I am back and I have secured a dog as per the dog-acquisition plan. I already had a dog, but two dogs is the ideal number of dogs. You have one dog who already knows the ropes, and then you get a second dog and let the first dog teach them the ropes. In the fullness of time the second dog will become the first dog and, having learned the ropes from their predecessor, can teach it to a new second dog. Never let the chain be broken or you’re starting over from scratch with no ropes. You always want to have ropes and knowledge of same. Herewith is the promised (and legally required) dog tax:
That’s an up-to-the-minute photo of her watching me write Shelf Life in real time. Her name is Gideon because, like the heroine with the same name from one of my favorite books, she is large, golden-eyed, ginger-haired, good-natured, and thinks puns are automatically funny.
Some time back, about a million years ago now, I wrote a Shelf Life on writing rules to go ahead and break whenever you feel like it. Today is more of this.
The idea behind the last one, which I’ll recap here though I suggest you go back and read it if you missed it the first time, is that there are a number of grammatical writing “rules” in English that exist for their reasons and are agreed by most or all knowledgeable English speakers to be valid rules but that can, under correct circumstances, be safely broken.
The purpose of language is to make one’s thoughts and ideas understood to others. If you do that with your writing, you have written successfully—whether you followed all the prescribed grammatical rules or not. Further, the rules of grammar apply more loosely to the spoken word than to the written. For instance, it’s very normal for a person speaking to end a sentence with a preposition and for the listening audience not to notice or care, whereas the rule on ending sentences with propositions is more commonly enforced in writing.
How close you want to hew to the rules of writing may depend upon the formality of what you’re writing. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, there are opportunities to take a more- or less-formal tone. Examples of nonfiction writing with more formal voices might include a textbook or an article in a scientific journal, whereas an example of nonfiction writing in a less-formal, more conversational voice is this Shelf Life you are reading right now. In fiction, the formality of the voice depends on the narrator. A narrator who is a bartender in a pub in a medieval village will use an informal tone compared to a narrator who is a nineteenth-century English solicitor. If you’re using an omniscient or limited third narrative voice that is not one of your characters, you will likely want to match the level of formality to the tone of your book so the narrative voice fits and blends in.
When characters speak, it’s a good idea to be judicious with the grammar rules. Most people don’t speak with perfect grammar and if all your characters speak in complete, perfectly punctuated sentences all the time—unless your story is set in a college English department—the dialogue is not going to sound realistic.
Without further ado, allow me to propose a selection of rules for writing that I suggest you ignore whenever the mood takes you.
Finish Your Sentences
One of the first rules of writing is that every sentence must have a subject and a predicate. Every single sentence.
Oops, look what I did there. “Every single sentence” isn’t a complete sentence. It’s a fragment. It has a subject and no predicate. Every single sentence . . . what? And yet, you knew just what I meant. I was emphasizing the prior statement. “Every single sentence [must have a subject and a predicate].” The part in brackets was implied.
Perhaps you learned in school that sentences in the imperative voice (those that issue a command) need not have a subject and a predicate. For instance, if I see my new dog sticking her nose into the trash I might shout:
“Stop that right now!”
This is actually not a for instance this has happened 50 million times today alone.
The sentence “stop that right now” is all predicate: The verb (stop) and the modifiers that attach to stop. What are we stopping? “That.” When are we stopping it? (Never) “Right now.” But I didn’t include a subject—I did not specify who is being commanded to do the action (stop)—or in this case the lack of action, I guess.
In the imperative voice, I was taught, the subject is the implied you. When I say:
“Stop that right now!”
I leave the subject unstated but it’s actually “you”:
“You stop that right now!”
Because a command is always delivered to someone, “you”—the person receiving the command—can always be inferred as the subject, even if it is not stated directly.
I contend that if we can allow an implied subject based on context, as we do in the imperative voice, then we can also have an implied predicate based on context. So I couldn’t just do this out of context:
“Yes, every single sentence.”
What? Every single sentence what? It’s too far away from the context that included the implied predicate. But with the context available, many people will (in speech) omit a predicate or omit a subject to avoid repetition while delivering emphasis.
“Every sentence must be complete. Yes, every single sentence.”
In this case “must be complete” is our predicate and it’s implied in the second, predicate-less clause.
Remember, anything people do in speech is something characters can do in dialogue in your writing. This isn’t just for putting dialogue in characters’ mouths, though. I use this kind of construct in Shelf Life frequently. All the time, in fact. (See, I just did it again.) That’s how I speak, and Shelf Life is written in my conversational voice, so I don’t hold it to the standard that every sentence must be grammatically correct. And I don’t think you should, either.
Make Definitive Statements
Common writing advice: Don’t equivocate or use a bunch of qualifiers or make wishy-washy statements. Use bold, declarative statements. Be unequivocal. Don’t use language like “to my knowledge” or “in my opinion,” just say what you want to say.
Not at all true. Even in formal writing. Sometimes especially in formal writing we do have to qualify what we’re saying. Science editors regularly have to dial back author language like “this is the first study of” or “we were the first to”—unless you are absolutely certain that nobody else anywhere in the world in any laboratory was studying the same thing at the same time as you, you can’t run with an unequivocal statement of novelty/primacy.
Every Shelf Life article is an opinion piece and, except where I cite sources otherwise, the information within comes from my brain. Everything in Shelf Life is my thought or my opinion. I still use the rhetorical “I think” or “in my opinion” even though that may go without saying when I want to emphasize that I am not talking about a universal truth—that I am stating something with which other qualified and knowledgeable people like myself might disagree. That’s not to say others can’t disagree with everything else in Shelf Life because frankly it’s all disagreeable. But I use that construction often when I want to make clear that I’m sharing something that could be controversial and ought not be repeated as accepted fact.
In argumentative, persuasive, or even expository writing, it also never hurts to make a concession to the reader; that is, to acknowledge that the reader may have a different opinion or feel differently than the author (you) do. If you approach your reader with the authority of a schoolmarm to a pupil you may put them right off being persuaded.
You don’t need to steamroll over the possibility of contrary opinions. Acknowledging the existence of other perspectives doesn’t water down your writing.
Tautology
Tautology is the practice of looking at the date and time you were born and using that to determine your personality traits and predict your future. Just kidding! A tautology is a redundant expression; a phrase in which the same thing is expressed twice. For instance,
Karen punched her PIN number into the ATM machine.
Clever readers will spot two tautologies in this sentence: PIN stands for personal identification number so “PIN number” is like saying “personal identification number number” and likewise, “ATM machine” is equivalent to “automatic teller machine machine.” Another example of a tautology might be:
I made you this scarf with my own hands.
If I made the scarf, I obviously used my own hands. I didn’t use my feet. I didn’t use someone else’s hands. Perhaps it needn’t be said both that “I made you this scarf” and “with my own hands.”
However: Don’t people say “ATM machine” and “PIN number” even if those are redundant? Don’t readers understand “ATM machine” and “PIN number”? Yes to both. While it may not be technically correct, may be technically redundant, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong enough that you would never want to do it in writing.
It’s like how some things are illegal but not criminal. You’re not supposed to exceed the speed limit when you drive, it’s against the law, but going 65 in a 55 isn’t a criminal act. Saying or writing “ATM machine” is like going two miles per hour over the speed limit. No one cares. Not even the cops care, and it’s their job to care. As an editor it’s my job to care about grammatical mistakes but I’m probably not pulling anybody over for “ATM machine” unless it’s the end of the month and I have a correction quota to meet.
Then, when you say something like, “I made this scarf for you with my own two hands,” doesn’t that have a different connotation and a different feeling than, “I made this scarf for you”? In the phrase “I made you this scarf” there are two possible positions for the reader to place the emphasis: “Made” and “scarf.” With no additional context, the reader must decide for themself whether it’s more significant that an item was made or that the made item is a scarf, or whether both parts of this gift are equally significant. If you write, “I made you this scarf with my own hands,” you let the reader know that the person speaking is emphasizing the making of the object rather than the finished object.
When you’re speaking to someone in real time, there’s an opportunity to request more information and ask clarifying questions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an exchange like this:
Me: Here I made you this scarf.
Friend: Thanks! I love it. Wait, you made this?
Me: Yes, with my own hands.
When you write something, you have to ensure that you put all the information in that the reader needs (and, within reason, wants). The reader will not be able to request more information or ask you to clarify. Whatever words are there when you publish are all the words they have to figure it out. In my opinion, it’s better to overdo it and risk a tautology than to underdo it and leave the reader guessing when you intended for them to understand you.
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