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Academic and Thesis Writing Workshops
Series 1 2011
Logic of written texts 2: additional information
In seminar 3 we began the process of understanding how the logic of grammar
works in English. We will continue to deepen that understanding today by
examining a few more aspects of grammar such as adjuncts and prepositions, and
the correct use of punctuation. We will not have covered the whole of grammar
and punctuation, but I hope that you will have enough to build on, to make your
writing as flexible as it can be within the rules of English. Those rules are not
confining – instead, they are a liberating and strong architecture that makes your
meaning as clear as it can be.
Many ways of writing are almost automatic – they conform to unconscious
patterns that we have adopted for various reasons. In some cases, these
unexamined ways of writing will not be sufficient for the long-lasting writing that
academic work needs to be. We have to look afresh at exactly how we write the
way we do and why so that we can find ways to improve our written expression.
I am continuing briefly in these notes with an examination of the elements of
writing, to achieve that overall goal – greater control over one’s writing, to make
it the best it can be. Let’s begin with that reviled class of word, the adjective.
Adjectives
Adjectives are content words that describe a noun, adding further information of
various kinds – for example: desirable, fatal, beautiful, allergic, happy, active,
monstrous, nosy, angry. In English, adjectives may be recognisable because they
sometimes have characteristic endings, such as -able, -al, -ate, -ful, -ic, -ive, -ous,
-y and others. Adjectives also can be formed from verbs – for example, “riding
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competition” or “sliced bread”. And nouns may be used as adjectives – consider,
for example, the Gillard government or tennis lessons. Adjectives usually do not
have plural forms but they may have degrees – for example, “short”, “shorter”,
“shortest”. There are other ways of forming degrees of comparison: using
“more” and “most” for example. This allows us to write: ludicrous, more
ludicrous, most ludicrous. But be careful not to take this to extremes: we cannot
use “the most biggest horse”, for example.
There are two main kinds of adjectives: attributive and predicative. You may
need to know this, but I don’t want to dwell on it too much. It helps as writers to
know the difference, again to give you that control and also to fully analyse a
sentence you may have written. An adjective may stand in a close relationship
with the word it describes, and this is called the attributive adjective: It was a
glorious summer. The other kind stands outside the noun phrase and functions as
its predicate; these are the predicative adjectives: “The results sound promising”,
or “The data were inconclusive”. I think you can see that the adjectives are still
describing qualities of the relevant nouns, but they are connected by a verb – a
particular kind of verb, but we won’t go into that right now.
Adverbs
Another important class of content words are the adverbs. These give more
information about the action of the verb. An adverb can indicate time, manner,
place, reason or purpose. It offers the answers to questions about the verb like
where? why? when? how? what for? how long? how often? how much? Many
adverbs of manner are formed from adjectives by the addition of -ly. For
example: rapidly, smoothly, cleverly, stupidly, wildly, boldly. But other kinds of
adverbs that indicate time, place and degree have no particular distinguishing
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form, so we must look at them in context to identify them as adverbs. For
example, in the sentence “let’s go now”, the word “now” is an adverb. You can
recognise it by the fact that it adds more information to the verb, "go": it answers
the question “when?”
Adjectives and adverbs can be useful when used sparingly, but be ruthless in
cutting out those that don’t add sufficient information to justify their inclusion.
Always weigh up the usefulness of every word in your sentences. This especially
goes for adjectives and adverbs. For example, the word “very” is considered a
“weak modifier” that often does not add much to the meaning of the sentence.
Examine its use and see if it is aiding meaning. If it is not, cut it out. I am not
among those writing teachers who forbid adjectives and adverbs. Some
modifiers add vital, irreplaceable information and cutting them out would fatally
damage your text. As Orwell says, we must see our writing as an art and employ
discretion, style and judgement to everything we write.
Moving on now to some important function words - prepositions. These useful
but sometimes confusing words help draw relationships between the content
words. The word “preposition” simply means something placed before or in
front. In general, they define a relationship the following noun bears to an item
that precedes or follows. For example:
“(available) to participants
“(borrowed) by Ken”
Prepositions may define relationships in a spatial sense:
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“on ice”
“in tanks”
or a temporal sense:
“before breakfast”
“between seasons”
They can also show causal relationships:
“by perseverance”
“through effort”
And there is a range of other interconnections:
“despite hardships”
“against odds”
“among friends”
In a sense, a noun is “governed” by its prepositions. The nouns behave in certain
ways depending on what the preposition makes them do – for example, not above
or in ice, but “on ice”. They are, like so much of our language, misused all the
time. A common one I hear quite a bit these days is “I was bored of that”. Here
the preposition “of” is used incorrectly – the correct preposition is “with”. You
will find some other examples of incorrect preposition use in the written notes.
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Examples of incorrect preposition usage from Moffatt:
“…something else about which one is not familiar.”
“…a tussle against a roaring gale.”
“…we pride ourselves in having.”
“…scientists believe of their existence.”
“…this question had been asked solely to foreigners.”
These should be corrected as follows:
“…with which one is not familiar.” (not about)
“…a tussle with.” (not against)
“…we pride ourselves on (not in)
“…believe in.” (not of)
“…ask questions of someone.” (not to)
Because of the close and unequal relationship between prepositions and the
nouns they govern, they should not be disrupted. For example, you can put the
word “suddenly” in various places in the sentence “Ruth’s dogs sprang at him”,
but not between “at” and “him”.
Prepositional phrases
A prepositional phrase is made up of a preposition, a dependent noun or pronoun,
and any other words associated with the latter. Like adverbs, these phrases
provide more information about the central action of the sentence. For example:
The kids were singing on the bus.
I was in the supermarket.
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This is an adjunct phrase, just as an adverb is an adjunct (and so is an adverbial
phrase). Adjuncts are sometimes grouped under categories of place, time, means,
manner, degree, circumstances and so on. You will have heard the saying “I
categorically deny that I did X”, but may not have known the true meaning of the
word “categorical” in that context. It comes from traditional grammar and means
that the denial goes through all the categories: I did it in no place, for no reason,
at no time, and so on.
Let’s turn now to understanding how things can go wrong in sentences and how
we might be able to fix the problems. I would just like to start by defining
another grammatical entity, the participles. Participial words and phrases take a
variety of forms, sometimes just as compound verbs with “ing” endings, such as
“He is trying hard”, where “trying” joins with “is” to form a continuous tense
compound verb. So you will see that term participle used in that connection.
The term participle simply means that they are partly verbs, partly adjectives, but
participate in the functions of both. My main concern with participles is when
they go spectacularly wrong, and you need to know about the potential problems.
Split infinitives
This is a controversial issue and you will find vehement opinion on both sides of
the argument. Some people maintain that it is an arbitrary, meaningless rule
imposed by horrible, prescriptive grammarians wedded to Latin and unable to
cope with the twenty-first century. Others think that splitting an infinitive is
always poor writing and indicative of a lack of sensitivity to the language and a
general lack of education. Most writers concede, however, that sometimes, for
grace and clarity, you may need to split an infinitive.
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An infinitive is a kind of verb, distinct from the finite verb that we discussed
earlier. Among its distinguishing characteristics, it does not indicate tense or
singular/plural. It is often (though not always) made up of the word “to” and the
so-called dictionary form of a verb, such as “be”. The most famous infinitive of
all is found in Hamlet, “to be or not to be”. In English, words change their shape
for various reasons and we call this inflection. The dictionary form is the
uninflected form. So for example we could have the word “run”, which can
inflect to “ran”, “runs”, “running”, etc. Its dictionary form will always be “run”.
Its common infinitive form is “to run”. In this case, the second word in this
construction never inflects – you can’t have “to ran”, for example. It is one of
those little tests we have in grammar to see if you have got the definition right.
In the case of infinitives, see if you can inflect it. If you can’t, then it is an
infinitive. Note that infinitive verbs cannot drive a proper English sentence –
only finite verbs can do that.
And so to the split infinitive. The world’s most famous split infinitive comes
from the classic TV series Star Trek in which the denizens of the Starship
Enterprise vowed “to boldly go where man has gone before”. Here the adverb
“boldly” has found its way between the two elements of the infinitive.
Grammarians around the globe boycotted the show forever more. In the written
notes I have included some opposing opinions on the split infinitive for you to
consider. I would say that, increasingly, this is more of a style issue rather than a
grammar issue. It is much more to do with taste than correctness.
Opinions on the split infinitive
According to Bruce Caplan in Editing Made Easy, “In the publishing world, a
split infinitive usually shows that the writer does not understand a basic rule of
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grammar. Veteran editors on the receiving end of split infinitives can sometimes
be seen waving their arms, shouting or sobbing at their desks. These guardians of
language purity are the true believers in the crime of the split infinitive. So in
your own interests, when writing or editing your own or someone else’s work, do
not split the infinitive.”
But that timeless classic of English, first published in 1926, A Dictionary of
Modern English Usage by H W Fowler, defends splitting the infinitive in certain
cases. In making his case, Fowler divides the English speaking world into five
classes: those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; those who do
not know, but care very much; those who know and condemn; those who know
and approve; and those who know and distinguish: a useful and accurate
division. He reserves his scathing wit most for those who rant about not splitting
the infinitive while not really know what an infinitive is or why splitting it is a
problem. Moreover, he says that sometimes, to match the natural rhythms of
English, it is far better to split an infinitive than to slavishly keep it intact. Note
that the use of the term “to slavishly keep” is a split infinitive. Not splitting it
would result in wording like this: “…it is far better to split an infinitive than
slavishly to keep it intact.” Which sounds better? You decide.
Ending with a preposition
This is just as controversial as the split infinitive and there are many dissenters.
Winston Churchill famously mocked someone who criticised him for ending with
a preposition with the line: “That is something up with which I cannot put.”
Less ridiculous examples might be:
There’s the house I live in.
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That’s a problem he is already aware of.
The rule about ending with a preposition arises because a preposition is supposed
to be placed before a noun, a role implied in the literal meaning of the word
preposition (pre-position). If the preposition is the last word of a sentence,
obviously it is not before a noun. But there are arguments for saying that this
doesn’t matter, and you will find them quoted in the written materials.
H W Fowler, Dictionary of Modern English Usage: “It was once a cherished
superstition that prepositions must be kept true to their name and placed before
the word they govern in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them
late. . . . The fact is that. . . . even now immense pains are sometimes expended in
changing spontaneous into artificial English. . . . Those who lay down the
universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying
to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been
used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English
idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin
standards. The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in literary English must be
uncompromisingly maintained. . . .In avoiding the forbidden order, unskillful
handlers of words often fall into real blunders.”
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style: “Years ago, students were warned
not to end a sentence with a preposition; time, of course, has softened that rigid
decree. Not only is the preposition acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more
effective in that spot than anywhere else. ‘A claw hammer, not an axe, was the
tool he murdered her with.’ This is preferable to ‘A claw hammer, not an axe,
was the tool with which he murdered her.’ Why? Because it sounds more
violent, more like murder.”
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Like the split infinitive, ending with a preposition is something to be aware of (or
something of which to be aware) but not necessarily cowed by (or by which not
necessarily cowed). Use you writer’s ear to find what sounds most graceful and
vivid.
Punctuation: beyond apostrophes and commas
Commas between clauses
A note on whether you use a comma between clauses, and particularly if you use
a comma before “and”. You will find some pedantry around this one – some
people insist that it is never acceptable to put a comma before a conjunctive
“and”. Yet many grammar books insist upon a comma before the “and” in
complex or compound sentences. Since standard Australian style is tending
towards reducing the use of commas as much as possible, but correct grammar
requires that commas be used to aid clarity, I suggest the following. If, as we
saw in the compound sentence discussed in class, the clauses are co-ordinating
and joined by “and”, you don’t use a comma. If, however, you are using a
subordinate clause then use a comma.
Other punctuation elements can cause confusion. For example, the semi-colon is
used to substitute for a conjunction – this is almost its only function, apart from
separating elements of a list. Here is an example of it being used to stand in for a
conjunction:
“Mary Shelley’s works are entertaining; they are full of engaging
ideas.”
Here the semi-colon is taking the place of a conjunction such as “because”.
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Semi-colons and colons are not interchangeable. They have different functions.
A colon informs the reader that what follows proves and explains, or simply
provides elements of, what is referred to before. Here is an example of correct
colon use:
“The squalor of the streets reminded her of a line from Oscar Wilde:
‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’.”
Our final thought for today is from the incomparable Lynne Truss, who made
punctuation fun and funny and – even more amazing – was able to turn it into a
best-selling book. She said: “Punctuation herds words together, keeps others
apart. Punctuation directs you how to read, in the way musical notation
directs a musician how to play.”
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