Grammar rant
Oct. 3rd, 2011 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frogs_of_warI walk around the blocks near my house every day I don’t work, and I’ve discovered that listening to books on CD is much more interesting than listening to music, so I went through the books the library had on mp3-CD and put holds on everything that looked vaguely interesting. I ended up with a book on grammar, a few romances, a James Bond, some supernatural juvenile fiction, several Jeeves and Woosters, and a handful of mysteries (I stopped at H after twenty books. I can’t listen to them all at once anyway).
So I’m now listening to a science fiction romance called Heart of a Warrior. I’m not sure how much of its awfulness is the writer and how much is the person reading it. The reader can be blamed for having the male lead speak (words like appreciate and irritated) in monotone, so instead of sounding like a warrior with a big vocabulary he sounded like a robot.
She also chucked every time anyone chuckled, so I was subjected to Martha chuckled. [chuckling noise] much too many times.
On the writer’s part, she told that the warrior had strong emotion but never revealed them, then that they didn’t have strong emotions, then she showed that one had strong emotions, but didn’t reveal them. I think the second instance was just badly worded (‘never embarrassed’ instead of ‘never blushed’), but this is a published book; someone should have caught it.
She also gave the impression that English with all its modern idioms might have existed because our distant ancestors were aliens, which made me grunt in amazement. Only someone who knew nothing about language—and English in particular—could think that. Has she never heard of Chaucer? If he were alive today, we wouldn’t be about to understand him at all, and he lived only six hundred years ago. Only a few words today are even similar to early English (like bread, leek, and apple), and even Old English is a relatively new language in the scheme of things. Plus idioms change so fast. This alien world uses ‘double occupancy’ instead of marriage, says betcha and gonna, and even though all the aliens have alien names, the computer is Martha.
But what started me on this rant in the first place is a sentence construction I found irritating in the extreme. It’s bad enough to read. It’s worse to listen it.
I’ll use a sample sentence from a story I thought up this morning while putting off getting out of bed. It was kind of a Little Red Riding Hood with werewolves. (And no I don’t plan on ever writing it down.) “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
Good: “Aren’t you a feisty pup?” he said.
This has a good shape. It’s a little plush dog made of a single color. Plain, simple, but very effective.
Good: “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
This is also a good shape even without the ‘he said’ because no tags are needed if the reader can tell who is talking. Sometimes they just get in the way. This is a little plush black cat, which needs nothing else.
The best: He arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
This is a calico cat or a Holstein cow or a German Sheppard puppy. It not only has shape and color, but it has a specific one, as unique to the character talking as the words they use. My other character wouldn’t have arched his eyebrow and he wouldn’t have called the other man a pup.
With extra words: He arched an eyebrow and said, “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
This is a little plush Frankenstein’s monster with too many ears. The ‘and said’ is totally superfluous because if a character does an action the quotation following (or coming before) is his words. I was subjected to way too many of these listening to this book.
Bad: He arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a feisty pup?” he said.
Quotations should start and/or end paragraphs, where they will have the most impact. The ‘he said’ at the end is not only unnecessary, but also takes the force from the quotation. At very least the paragraph should be cut in two. But only if the story really, really needs two extra words. This plush zombie has a few extra limbs, sticking out of the wrong places, like his mouth.
And
The most annoying sentence construction I can think of at the moment and the reason for this rant : “Aren’t you a feisty pup?” came the reply.
‘came the reply’ is a phrase so passive that not only is it not said, it’s not even heard. It’s a bean bag of a quotation tag. Shapeless.
It doesn’t matter how interesting the quotation is, just like shape and color doesn’t matter for a bean bag. It will never be anything but flat.
I tried as I might to come up with a sentence/paragraph/story that ‘came the reply’ would be the best choice in. I couldn’t find one. Maybe it exists. I’m always happy to learn.
So I’m now listening to a science fiction romance called Heart of a Warrior. I’m not sure how much of its awfulness is the writer and how much is the person reading it. The reader can be blamed for having the male lead speak (words like appreciate and irritated) in monotone, so instead of sounding like a warrior with a big vocabulary he sounded like a robot.
She also chucked every time anyone chuckled, so I was subjected to Martha chuckled. [chuckling noise] much too many times.
On the writer’s part, she told that the warrior had strong emotion but never revealed them, then that they didn’t have strong emotions, then she showed that one had strong emotions, but didn’t reveal them. I think the second instance was just badly worded (‘never embarrassed’ instead of ‘never blushed’), but this is a published book; someone should have caught it.
She also gave the impression that English with all its modern idioms might have existed because our distant ancestors were aliens, which made me grunt in amazement. Only someone who knew nothing about language—and English in particular—could think that. Has she never heard of Chaucer? If he were alive today, we wouldn’t be about to understand him at all, and he lived only six hundred years ago. Only a few words today are even similar to early English (like bread, leek, and apple), and even Old English is a relatively new language in the scheme of things. Plus idioms change so fast. This alien world uses ‘double occupancy’ instead of marriage, says betcha and gonna, and even though all the aliens have alien names, the computer is Martha.
But what started me on this rant in the first place is a sentence construction I found irritating in the extreme. It’s bad enough to read. It’s worse to listen it.
I’ll use a sample sentence from a story I thought up this morning while putting off getting out of bed. It was kind of a Little Red Riding Hood with werewolves. (And no I don’t plan on ever writing it down.) “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
Good: “Aren’t you a feisty pup?” he said.
This has a good shape. It’s a little plush dog made of a single color. Plain, simple, but very effective.
Good: “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
This is also a good shape even without the ‘he said’ because no tags are needed if the reader can tell who is talking. Sometimes they just get in the way. This is a little plush black cat, which needs nothing else.
The best: He arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
This is a calico cat or a Holstein cow or a German Sheppard puppy. It not only has shape and color, but it has a specific one, as unique to the character talking as the words they use. My other character wouldn’t have arched his eyebrow and he wouldn’t have called the other man a pup.
With extra words: He arched an eyebrow and said, “Aren’t you a feisty pup?”
This is a little plush Frankenstein’s monster with too many ears. The ‘and said’ is totally superfluous because if a character does an action the quotation following (or coming before) is his words. I was subjected to way too many of these listening to this book.
Bad: He arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a feisty pup?” he said.
Quotations should start and/or end paragraphs, where they will have the most impact. The ‘he said’ at the end is not only unnecessary, but also takes the force from the quotation. At very least the paragraph should be cut in two. But only if the story really, really needs two extra words. This plush zombie has a few extra limbs, sticking out of the wrong places, like his mouth.
And
The most annoying sentence construction I can think of at the moment and the reason for this rant : “Aren’t you a feisty pup?” came the reply.
‘came the reply’ is a phrase so passive that not only is it not said, it’s not even heard. It’s a bean bag of a quotation tag. Shapeless.
It doesn’t matter how interesting the quotation is, just like shape and color doesn’t matter for a bean bag. It will never be anything but flat.
I tried as I might to come up with a sentence/paragraph/story that ‘came the reply’ would be the best choice in. I couldn’t find one. Maybe it exists. I’m always happy to learn.
