writeright

After author David Foster Wallace’s untimely death earlier this year, Harper’s Magazine made all the essays he wrote for them available online.  This is a treasure trove of brilliant, lively writing that oozes DFW’s unique blend of genius, logic, and humanity.  You should read all of them! However, if you’re looking for one in particular, and if you’ve ever wondered “Why do we need grammar, anyway?” or, “Who decides what is correct usage?”, or “Why can’t we all just write like we speak?”, he has an answer (or 40) for you.

This is quite possibly the only explanation of good grammar and usage (and how to find it) that you’ll ever need: http://www.harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf

If you’d like to see all the essays, go here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

If you’re really ambitious, try his novels (like Infinite Jest) or short stories on for size.  There is no writer like him, and unfortunately, what we have from his is all we’re going to get– too little for such an overflowing mind and talent, but so, so rich.

If you’d like to learn more about DFW himself, check out this New Yorker piece: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max

Enjoy.

Let’s get right in here and begin with the terms we want to define:

• comma ,
  
• colon :
  
• semicolon ;
  
• ellipsis …
  
• brackets [ ]
  
• parentheses ( )
  
• hyphen -
  
• en-dash –
  
• em-dash —
  

Part One of this topic is going to cover commas, semi-colons, and colons.  We’ll cover the others in Part Two (ellipsis, parentheses, brackets), and Part Three (hyphens, em-dashes, and en-dashes).

Commas:

Commas are used to connect and differentiate phrases and clauses.  They can be used alone to connect a phrase to the rest of a sentence.

e.g., With quiet steps, Marjorie snuck up on Jake.    OR  With quiet steps, trembling hands, and a queasy stomach,…

When connecting a clause to another clause, however, they must be used with a conjunction, which I’ve underlined below.  The first example has a subordinating conjunction; the second, a coordinating one.

e.g., Though I was very tired, I continued to swim.  OR Bill and I were tired, but we decided to keep going.

Do not simply use them everytime you, uh, pause, because, you’re not sure, what to say.  If you’re in doubt, refer to the post about phrases and clauses.

Colons:

Colons are used to alert the reader to information you want to list or define.  However, be sure that the colon is preceded by a complete sentence (or independent clause).  Here are a couple examples:

Correct:  I have three favorite artists: Van Gogh, Picasso, and Monet.

OR          I can tell you one simple fact: there is no way to get rich quickly.

Incorrect: My favorite artists are: Van Gogh, Picasso, and Monet.

Grammar Girl says that an easy way to remember this is that you should be able to substitute the word “namely” for the colon, and the sentence will still work.

Semicolons:

Semicolons are typically used to connect independent clauses to each other.  Basically, if you have two sentences that can stand alone and that are related, you can connect them with a semicolon instead of using a period.  Make sure you’re not using coordinating conjunctions, like “and” or “but”, which are used with commas.

e.g., Bill and I are cousins.  We are also best friends. –> Bill and I are cousins; we are also best friends.

One exception to this is when you have a list with of phrases that include commas already; in this case, semicolons sort the list out.

e.g. There were three winning teams: Mary’s, Jane’s, and Nancy’s team; Sam’s, Bill’s, and Sandy’s; and Joe’s, Adam’s, and Howard’s.

That’s it for now.  Check back soon!

Stanley Fish has written a masterful column for the NY Times analyzing the inaugural address and has some really good points to make about the difference between parataxis and hypotaxis.  Here is a bit of what he said:

There is a technical term for this kind of writing – parataxis, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the placing of propositions or clauses one after the other without indicating . . . the relation of co-ordination or subordination between them.”

The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward. One kind of prose is additive – here’s this and now here’s that; the other asks the reader or hearer to hold in suspension the components of an argument that will not fully emerge until the final word. It is the difference between walking through a museum and stopping as long as you like at each picture, and being hurried along by a guide who wants you to see what you’re looking at as a stage in a developmental arc she is eager to trace for you.

Of course, no prose is all one or the other, but the prose of Obama’s inauguration is surely more paratactic than hypotactic, and in this it resembles the prose of the Bible with its long lists and serial “ands.” The style is incantatory rather than progressive; the cadences ask for assent to each proposition (“That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood’) rather than to a developing argument. The power is in discrete moments rather than in a thesis proved by the marshaling of evidence.

To properly understand what Dr. Fish is trying to explain, you really should read the whole article here, as it is a great followup to our class discussion of parallelism.  Parallelism is a building block of style, but subordination (creating a hierarchy of ideas, ie. hypotaxis) and coordination (sticking ideas of equal emphasis together, ie. parataxis) are really powerful ways to organize an argument.

Sentences can get pretty complicated, but understanding the basic parts that make them up, and how to identify them, will make writing good sentences much easier.

All sentences must have a verb, a subject (or one that is implied), and form a complete idea.

A verb, or verb phrase, constitutes the action or state of being in a sentence.  The simplest sentences around are formed of verbs:

No! Go! Stop!

In each of these, the subject was implied, as in: (You) stop!

A subject is a noun (person, place, thing, or idea) that performs the action or state of being in the sentence, such as “I” or “the dog” or “New York”.

So, we have sentences like I(s) am hungry (vp), or The dog (s) ran (v).

Modifiers are another sentence part.  Modifiers are describing words or phrases that add meaning to a sentence, like adjectives or adverbs.  So, you could have a sentence like this:

The small (m) dog (s) ran (v) quickly (m).

“small” modifies “dog”, and “quickly” modifies “ran”.  One explains what type of dog, the other, how the dog ran.

Also in sentences are prepositions and conjunctions, just as in parts of speech.  Prepositions are typically used in a prepositional phrase, which begins with a preposition and ends with a noun, like these:

at the park, up the hill, inside the house, through the dark woods, etc.

Conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses together, and come in two flavors: coordinating (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) and subordinating (despite, although, though, because, etc.).

To understand the use of conjunctions, however, we really need to know what words, phrases, and clauses are, and how to identify them.  Okay, maybe not words; you can probably pick those out.

Phrases, though,  are groups of words that don’t form a complete idea.  Often, we name a specific type of phrase by the part of speech is acts like. Here are some examples:

Adjectival Phrase: bright red (instead of “red”)

Verb phrase: was using (instead of “used”)

Adverbial phrase: in great haste (instead of “quickly”)

Clauses are a different beast.  Clauses contain a verb or verb phrase and a subject (which may be implied).  They come in two types: Independent (sometimes called the “main” clause) and Dependent (or Subordinate).  An independent clause could be a sentence by itself (called a simple sentence– more on sentence types later!), or part of a larger sentence.  A dependent clause must be attached to an independent clause; it cannot be by itself because of its subordinating conjunction.  Here are some examples:

Independent: I went to the store

Depdendent: Although I went to the store

You can see that the first is a fine sentence on its own, while the second seems unfinished.

For all the ways to connect clauses together, you’ll have to wait until Part 3, Sentence Types.

Parts of speech are also known as types of words, and there are 8 of them.  These are:

Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Interjections.

Nouns can be defined as people, places, things, or ideas.  They can be concrete (able to be sensed or measured) or abstract (conceptual).  They are often preceded by an article (a, an, or the– articles are a type of adjective). Proper nouns are names and are capitalized.

Pronouns stand in for nouns we don’t wish to repeat over and over.  The noun that the pronoun refers to is called the antecedent.  A pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number, gender, and case.  Pronouns can also show possession.

Verbs can be defined as actions or states of being.  They can be part of a verb phrase (multiple words expressing an action or state of being).  They also have twelve tenses (different ways of expressing time), and four verb parts: present, present participle, past, and past participle.

Adjectives are modifiers (words that describe, or modify, other words) that describe nouns.  Articles are also adjectives.  A and an are indefinite articles, and the is a definite article. Adjectives describe a “what?”.

Adverbs are modifers that describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.  Adverbs describe a “how?” or “in what manner?”.

Prepositions are location and time helper words, such as on, in, around, between, though, under, over, to, from, at, with, etc. A prepositional phrase begins with a preposition and ends with a noun, and contains no verbs.  Many idioms (expressions that cannot be literally translated and retain their meaning) contain prepositions.

Conjunctions are words that join together words, phrases, and clauses.  They can be coordinating (FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so; these words link items of equal weight or importance) or subordinating (these, like though, still, while, etc., link a dependent clause to an independent or main clause in a sentence).

Interjections are words set off by themselves with an exclamation mark.  These constitute expressions of strong feeling in single word sentences, such as Oh! or Wow!