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The
Write Way
29 February 2008 Must They?
Greetings, We carbon-based bipeds are funny little critters, aren't we? I'm sure we're all hard-wired to think alike; how else to explain the way every time the Love of My Life and I get one of our periodic Good Ideas, it seems every other person on the planet is thinking along the same lines? When we decided to get a campervan to travel the King's Highway, lo and behold, so did every other man and his dog! When we were bitten by the Renovation Bug and bought a little doer-upper to make our fortune, so, too, did everyone else in our demographic group, with the result that prices for done-up doer-uppers stagnated. When we decided we wanted to move from our inland, country town, which had been home for a decade, back to the coast, we thought we'd finally got it right. We'd found our perfect spot: it was quiet and relatively unspoilt; close to the water, but still near enough to the city for airports and major entertainment and shopping needs ... and we could actually afford to buy something we wanted to live in. Ah, bliss. We'd beaten the odds at last ... But what's that they say about "famous last words" and the "best laid plans of mice and men" ...? Sigh. We'd only been living here a couple of years before the rest of the world discovered our little piece of Paradise and moved in. I have to admit that it's been great in lots of ways, and I've already bragged about our beautiful walkways and parks the local council has poured money into, but with the improvements came the Outsiders. And come they do, every weekend, in droves, in swarms, in mobs. They come in clapped-out old cars, in fancy automobiles, in petrol-guzzling 4-WDs. They come decked out in leather on rumbling motor-cyles. They come trailing motor-boats, jet-skis and canoes in their wake. But the very worst by far, gentle reader, are those who arrive on bicycles. We're on a peninsula, and we not only have plenty of scenic roads along the water's edge, we also have the longest bridge in the country, and this proves just too much of a temptation for bike riders from all over the city. I have no objection to people riding bicycles and visiting, but why (oh why?) must they dress the way they do? Our Sunday morning coffee is often spoilt by the sight of mobs of sweaty bike riders in their crazy, lop-sided riding shoes, clomping their way from their bikes (which, I might add, they rest precariously along the potted perfumed plants that serve as borders between various cafés) to their tables. It's most unnerving to be sitting, quietly sipping a flat white, gazing across the clear blue waters of the Bay to suddenly find yourself cheek-by-groin with lycra bike pants. (Shudder ...) Something that made subscriber, Dan, shudder (or at least shake his head in wonder) was an item in a news report about the world's oil reserves: "The total world's official foreign reserves are around US$6.4 trillion." As Dan commented, 'It seems that there may be oil foreign to the world. Where, exactly are those reserves?' Where, indeed? This just shows how a little ethnocentricity can lead to difficulties in communication. I also pondered what other parts of the world were out there, since this report referred to the "total world's official ..." It just goes to show how there's a place for everything and that everything should be squarely in its place. One misplaced word can turn a serious report into a puzzle for readers. The problems with the sentence above occur because one simple rule of syntax was broken ... and that rule is: place modifiers (they're the other words you use to give more information about your "main" words -- the adjectives, adverbs, phrases and clauses you lob in to beef up the sentence at times) as close as humanly possible to the words they modify. The total world's official foreign reserves ... (?) I then wondered about the "official" side of these foreign reserves ... Are there also "unofficial" foreign reserves? And I'm a tad concerned about "the total world's reserves ..." Which part of the world do we normally leave out of our calculations? Rework this sentence and place the modifiers next to the words they actually modify and you have instant clarity: NOT: The total world's official foreign reserves are around US$6.4 trillion. BUT: Officially, the world's total, foreign (i.e. non-US) reserves are around US$6.4 trillion. OK ... that's the cue for all of you who really understand about petrodollars and oil reserves and their ilk to let me know this isn't what it means at all. Go on ... I can take it ... This week's Little Something Extra has some tips to help you cope with your syntax (and that has nothing to do with government charges that should be levied on people who wear bike pants in public!) Here's a little story from Marvin about the eye of the beholder ... One night a teenage girl brought
her new boyfriend home to meet her This week's quiz: Here are some easy words about grammar and syntax ... Match 'em up: adverb, orthography, conjunction, preposition, adjective, semantics, antecedent, gerund, appositive, adjunct 1. construction that is part of a sentence but not essential to its meaning and can be omitted without making the sentence ungrammatical 2. verb ending in -ing and used as a noun 3. word that qualifies a verb or an adjective 4. words which relate a noun or pronoun to another word in the sentence 5. term used in linguistics used to refer to spelling 6. word that qualifies a noun 7. links together phrases and clauses 8. noun, noun phrase, or noun clause which follows a noun or pronoun and renames or describes the noun or pronoun 9. word or idea to which a pronoun is referring 10. study of word and phrase meaning Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time! Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK. For all the flash new browsers, you'll have to do a search on my mate google to find what to do. There's a search box on the archives page!) If you've received this little missive from a friend, you can get your very own issue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every Friday morning by clicking here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogrups.com And I'm even prepared to offer a shameless bribe. An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot! Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them). I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark. Last week's quiz: As reader, Eileen Clark, (Senior Lecturer in Nursing & Midwifery) remarked after last week's quiz, "As someone once said, rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated ... Don't pension off hebephrenic and iatrogenic quite yet, they have specific meanings and we expect our students to know and use them appropriately. I'm not so sure about peenge, though. Some of the students might think that is the word for what physiologists refer to as micturation!" hebephrenic, groak, neanimorphic, peenge, iatrogenic, abligurition, gloze, mundation, pandiculation, obambulate 1. to watch people silently while they are eating, hoping they will ask you to join them - GROAT (Has there ever been a better word than this?) 2. looking younger than one's years - NEANIMORPHIC (sometimes also known as "mutton done up as lamb") 3. to complain and whine - PEENGE 4. spending enormous amounts on food; a prodigal expense for food - ABLIGURITION 5. yawning and stretching (as when first waking up) - PANDICULATION 6. suffering from a form of schizophrenia characterised by foolish mannerisms and senseless laughter along with delusions and regressive behaviour; condition of adolescent silliness - HEBEPHRENIC 7. act of cleansing - MUNDATION 8. induced by a physician's words or therapy (used especially of a complication resulting from treatment) - IATROGENIC 9. to wander about - OBAMBULATE 10. to flatter; to wheedle; to fawn; to talk smoothly - GLOZE Want to donate to the upkeep of this newsletter? Just $17 a year seems a small price to pay for all this wit and wisdom, don't you think? C'mon, that's just a tad over than 30 cents a week! Here's how to toss a few pennies in my Running Away Fund. Just pay by PayPal. A Little Something Extra The
Practice of Writing Virgil, the great Roman poet, wrote “Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.” From this we can assume that practice comes before thought, and so it is with present day writers. What must be practiced? If one is to be a successful writer then one must be able to practice good grammar. In order to practice good grammar, a writer must know the rules of good grammar and therefore must study the rules of good grammar. Most editors reject quickly those writers who do not know how to construct a proper sentence with at least a subject and predicate. Besides knowledge of a simple sentence, a writer must use compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. In order to perfect the ability to use these sentences, one must practice their use until it becomes second nature. Once a writer—through practice—has mastered the sentence then it is time to work on the paragraph. Again, composing a unified, effective paragraph requires practice so that it has unity, coherence, rhythm and acceptable syntax. Read how to make sure your writing benefits from the practice of good technique. Word of the week: Trillion (n) In the U.S., the third power of a thousand (one thousand billion, 1 followed by 12 zeroes); in Great Britain, the third power of a million (one million billion, 1 followed by 18 zeroes), which is the original sense. (dictionary.com) Got that sorted? Since we were discussing trillions of dollars earlier, I thought it would be worth the effort to try to get our tiny minds around these truly mind-boggling numbers. So if you're thinking a trillion isn't that much more than a billion or two, think again, boys and girls, think again! This is how big a trillion is. Oxymoron of the week: attractive bike pants This week's Latin phrase nicely sums up how I feel some Sunday mornings having coffee when the dreaded Lycra Brigade arrive en masse ... A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi [AH FROON-tay preye-kee-pee-TEE-oom AH TAYR-goh LOO-pee] (A precipice in front, wolves behind OR between a rock and a hard place) Did you know that you can have your very own Latin reminders? How about undies proclaiming, Bene est rex esse? (It's good to be king) Or a shopping bag that warns, Emptrix nata sum (Born to shop)? Kind regards, Jennifer To unsubscribe from this list, send
a blank email to: mailto:WritingTips- Copyright Jennifer Stewart 2008 Individual articles copyrighted by their authors. |
