are three different kinds of clause, but they all address the range of questions
from “how?” to “why?”.
A purpose clause tells the intention of the agent that produced a given action — i.e.,
his or her reason for doing something. A purpose clause presupposes an intelligence of
some sort behind the action.
He took off his hat in order to show respect.
A result clause expresses the outcome, which may or may not have been intended by
the agent, who may or may not have been capable of intention.
They all pulled out their investments, so that the economy of the little
town collapsed.
Greek formally distinguishes actual from natural result — something you don’t
probably need to do in terms of the forms of the English sentence, but it is something
you probably should keep track of in terms of your meanings. Was the result something
that actually happened, whether probably or not, or was it what might have been
expected to happen (whether it actually happened or not)?
He took off his hat so that his head grew cold. (actual result)
He chopped down the tree in such a way as to make it fall between the
buildings, but failed to consider the wind. (natural result)
A causal clause expresses the thing that brought something about, whether with or
without intention. It is in some ways the “flip side” of the result clause.
Because he had taken off his hat, his head grew cold.
As you probably can see, these all overlap a bit.
Temporal clauses and similar clauses (location, etc.)
Temporal clauses tell when something happened. There are other similar clauses
that tell things like where something happened, as well.
When the birds began to sing, I felt as if I were in the middle of an
animated movie.
There are different kinds of temporal clause, but for now it will suffice to recognize
two general sorts: some refer to specific actions at a specific time (as in the foregoing
example) while others refer to general or repeated situation.
When I get hungry, I like to eat a handful of peanuts or an apple.
This instance doesn’t talk about a particular occasion; it instead talks about the
general condition. You can differentiate the two with the following rule: if you could use
the word “whenever” (even if you actually don’t) without changing your meaning, it’s a
general temporal clause. Otherwise it’s a particular one.
Conditional clauses
Conditional clauses are in many respects like temporal clauses. They have both
general and specific forms. Conditional clauses are all governed by the idea of “if”.
They specify the conditions under which something did happen, something does
happen, or something might happen.
If I want to show respect, I will take off my hat.
As with temporal clauses, conditional clauses can be general or specific;
differentiating between them is a little fuzzier than with temporal clauses, but again “if
ever” would mark a general version of the clause. Most of the time that will have some
significance for how the clause is used, but relatively little for the way it’s constructed.
There are a number of ways of thinking about conditions and discussing them, but
there are two broad categories you need to know about. There are conditions that can or
might happen, and there are those that are (by the way they’re phrased) already
determined to be contrary to fact.
Different languages deal with contrary to fact conditions in different ways, but
English marks them with the subjunctive mood of the verb. We’ll talk about that more
later, but you should already know how to frame these.
If I wanted to show respect, I would take off my hat.
If I had wanted to show respect, I would have taken off my hat.
Both of those indicate that the speaker didn’t want to show respect.
One very common error in the contrary to fact condition is to use the word “would”
in the conditional part. It’s never correct to say:
If I would have brought my umbrella, I would be dry now.
“Would” belongs only in the “then” part of the sentence (whether the “then” is
expressed or not):
If I had brought my umbrella, I would be dry now.
Or:
Had I brought my umbrella, I would have stayed dry.
Concessive clauses
Concessive clauses are about those things that would not be expected, or which are
conceded or granted to a presumably opposed interlocutor.
Although he is taller, I am stronger.
I like ravioli, though I don’t much care for spaghetti.
Comparative clauses
Comparative clauses say how things are alike or how they are different from the
predication in the main clause. They are connected to the main clause either with a
“than” or an “as”. (“Like” is commonly misused for the purpose, but it’s really only for
comparing things as represented by nouns.)
He is taller than I am [tall].
I like spaghetti more than he does.
Tom speaks French as well as George does.
ADJECTIVAL (RELATIVE) CLAUSES
Antecedents
Adjectival clauses are those that modify nouns, and they are also often called relative
clauses. The noun that they’re attached to is known as the antecedent. You need to be
able to identify the antecedent of any relative clause in order to use it properly. The
antecedent is represented in the relative clause by the relative pronoun — words like
“that”, “which”, “who”, and “whom”. For example:
The car that is in the garage needs new brakes.
Here the antecedent (or referent) of the relative clause is “the car”. The relative clause is
the part that is italicized.
Restrictive vs parenthetical relative clauses
There are really two different reasons for using relative clauses — one is to restrict
the referent of the antecedent, and the other is to add parenthetical information about the
antecedent.
The car that is in the garage needs new brakes.
Here, the relative clause tells us which car (perhaps of many) is being talked about. It’s
limiting or restricting the antecedent (“the car”) to exclude the one that is on the street
or in the shop.
A parenthetical relative clause, on the other hand, adds information that is not
essential to the sentence. Usually it’s set off by commas, or (occasionally) by
parentheses:
The car, which is in the garage, needs new brakes.
This merely tells you that the car needs new brakes. There’s no doubt about which one
is being discussed; the car’s location is added as an extra piece of information.
Some authorities prefer to distinguish the two types of clause by reserving “which”
for parenthetical clauses wherever it’s possible to do so. Sometimes one needs to use
“which” even for restrictive clauses; nobody would say:
The book from that I learned this story was very long.
but would rather say:
The book from which I learned this story was very long.
Wherever it is possible to preserve this distinction, however, please do so. Always
set a parenthetical clause off with commas or parentheses, however.
NOUN CLAUSES
Noun clauses as a whole stand for nouns — they may be the subjects or objects of
verbs or the objects of prepositions. Sometimes it is introduced by a a word flagging it
as a noun clause like “the fact”.
John’s father resented [the fact] that he had quit medical school.
Here the noun clause is the object of the verb “resented” (it’s also sometimes called an
object clause.)
From the fact that he was dressed in funny clothes, I deduced that he
was a clown.
Here the noun is the object of the preposition “from”.
I told him that I was a fisherman.
Here the noun clause is in fact of a special sort we call “indirect statement” — but it’s a
noun clause all the same: it’s what the speaker told the hearer.
P: Pronouns and pronoun reference
We’ve already discussed pronouns somewhat, but it’s important to nail down the
whole category. You’ll be expected to be able to identify the types of pronouns. A
pronoun is a word that changes its meaning completely in accordance with context.
Each pronoun require an antecedent (a word that comes before it) to give it its meaning.
We say that the pronoun refers to its antecedent, and that the antecedent is the referent of
the pronoun.
The referent of a pronoun always needs to be clear; if it isn’t, you have what is called
a pronoun reference problem. Remember that the reference needs to be clear to the reader
— just because you understand it as the writer doesn’t mean that the reader will. The
antecedent of the pronoun needs to be the nearest preceding noun to which it can apply.
“Him” won’t apply to a plural noun, but the nearest masculine
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Personal pronouns are the ones that stand for persons (or things) in a clause. They
include words like “I, “you”, “we”, “us”, “he”, “she”, “him”, “her”, “it”, “they”, and
“them”. The antecedent doesn’t need to be in the same sentence, but it most often is. in
the case of first and second person pronouns, often the context makes it clear without an
explicit antecedent anywhere.
He had been a soldier in the Korean war.
I told her not to bring anything for dinner.
When he saw the state of the buildings, he ordered us to paint them.
We took the bananas and cooked them in brown sugar.
The “we” has no antecedent, since the speaker is probably clear already. The antecedent
of “them”, however, is “bananas”.
DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS AND ADJECTIVES
Demonstrative pronouns are those that point things out. They’re words like “this”
and “that”, “these”, and “those”. Unlike most pronouns, they often take their meaning
from the context of the speaker, rather than from any previous word.
Demonstrative adjectives are just like them, except that they go along with nouns to
point them out.
This is a very fine hat.
Here it’s a pronoun; the referent is clear only if one sees (or imagines) the speaker
holding or wearing a hat.
This hat is very fine.
Here “this” is a demonstrative adjective, since it’s modifying “hat”.
POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS AND ADJECTIVES
Fairly unsurprisingly, possessive pronouns and adjectives are those that indicate
possession. If they stand alone, they can be considered pronouns; they usually can
function as adjectives. They include such words as “my”, “your”, “his”, “her”, and
“its”; free-standing versions like “mine” and “yours” and “hers” function more as
nouns. (There is no equivalent to “hers” for the masculine, since adding an “s” to “his”
would just produce “hiss”, which is not a pronoun.)
RELATIVE PRONOUNS
Relative pronouns are the ones that connect relative clauses to the nouns they
modify. We’ve already talked about relative clauses, so those should be reasonably clear.
Q: Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions
Conjunctions are just little words used to join things. They can join two nouns or
two verbs in a sentence; somewhat more significantly , they can join clauses.
The ones that join clauses come in two flavors — coordinating conjunctions, and
subordinating conjunctions.
Coordinating conjunctions join clauses at the same level. That is, they are the ones
used to link two main clauses together as one sentence, or two parallel subordinate
clauses. There are only a few of them — “and” and “but” accounting for almost all the
cases.
Subordinating conjunctions are much more abundant, and they have a range of
meanings. They include things like “when”, “if”, and “although”.
R: Modifiers: adverbs and adjectives
Modifiers are both adverbs and adjectives, and we’ve talked about them in parts of
speech. Most of what we need to talk about here is the question of dangling or
misplaced modifiers.
Misplaces modifiers seem to be talking about one thing, but the logic of the sentence
suggests something else. They’re particularly hard to track, because when you’re
writing, you know what you mean: it’s the reader who doesn’t already know who’s
confused by your phrasing.
Examples of misplaced modifiers are usually concerned with longer modifiers, like
modifying clauses or participial phrases. The most famous of these is the so-called
“dangling participle”.
I saw the new stadium driving to work the other day.
Obviously, what is meant is that the speaker, driving to work, saw the new stadium.
Unfortunately, what he or she actually said was that the stadium was driving to work.
This kind of error is hard to avoid mostly because it tends to slip past our mental
“radar” — we know what we mean, and so when we say something like that, we
understand it in the way we intended it to be understood. Probably the best remedy for
this is time: letting something you’ve written sit a day or two before proof-reading it
(this of course requires some advance planning!) will distance you from the mindset in
which you composed it, and allow you to see the glaring errors somewhat better.
When it comes to fixing these errors, there really are two approaches. They can
almost always be eliminated by turning the participial phrase into a full clause (such as
a temporal clause):
I saw the new stadium when I was driving to work the other day.
This clarifies all ambiguities. Alternatively, the phrases can be rearranged to make
the participial phrase come closer to its intended modificand:
Driving to work the other day, I saw the new stadium.
That’s really all there is to it.
The bottom line is that when a word or phrase modifies something, it has to be clear
what it’s modifying. Otherwise it’s just a mess.
MILES
This section covers the rule-based mechanics — such things as punctuation,
capitalization, spacing, italics and underline, and so forth.
The rules are in some respects arbitrary, but like the rules about which side of the
road you drive on, if everyone follows the same rules, they make a lot more sense than
if everyone comes up with his or her own system.
Punctuation
Punctuation was a late arrival on the world stage — early writing was most often
without it. It has, however, much the same function as a traffic light. It is not, perhaps,
an integral part of the traffic, but it keeps things moving in an orderly way. English has
a certain number of fairly well-defined rules of punctuation, and following them will
make your own prose much easier to follow.
COMMAS
The most commonly misunderstood punctuation is the comma. Starting out,
students are often taught, “Use a comma wherever you would pause in speaking.” It’s
not bad advice, but it’s not really good advice either. The fact is that people speak
differently, but the comma has become (over the last century and a half) the sign not so
much of how one should read things, but how one understands certain relationships
within a sentence.
Here’s where you use a comma. You will need to know the material from the
previous section well to understand these. We’ve given mnemonics (a memory aid) for
each of the rules so that you’ll have a way to hang on to them. If you can’t find among
those given here a good reason to use a comma in a given situation, there probably isn’t
one. Avoid it.
Probably the single most impressively confusing (and remarkably common) comma
error is placing a single comma between the subject of a sentence and the verb. That is
never correct, and promotes misreading and misunderstanding.
Here are the various comma manuevers:
Independent clauses separated by a coordinating conjunction
Use a comma to separate independent clauses when they are joined by coordinating
conjunctions. Chief among those are “and” and “but”; one also finds “for”, “or”, “nor”,
“so”, and “yet” used this way. Note that not all uses of all these words are as
coordinating conjunctions — so you need to see them in context.
Mnemonic: CUT
Commas are properly used here:
The band began to play, and the people began to dance.
The waves began to lap more fiercely against the shore, yet the tide
did not seem to be rising.
Note that this applies only to completely separate clauses. Do not use a comma to
separate two subjects or objects in a sentence, or even multiple verbs sharing the same
subject, if they don’t actually form two independent clauses. No commas are needed
anywhere in the following sentences.
The birds and the forest animals began to flee from the fire.
My cousin is fond of hunting and fishing.
Anabelle danced and jumped through the streets when she heard
the news.
Separating items in a series
When you get to three or more subjects, objects, or verbs, however, you now have
what is considered a series or a list, and then you do want to use commas. In this
program we will use the serial (“Oxford”) comma (i.e., the one before the “and”) at all
times.
Mnemonic: CHOP
For example:
The insects, the birds, and the forest animals began to flee from the
fire.
My cousin is fond of sailing, swimming, hunting, and fishing.
Anabelle danced, jumped, and sang through the streets when she
heard the news.
This is also true for any other kind of list or series — for example, a
series of adjectives.
Setting off parenthetical phrases or clauses
Use commas to set off parenthetical clauses or phrases — that is, those that are not
essential to preserving the meaning of the sentence, but which merely add some extra
information. Use commas before and after the phrase — using only one will generate
even more confusion than not using any at all. Do not use them if the clause or phrase is
restrictive — that is, essential to clarifying the word or phrase that it’s modifying.
If such a word or phrase appears at the beginning or the end of a sentence, then one
needs only a single comma to divide it from the rest. The point is that, wherever it
comes into contact with another part of the sentence, it should have a comma.
Mnemonic: SHEATHE
There are some cases where it’s a bit hard to figure out whether something is
essential to the meaning of a sentence or not, but in general the test is simple: if you take
it away, does the sentence mean the same thing, or does it mean something different?
This rule is just an extension of what we said in the last unit about restrictive vs.
parenthetical relative clauses.
You will remember from the last unit:
The car that is in the garage needs new brakes.
vs.
The car, which is in the garage, needs new brakes.
The same goes for any other clause, phrase, or word in a sentence.
Very little in addition to food and shelter is absolutely required for
life.
Here the “in addition...” phrase is not set off with commas here because it’s restrictively
clarifying the meaning of “very little”. On the other hand,
Very little, on the calculation of these bureaucrats, is absolutely
required for life.
or
Very little, however, is absolutely required for life.
Separating quoted text, and substituting for a period at the end of a direct
quotation
Use commas before or after quoted text within a sentence introduced with a word of
speaking, thinking, or the like. If the quoted sentence is complete, its period is replaced
by a comma. If it has a question mark, however, the question mark remains.
Do not use them if the quoted structure is syntactically continuous with the phrasing
leading up to the quotation.
Mnemonic: INTERROGATE
Hence:
“Tomorrow,” said John, “I will go flying.”
Here there is a comma both in the quoted initial part of John’s sentence, and after the
“said John” piece. If the quoted piece contains multiple sentences, only the last one
(before the closing quotation mark) is terminated with a comma.
“Are you having a good time?” asked Jim.
On the other hand,
Jim asked, “Are you having a good time?”
The trickier cases are those where one slides sideways into quoted material. There the
rule is generally to omit the comma, if the sentence makes sense without it.
Dr. King came to believe with Earl Warren that “justice too long
delayed is justice denied”.
Separating introductory words or phrases from the following main clause
This is very like separating out parenthetical clauses, though in some cases the
clauses or phrases so indicated are not particularly parenthetical. In fact, the same
clause or phrase might, if it appeared at the end of the sentence, not be set apart with a
comma:
Mnemonic: DECAPITATE
Hence:
While Aeneas was looking at the pictures on the wall, the queen
arrived.
but
The queen arrived while Aeneas was looking at the pictures on the
wall.
Or:
Having apologized lavishly, the Count left the garden.
but also:
The Count left the garden, having apologized handsomely.
Why is there a comma here, and not in the previous case? Mostly because the phrase
being separated is parenthetical. Here are a few other examples of where it may or may
not appear:
Nevertheless, we will proceed as we originally planned to do.
but:
We nevertheless will proceed as we originally planned to do.
Fortunately, we did not encounter armed resistance.
Yes, we have no bananas.
To cross the tracks, please use the bridge.
but:
Please use the bridge to cross the tracks.
(In this last case, the implication of the sentence is arguably somewhat different, since
the first sentence implicitly responds to the question, “How shall I cross the tracks?”
while the second really instead answers, “For what shall I use the bridge?”
The case with introductory adverbial phrases is somewhat murkier, and there’s a
certain amount of latitude as to whether one needs to use a comma or not. Mostly you
can govern this by your own sense of what’s proper and get away with it:
Near the outside door, there stood an aged olive tree.
Near the ouside door there stood an aged olive tree.
Both of those work. In a sense, the latter version (without the comma) is implicitly more
restrictive, clarifying the scope of “there”, while the former (with the comma) is
implicitly more parenthetical. The same ambiguity doesn’t hold for:
When I had finished my dinner, I went out for a stroll down the
deserted beach.
The comma is virtually essential here.
There is some disagreement about whether you need a comma with preliminary
prepositional phrases; again, that’s largely going to be conditioned by your sense of
how important it is, and also (in a rather unusual move) on how long it is. The longer
the phrase, the more likely it is to be set aside with a comma:
From Don John I have learned that you will be coming to Messina.
A comma after “John” is not inconceivable, but would be quite unlikely. By contrast:
From the way you’re holding your head, I assume that the
interview didn’t go well.
Here the comma could be removed, but it would be fairly daring to do so. If you want a
rule of thumb, use a comma after an initial prepositional phrase (i.e., the preposition
and its object and any related words) if that phrase is longer than four words.
In both of those cases, however, the results could be otherwise. The commas here are
not absolutely essential.
Separating subordinate clauses in other places in the sentence if they
express significant difference or contrast to the main clause.
Use commas to separate subordinate clauses that are parenthetical in any other way.
Usually the expression of an opposition is definitionally parenthetical, since it is an
observation or contrast formed in the mind of the speaker.
Mnemonic: DIVIDE
Hence:
I went to the Louvre when I was in Paris.
You do not need a comma after “Louvre”, because the temporal clause is not really
coincidental or parenthetical. It’s felt to be essential to the meaning of the main clause
(“I went to the Louvre”). On the other hand, something contrary to expectation would
give rise to the comma:
I did not get to the Louvre, although I was in Paris for a week.
Here the opposition is in the mind of the speaker, and there is no essential or causal
relationship between being in Paris and not going to the Louvre.
Similar to this — similar enough that it can be viewed as a permutation of the same
phenomenon — is the practice of using a comma for an opposing or balancing part of
the sentence that provides an alternative completion to the first part of the sentence,
whether or not that’s really an opposite idea. For example:
I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.
The forest was quiet, almost freakishly so.
Tag questions come under this heading:
The requirements for the writing program are very severe, aren’t
they?
You don’t have enough credits to graduate, do you?
Use commas to separate coordinate adjectives that are modifying the
same noun. Do not use a comma after the last of these.
The trick here is knowing what “coordinate” adjectives are. They are generally
adjectives that are modifying something at about the same level. That’s a pretty hard
concept to nail down, but a good rule of thumb is that if you can reverse the order of the
adjectives, they’re coordinate, whereas if you can’t comfortably do so, they’re not.
Mnemonic: DICE
Therefore:
The governor lives in a large green house.
“Large” and “green” aren’t coordinate here, because you’d never actually say,
The governor lives in a green large house.
Why? This is a matter of some subtlety, and probably we don’t have time to sort it out
here. Meanwhile, however, it’s something your instincts are probably pretty good at
differentiating. Non-coordinating adjectives can be stacked several deep without any
actual commas:
The governor lives in a large green timber-frame house.
but:
The governor lives in a refined, elegant house.
“Refined” and “elegant” are coordinate — and you can prove that to yourself by
switching them around:
The governor lives in an elegant, refined house.
One can even combine these coordinate adjectives (which retain their commas) in
longer sequences of non-coordinate adjectives (which still don’t get any):
The governor lives in a refined, elegant green timber-frame house.
Use commas conventionally to separate pieces of addresses, dates, and
other such multi-layered designators, especially if there’s a hierarchical
relationship among them, or titles included with names.
These are all fairly arbitrary, and are driven only by a loose kind of internal logic.
Mnemonic: SALUTE
Probably the best thing to do here is merely to follow the examples until they
become second nature:
1234 Main Street, Anytown, USA, 99900
Chairman, Department of Elvish Linguistics, College of Arts and
Sciences, Hobbingen University
July 17, 2056
T. Percival Aquinas, Ph.D.
The European convention eliminates the comma; if you use it, you must follow the
same order of elements:
17 July 2056
The European convention also uses a comma where England and America use a
decimal point. This is probably worth avoiding unless you’re actually in Europe or
writing to Europeans.
ENDING PUNCTUATION
Ending punctuation is easy. Every sentence should have one (and only one) mark of
closing punctuation. There are three types, only two of which should ever be used in
formal prose.
Question mark
A question mark ends and flags a direct question as being a question. This is its only
legitimate function. Do not use it to express surprise, perplexity, or doubt. Do not use it
to mark indirect questions (which are embedded in statements — e.g., “The evil wolf
asked Red Riding Hood whether her grandmother was at home.”)
Period
Sentences expressing statements or commands should be ended with a period.
Basically, if it doesn’t deserve a question-mark on well-established criteria outlined
above, it should receive a period. You should also use a period to conclude an entry in a
list of a complex sort, such as a bibliography.
Exclamation point
An exclamation point should not appear in formal expository prose. Your job is to
explain, not to exclaim, rant, or expostulate.
In other kinds of writing, it’s best used frugally, if at all. A good writer creates
excitement in the reader through words and ideas, and should therefore need no
punctuation to instruct the reader to be excited. A writer who doesn’t do so cannot
make up the difference with punctuation.
The exclamation point is chiefly useful in dialogue, as a way of implying the
speaker’s intonation. It is also useful to mark things that are syntactically exclamatory
— “My word!” or “How beautiful the moon is!” These are not things you should be
saying in an expository essay, though.
On no occasion should ending punctuation be doubled or combined. Exclamation
points should not appear with question marks. Two exclamation points do not indicate
more excitement: they indicate authorial incompetence. Two question marks cast the
sanity of the writer into question.
SEMICOLON, COLON, HYPHEN, AND DASH
These are intermediate marks of punctuation that separate a sentence in particular
ways.
Semicolon
The semicolon has several distinct functions, like the comma, but there are not as
many, and the general meanings are clearer.
The semicolon can stand between two independent clauses (with any subordinate
clauses adhering to them) to join them into a single sentence. In this regard, you may
look at them either as substituting for a coordinating conjunction (e.g., “and” or “but”)
or even sometimes for a subordinating one (e.g., “because”). It can also be seen as
standing in for a period, to indicate that the ideas in the two sentences are particularly
closely related. Really there’s nothing to choose between those two substitutionary
models. Pick one that you like and live with it.
For example:
This is my hat; Georgeanne gave it to me for Christmas last year.
which is implicitly equivalent to:
This is my hat, [because] Georgeanne gave it to me for Christmas
last year.
Or:
We bought a dozen eggs; we made omelets.
Which is effectively equivalent to:
We bought a dozen eggs and we made omelets.
Or:
We have chocolate and vanilla ice cream; pick whichever you
prefer.
Which is very nearly equivalent to:
We have chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Pick whichever you
prefer.
In a normal sentence, that’s really the only grammatical reason for using a
semicolon. The remaining possibilities are conventional, and you need to learn them too
— but they’re not terribly difficult.
Usually we use a comma to separate the parts of a compound sentence or the
elements on a list. If, however, the elements on the list or the parts of the compound
sentence themselves contain commas — and if it’s important to signal the enclosure —
we need something a little more powerful. This is where we introduce the semicolon.
Hence:
We ask that you bring four dollars, a clean handkerchief, and your
signed release form.
But:
We will be visiting Bozeman, Montana; Seattle, Washington; and
Portland, Oregon.
Sometimes the significance of the enclosure is open to question, and then you have
to make a judgment of your own. One could, for example, have:
We bought a dozen eggs, from which we selected six, and we made
omelets.
Some authorities make an equally good case for:
We bought a dozen eggs, from which we selected six; and we made
omelets.
This is, however, somewhat edgy. Often the best solution to this dilemma, one finds, is
to break it definitively, and go with the former version or the following:
We bought a dozen eggs, from which we selected six; we made
omelets.
Some authorities suggest that you can use a semicolon before certain words that
introduce a list or an example, where the latter part is not itself a complete sentence in
construction:
There are eight parts of speech; to wit, nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and
interjections.
In general, I would discourage this; it tends to lead to uneven reading and
ambiguity. In virtually every case, one can come up with something other than a
semicolon to do the job. Here I would suggest using a colon instead of a semicolon: it
signals that the part to follow is an elaboration of the foregoing. Most of the time, the
introductory words can be discarded as well, which results in more economical writing.
There are eight parts of speech: to wit, nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and
interjections.
Or (better):
There are eight parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.
Colon
The colon is extremely useful and widely misunderstood. Its fundamental idea is
one of continuation: it looks forward to what follows.
It is therefore used much as the semicolon is used, to separate two independent
sentences, if the author feels that the second of these is in some sense an elaboration or
extension of the first. The colon expresses, in a way that only the reader of the words on
the page can discern, the implicit connection between the two parts.
We bought a dozen eggs, from which we selected six: we made
omelets.
This is just as legitimate and reasonable as the version with the semicolon, but it
expresses a stronger connection between the parts.
The colon can also be used to introduce a list that is felt to be too cumbersome for a
simple list in line with the sentence, especially if what stands before the colon is itself
capable of being construed as a complete sentence:
The Roman soldier was expected to provide his own equipment:
shield, armor, and sword.
If the part before the colon does not stand as a complete sentence, usage is disputed at
best (some style manuals allow it, while others don’t), and we suggest avoiding it:
The Roman soldier was expected to provide: shield, armor, and
sword.
The idea that the direct object of a verb should be separated from the verb by any
punctuation — comma, semicolon, or colon — is curiously offensive to most of us who
feel that there’s some internal coherence to the subject-verb-object structure.
There’s currently a great deal of confusion involving the use of capitals after colons
in sentences. Different style manuals have different rules, all of them insisting that its
own way is the only right way. You may one day find yourself having to deal with
someone else’s rules, and, if so, you’ll just have to adapt. We’ll make it simple for now,
though. Don’t. Don’t capitalize words after a colon in a sentence, ever. Some authorities
say that if there are two or more sentences introduced by a colon, you should capitalize
each of them. This is a thorny problem that you can avoid entirely by not trying to
embed two or more sentences in another sentence after a colon. Doing so makes about
as much sense as putting two feet into one shoe. Accordingly we will blissfully ignore
those authorities. Just don’t do it.
You should capitalize after a colon if and only if items are set off as different
paragraphs or bullet items, or after the salutation in a formal letter:
We take these truths to be self-evident:
All men are created equal.
All men are endowed by their creator with certain
inalienable rights.
Mayonnaise does not go well with fried food.
Dear Dr. Who:
Please forgive my tardiness in applying fire-retardant tarpaper to your tarnished TARDIS. I was afflicted by
terminal consternation by the terminology.
Hyphen and dash
There are three marks that are often confused in modern typography. Complicating
the matter is the fact that one of them is almost never distinguished from the other two
in anything less than professional typography, while the other two are essential to
distinguish from one another. These are the hyphen (-), the en-dash (–), and the em-dash
(—).
The hyphen is short. It’s used for gluing parts of compound words together, and for
nothing else. One should never use a space before or after the hyphen in a compound.
One may sometimes see compounds given incompletely with nothing following the
hyphen, but it’s generally a convenience for the sake of compression rather than a
principled decision on the basis of semantics:
We have first- and second-generation smart-phones available.
That is,
We have first-generation and second-generation smart-phones
available.
In any case, the hyphen is not a dash, and should not be used as one.
The en-dash is rather specialized, and not really used by amateurs most of the time.
Probably it’s best reserved for indicating ranges of things:
Development was curtailed by the Second World War, 1939–1945.
Don’t use a space before or after this one either.
The true dash is the em-dash. In the age of typewriters it was routinely expressed by
two consecutive hyphens (--). This has led to some degree of confusion. Most modern
computers allow the differentiation of the three forms.
Traditionally, the dash was used without a preceding or a following space. One can
still do this, but many computer programs fail to recognize it as a legitimate wordbreak, and hence a dash (without framing spaces) will often force rather grotesque
spacings to occur, especially in a justified line since the word before, the dash, and the
word after will all be considered a single very long word, and (more often than not)
forced onto the next line. More and more frequently, it’s considered acceptable to use
spaces before and after the dash — but whatever method you use, use it consistently.
As a mark of punctuation, the dash is very flexible, and can be used to indicate
almost any kind of break. The result is that many writers use it fairly indiscriminately.
Often something better can be found.
Most fundamentally, the dash expresses a change of direction — giving a kind of
warning for which no syntactical preparation has been provided. Most basically, it
expresses a change in direction or the interruption of a thought, as in the first book of
Vergil’s Aeneid:
Whom I — but first I must calm the waves.
As such it’s dramatic, but usually not appropriate to formal expository prose, since
what you write in a formal expository mode shouldn’t be subject to sudden changes in
direction. If you change your mind while writing, you have a chance to go back and
patch it up, and make adjustments so that there isn’t any need to turn without a turnsignal.
The dash is also used in pairs as an enclosing mark of punctuation to set off an
appositive word or explanatory phrase. It forms a more decisive break than a comma,
and suggests a more urgent connection with its referent than a pair of parentheses:
He was a very good tennis-player — the best in the county — until
he broke his right elbow.
The dash can fill the role of the semicolon:
We bought a dozen eggs — we made omelets.
We bought a dozen eggs — and we made omelets.
We bought a dozen eggs, from which we selected six — we made
omelets.
We bought a dozen eggs, from which we selected six — and we
made omelets.
In almost all of these cases, the semicolon would generally have been a better choice.
The dash can fill in for a colon, as well:
The Roman soldier was expected to provide his own equipment —
shield, armor, and sword.
There is some difference of opinion, as mentioned above, about using a colon to
introduce an object list. For our purposes here, it’s discouraged. Even those who would
admit the colon, however, would not normally allow a dash for this function:
The Roman soldier was expected to provide — shield, armor, and
sword.
For some of us, this is merely further confirmation that one shouldn’t do this with a
colon either. This really just belongs as a comma-separated list in the place of the direct
object, without other intervening punctuation.
The dash, therefore, has a number of legitimate uses, and fairly few for which it’s
really the best choice. If you are not Emily Dickinson (and who is, any more, really?)
consider putting yourself on a strict diet, limiting yourself to only a few of these per
page.
ENCLOSING PUNCTUATION: PARENTHESES, QUOTATION MARKS
Some marks of punctuation are designed to be used in pairs. They enclose words,
phrases, or sentences. Some of them are simply to insert something while at the same
time suggesting that it’s not at the same level of importance as the surrounding text.
Others have specific purposes.
Parentheses
The term “parenthesis” means something like “set along side within” — which
seems like a contradiction in terms (is it alongside, or is it in?), but one can see what it
means. Properly, it refers to the phrase itself. We talk about “parentheses” more or less
the way we’d talk about “quotes” when we really mean “quotation marks”. The usage
is, if rooted in error, nevertheless very common.
The parenthesis may or may not really syntactically flow with the sentence; it is
usually some kind of aside, however, that could be removed without materially
changing the meaning of the sentence. As we noted above in the discussion of the
comma, even some relative clauses are parenthetical.
If a whole sentence is enclosed in a pair of parentheses, the period should be placed
within the parentheses. If only a part of the sentence is inside the parentheses, the
closing (right) parenthesis comes before the period.
We told him about your cousin (the tennis-player).
(We told him about your cousin, the tennis-player.)
If you find yourself in the middle of a parenthesis and need to set something else
aside within that context, the right tool is the pair of brackets, for which exactly the
same rules apply, though if you find yourself in that situation, you might generally do
better to consider what wayward path has brought you to this crisis. Most of the time
the bracket is not as good a solution as a more thorough overhaul of the sentence.
(We told him about your cousin [the tennis-player].)
As a formal thing, one may use parentheses to enclose numbers or letters setting
apart sections of a list, if desired. This is not likely to come up in most formal prose
other than where very specific points are being enumerated.
We require the services of (a) butchers, (b) bakers, (c) candlestick-makers.
Quotation marks
Quotation marks are among the most-abused of modern punctuation marks, and,
especially because the consequences are so amusing, are the butt of endless jokes.
Quotation marks are, properly, to be used only to refer to something being quoted —
i.e., something someone else says, that you are relating in that other speaker’s own
words.
This has several ramifications.
The simplest use of quotation marks is to represent a direct and overt quotation:
“What is the way to the Eiffel Tower?” he asked.
This offers very little difficulty.
In American usage, a quotation within a quotation is signaled by single quotation
marks. In British English, it’s the other way around, which really makes more sense,
and could theoretically allow for almost infinite nesting of quotations. Nevertheless, this
is a tide we’re unlikely to be able to turn.
“Is Machiavelli the author who coined the phrase, ‘The ends justify
the means’?” he asked.
Derived from this basic idea are two others.
Quotation marks are also used around the titles of works, or to mark words being
treated as words (rather than as the thing or things they refer to):
“Green” is a word of five letters; green is a color, which has no
letters.
Bernard Shaw suggested that the word “fish” might be spelled
“ghoti”.
Finally, one may use quotation marks to mark a word or phrase that is used by
others, but for which the author is deliberately not vouching. As such, they are
sometimes called “quotation marks of ironic assertion” or the like. Using them is much
the same as prefixing “so-called” to the term in question.
Around the corner one may find New College. This “new”
institution was founded in 1374.
I.e., the so-called new institution... The implication is that it is old.
The “fresh” fish being sold by this particular vendor could not
possibly have been on the counter for less than two
weeks.
I.e., The so-called fresh fish... The implication is that they are rotten.
One sometimes encounters, among the ill-informed or militantly ignorant, the use of
quotation marks as if they were marks of emphasis. Don’t be among the people who do
that. The results are ridiculous. There is an entire blog devoted to these misplaced
quotation marks. When they are not positively sordid, the implications are at best
laughable.
If one doesn’t fall to the preceding problem, there are many rules that govern the
order of placement of other punctuation with respect to quotation marks. To make life
more difficult, the standards governing them are changing.
The logical solution is that a mark of punctuation should go inside the quotation
marks if it’s part of the quotation, and not if it’s not. More and more people — including
a number of university presses — are pushing for the adoption of this consistent and
rational rule. The more traditional setup is aesthetic rather than logical. If the mark of
punctuation goes on the line (comma or period), it goes inside the quotation marks,
irrespective of logic; if it extends up from the line (question mark or exclamation point),
it is placed according to logic. There seems little reason to preserve this archaic system,
but we will tolerate either, provided that it is pursued consistently. If the logic should
lead to two consecutive marks, the dominant one wins.
He asked, “Is there a God?”
Did he still say, “There is no God”?
Therefore also not:
Do you still ask, “Is there a God”?
But rather:
Do you still ask, “Is there a God?”
To clarify a few marginal cases:
Where the comma appears as a replacement for a period in a quotation, when an
attribution of speaker is following, it should always go inside the quotation mark:
“This is not my house,” he said calmly.
“This is not my house!” he cried.
“Is this not my house?” he asked.
APOSTROPHE
The apostrophe is only a short way behind the quotation marks as a source of
ludicrous mistakes. It’s really very simple, though, and there’s no reason for any of
them.
Though it is the same sign as the right single quotation mark, it is not used in pairs,
and it is never turned around to match the left single quotation mark in form. Hence
not:
‘Way down south.
but
‘Way down south.
The apostrophe is used, first and foremost, as a sign of missing letters. It especially
denotes missing letters in a contraction:
Don’t.
Haven’t.
We’re.
They’re.
It is from this role that its use for possession is derived, apparently:
John his book —> John’s book.
There is some question as to whether this derivation is correct, but little doubt that if
you think about it this way, you’ll usually come up with the right answer.
It is never — I repeat, never — used to form a possessive of a pronoun. Let that point
sink in. At no point should you attach apostrophe and “s” to any pronoun whatever to
form a possessive. Those who do so mark themselves as illiterate and uneducated.
Don’t be one of those. Using “it’s” for possession on a college application essay could
well mean the difference between getting in and not. This is not an exaggeration.
The possessive of “it” is “its”. Really. “It’s” exists, but it is a contraction, and it always
means “it is”. Therefore when someone writes,
The church lost it’s steeple.
...what he is unwittingly saying is the (nonsensical):
The church lost it is steeple.
Don’t do that. Don’t do “her’s” either, which is never right for anything. “Hers”, like
“its” goes along with “his”, and you wouldn’t write “hi’s”, would you?
If you would, don’t tell me. Just go quietly mend your ways.
Use an apostrophe and “s” after a noun to indicate possession. If the noun is a
plural, just use the apostrophe, and forget the “s”. If the noun ends with an “s” and is
not a plural, you have a decision to make. I really don’t care which way you go, as long
as you do so consistently. Strunk and White argue that the possessive of “Lewis” should
be “Lewis’s”. That’s okay. They then exempt certain ancient names from their general
rule, which is cowardly and craven. Whichever way you go, do it consistently. If the
possessive of “Lewis” is “Lewis’s”, then the the possessive of “Socrates” should be
“Socrates’s”. Personally I’m happy either way, as long as you don’t change policies in
midstream. Use Socrates’ and Lewis’, or Socrates’s and Lewis’s.
You will note that “pluralization” is not on the list of reasons to use the apostrophe
either. This is not an oversight. The apostrophe should never be involved in
pluralization. It’s bizarre, but this has had a runaway popularity. Don’t be one of the
vulgarians who is guilty of such a thing.
One sometimes finds something like a mailbox with “The Smith’s” printed on it in
proud and glowing letters. Nothing is so arrogant as error. This lettering is proclaiming
that the mailbox is the property of The Smith, whoever that is.
If it is meant to refer to the members of the Smith household, however, it should be
“The Smiths”. At no point should there by any apostrophe anywhere in sight. If one
wants to form a possessive of the plural, it would be “The Smiths’”. Words ending in
“s” usually form their plurals with an added “-es”, rather than just “s”, so strictly if I
were going to dinner at the house of the Williams family, I would say, “I’m going to
have dinner at the Williamses’ house.” This may look odd, but it’s right.
There are other words that seem to be plural or nearly so before plural forms are
added: for example, the plural of “diocese” is not “diocese”, but “dioceses”. The
possessive of “dioceses” would be “dioceses’ “. How would one pronounce that?
Fortunately, this is not a pronouncing course, but a writing course.
Capitalization
Capital letters are entirely a matter of convention, but they’re a very useful
convention.
Capitalize the first word in a sentence:
There are virtually no sentences in this whole article that don’t
illustrate this principle.
Capitalize the first word in a quoted sentence, even if there’s some of the framing
sentence around it.
He said, “There are virtually no sentences in this whole article that
don’t illustrate this principle.”
Capitalize proper names, or things derived from proper names.
I was looking to see Robert Guiscard and Thomas Aquinas.
He went to college to study English.
As always, there are some marginal cases here. The names of specific courses, for
example, would normally be capitalized, but subjects (other than those like “English”)
would not necessarily be. Words like “latinity” might well not be capitalized, even
though “Latin” is.
I wanted to take Trigonometry II, but there was no room in the
course.
But:
I wanted to learn the basics of trigonometry.
Capitalize titles that are prefixed to (and hence felt to be part of) proper names.
This includes generic honorifics like “Mr.” or “Mrs.”
We are hoping to meet Governor James.
Titles that follow proper names are capitalized, for much the same reason.
Allow me to introduce William Smith, Ph.D.
Titles that are used in place of proper names. Hence:
The president came to visit.
But:
Mr. President, please honor us with your comments.
Capitalize all the words in a title of a work, such as a book, movie, or poem. You
may (and indeed should) omit articles, prepositions, and other small words, unless they
are the first words of the title.
I was reading War and Peace.
I was watching Five Million Years to Earth.
Do you have a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird?
Capitalize all the letters in an acronym.
He made a large donation to the NAACP.
Italics and underlines
In typographical terms, italics are the same as underlines, and the rules are
wonderfully simple. Traditionally, an underline was an indicator to the typesetter to
italicize the relevant text. This is not always necessarily true any more, but the
conventions surrounding such things still treat them as the same thing.
Italicize the titles of books.
I was reading War and Peace.
Do not italicize the titles of shorter works. Put them into quotation marks instead.
This would comprehend poems (other than book-length epics like The Iliad and The
Song of Roland) and short stories or articles.
Conventions vary regarding plays and movies. Some style manuals treat them as
being on a par with a book, and so italicize them. One may legitimately cite Hamlet or
“Hamlet”. I really don’t care which convention you follow, as long as you do so
consistently.
Italicize foreign words or phrases, assuming they have not been sufficiently
normalized into English as to be seen as a normal part of English vocabulary. Hence:
The president praised the principle of quid pro quo.
Babette promised to make un vrai diner Francais.
But:
My youngest daughter started kindergarten last year.
He went to the central piazza of the city to wait for his contact.
Here we don’t need to italicize ”kindergarten” or “piazza” because they have been
sufficiently normalized in English.
Italicize abbreviations that express foreign phrases:
We take exception to these slurs, e.g., the perpetual carping upon
the ancestry of the candidate.
Here “e.g.” stands for the Latin phrase exempli gratia, and hence should be italicized.
Other candidates in normal use here are etc. (et cetera), and i.e., (id est).
TRIBVNVS MILITVM
This unit is primarily about producing solid sentences — both in terms of grammar
and mechanics and in arranging sentences to convey their meaning most clearly. The
governing metaphor is positioning one’s troops in a tactical sense.
By now you have encountered most of the grammatical and mechanical matters that
were part of the previous units.
Form the battle line:
Permutations on a sentence
We’ve already talked about what clauses are, what makes up different kinds of
clauses, and what moods to use in which kinds of clauses, and so on. Now it’s time to
put these things into practice.
There are many grammatically valid ways of combining pieces to form sentences.
Every one of these however, has its own nuances. There are a few general principles
that can be laid down, but in fact every sentence is unique in its freight and hence
unique in its presentation.
Here are a few general principles that you can consider:
The friendliest and most informative way of producing a setnence is to move from
the known element to the unknown — that is, from the stable point of reference to the
element that presents news. That is, give the readers what they already know as a
starting-point, and then present the new information about it as the conclusion of the
sentence.
This is most obviously basic when one is saying something new about — applying a
new predicate to — a known subject. The main point of the sentence — the predication
of the main clause — should appear as the closing element.
When the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, a sequence of
diplomatic tripwires caused the beginning of the First
World War.
Because Hannibal did not attack the city of Rome, the delaying
tactics of Fabius Maximus were able to take their effect.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
Many writers — especially those untrained in Latin or Greek — are unaware of this
principle, or choose to ignore it. One way to keep it in focus is to For example, in most
airplanes, one will see the sign on the back of each seat:
Fasten seat belt while seated.
The implication of this sentence is that it is effectively in answer to “When shall I
fasten the seat belt?” On the face of it, that’s rather peculiar. When else, after all, would
one fasten it? The implicit question it’s meant to address is rather, “What should I do
while seated?” to which the better answer would be:
While seated, fasten the seat belt.
Or (even more rationally, since fastening it is a one-time activity that can’t be
repeated usefully):
While seated, keep seat belt fastened.
Another large-scale strategy of composing a sentence (which is often more or less the
same as the former one) is to arrange the sentence so that the meaning is not complete
until the sentence ends. Particularly in sentences with a number of subordinate clauses,
that generally means that the predication of the main clause is not complete until the
end of the sentence.
Consider the following two sentences:
The sneaky centurion stole the eagle of the legion, which had
honorably protected it in many a battle, in order to give it
to the leader of the Helvetii in exchange for money and
power.
In order to give it to the leader of the Helvetii in exchange for
money and power, the sneaky centurion stole from the
legion, which had honorably protected it in many a
battle, its eagle.
In the former — which is not all that uncommon in English usage — the basic idea
of the sentence is complete before the end of the sentence, and the rest of the sentence
follows as a sequence of add-ons. In the latter, though the word order is much more
unusual for English, the variety of incomplete thoughts are held in suspension until the
end of the process. This is the general strategy of the classical (sometimes called
“periodic”) sentence preferred by the likes of Cicero.
In a compound setnence, there is another element to keep in mind. Here you will
want in general to preserve parallelism, which is to say that they should be kept in the
same order of presentation. For example:
From my mother I learned cunning, and from my father strength,
but from my grandfather I learned patience, which has
been the most useful of all.
Or
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us — that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion — that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom
— and that government of the people, by the people, for
the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Parallelism can take almost infinite forms, but an expert can use it very effectively to
color and direct the way the reader or hearer isolates what is important in the sentence.
In the latter example (from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address), there are two noun clauses
introduced by “that” (“that from these honored dead...” and “that we here highly
resolve”); from the latter of those, three parallel “that” clauses depend upon it in turn
(“that these dead shall not...”, “that this nation...” and “and that government”); and
from the last of those are three prepositional phrases, in which the object is retained, but
the preposition is changed in each (“of the people, by the people, for the people”). It’s a
masterpiece of rhetorical control.
Advance and take a position:
Frame a single-sentence answer to a question
As you direct a small division of troops in the field, your first task is to address an
immediate tactical goal. Here your words are your troops: this is about setting them to
accomplish a single task efficiently.
Each of the tasks at this level will be very focused and directed. None of them
requires really strategical thinking — that comes later. For now, your job is to frame a
single sentence that accomplishes only the task that’s set, and does it completely and
precisely.
While this may seem bizarrely simple, we can say from experience that the single
most significant cause of failure (large or small) on exam questions or larger writing
projects is the simple problem that the answer does not actually address the question
that’s asked. This is a beginning of sorting that problem out. Learn to control and focus
your answers at this level, and you’ll never be at a loss on an exam.
As we argued before, almost every statement you can make represents a kind of
answer to an implicit question that lies behind it. If you were to take the sentences that
you produced here and tried to extract the implicit question, would it be the one that
was asked in the first place? If not, how does it differ, and how can you adjust your
answer so that the two will actually converge.
Tactical retreat:
Question terms, clarify ambiguities
This begins to verge on strategic thinking — at least it’s opening up the questions
that will enable you to think strategically in the future. For this part, you need to back
off from the actual composition for a moment and ask what questions the question itself
implies. What do you need to control in order to achieve your larger goal? What terms
need to be defined in order for your answer to a given question to be meaningful and
precise? Two people can give completely different answers to the same question, and it
may not be so much because they actually disagree about those answers as because they
understand the terms of the question differently.
It’s a reality of academic thought and almost any other kind of problem-solving that
complex questions give rise to subordinate questions. Here your job is to identify what
those questions are, what the vulnerabilities of your complex-sentence answer, and
enumerate the various things one needs to do to plug the gaps and fill in the blanks.
This is the first step toward forming whole-paragraph answers. The more complete
your list — even if it seems to punch very serious holes in your position — the better.
Anticipating the opposing move is the backbone of any kind of argumentative writing,
debate, or contest of any sort.
DEFINING TERMS
One of the wonderful capacities — but also one of the potential problems — with the
use of language is the fact that merely producing a word (in writing or in speech) does
not mean that everyone is clear about what it means. If we use terms without agreeing
on what they mean, or without fully understanding what they mean ourselves, we can
deceive ourselves or others. The mere fact that you know a word does not necessarily
mean that you know what it means. Nor does it mean that your reader will know what
it means.
To create clear and persuasive argument, you need to make sure that all the terms
you are using are adequately defined. Obviously, defining everything is simply
impossible: there are, we like to believe, terms that are fairly well understood by all
participants in the discussion. But the complex terms, or the ones that are most central
to a contentious argument, need to be defined clearly for the sake of argument. Even if
the definition you are using is not one that all participants would accede to, if you at
least make it clear what you mean when you use a word, then the reader will be able to
make adjustments and understand what it is you’re trying to say.
We will do a formal unit on definition later on in this course; for the time being,
however, let’s just say that we want to make sure that you know what you’re talking
about, and that your reader, too, can know what you are talking about.
AMBIGUITY
A special case of undefined terms arises with ambiguity. Ambiguous terms are those
that can be used — often completely legitimately — in two or more different ways.
Neither definition may be wrong, but trifling with the distinction can be seriously
problematic.
In literary usage, and especially in poetry, ambiguity may well be part of what a
creative author wants to use. Controlled ambiguity is full of possibilities. For expository
writing, however, it’s seldom a good idea to leave ambiguous terms on the table.
The problem is not a new one. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in his
penetrating and reflective work, the Agricola, reports the speech of a British tribal
chieftain, protesting agains the Romans:
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi
solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
By false names they call plundering, slaughtering, and thievery
“dominion”, and when they make a desert, they call it
peace.
In one sense, it’s all a matter of perspective, but it does serve to be thoughtful about
these issues.
HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS
Another thing to question about your own arguments is whether they are relying on
some kind of hidden assumptions. We will get into this in greater detail in the future as
well, but it is a question you should start thinking about now. What unstated
assumptions undergird your thinking or your argument about any given point?
Identifying these will make your argumentation stronger, your position more robust,
and your deliberations more honest.
ANTICIPATING COUNTER-ARGUMENT
For the moment, assume the position of someone who disagrees with you. What
kinds of arguments can you or would you raise an objection to your arguments? Even if
you don’t think they are valid, knowing where they might be coming from will be of
considerable assistance in blocking them.
Testudo:
Constructing a one-paragraph answer
The testudo (tortoise or tortoise-shell) was a Roman military maneuver in which
troops huddled together in a compact mass with their shields above and around them.
It was primarily a defensive maneuver, but it was often in the short term the right
answer to an immediate problem. Only the troops that survived one attack were
available to counterattack in turn, after all. We’re using the testudo as a figure of thought
in a less defensive way: it’s more about the tightness and compactness of the unit, made
up of a number of soldiers working together to form a single operating entity.
The next organizational step up from the sentence is the paragraph. Here you
construct a single structured paragraph to certain specifications. They are not all the
same, but the goal is to address the subject of the question in precise terms.