Category Archives: language

The President Teaches Me Good English. The Best.

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Dan and I have enrolled in the Donald Trump Remedial English Program.

I can’t pinpoint the exact date this happened, but we reached the saturation point at about the same time. Perhaps it was when we were enjoying a glass of fine ten-year-old Rioja. We enjoyed the delicious aroma, observed how it coated the inside of the glass, and swirled it around in our mouths a bit before swallowing. “This is really good,” I said to Dan.

“The best,” he replied, a response that for the past several months has brought us laughter. It’s been fun imitating our President’s, er, distinctive verbal style.

We each saw the doubt in the other’s eyes.

“All the other wines are losers,” I essayed. But it was too late. This no longer had the cachet of fresh humor that it once had.

“Pathetic?” he tried.

No. Clearly we were done.

“This is really sad,” I said, ignoring the warning finger Dan was waving at me. “It’s the end of an era. We can’t go on this way. It’s just not working anymore. We can’t just say, ‘the best.’ It doesn’t mean anything.”

Dan agreed. “But what should we say?” he wondered. “The best wine?”

Suddenly, it was all clear to me. We have become grounded on the shoals of vagueness. “That’s better, but it’s not good enough. We have to be more specific. What do you mean, ‘the best wine’? Why is it the best? The best for what? The best wine you’ve ever tasted in your entire life? The one wine that Robert Parker will finally rate with one hundred points? The best wine on this restaurant’s wine list—and how would you know that? Or maybe just the best wine for this particular dinner?”

“Stop!”

But I couldn’t stop. “The problem is that ‘best’ is entirely the wrong We have to rediscover the wonderful world of picturesque description. We’d be better off with just ‘This wine is really good.’ But even so, we can do much better. We have to start learning all over again how to say what we really mean. And what we really mean here is, ‘This wine is delicious.’ Or, ‘It’s exactly the kind of wine I was hoping for.’ Or even, ‘I really like this wine; it’s just to my taste.’”

And so we vowed we would try, from that moment on, to avoid certain formerly funny phrases and instead to say specifically what we mean. It’s hard, but we are doing our best to keep each other honest. We may need to join a twelve-step program.

On our last night in Barcelona, we explored a restaurant that sounded promising on Yelp and was only a short walk from our hotel. After we’d been seated, looked over the menu and ordered, and our first course had arrived, Dan said, “This restaurant is the best.”

I gave him a squinty, head=tilted look.

“Restaurant. It’s the best restaurant.”

“Really?” I asked. “In the world? According to whom?” (Yes, folks, I do actually, from time to time, use the word ‘whom’ in ordinary speech.) “The best in what respect? Certainly not the tablecloths.” (There were none.) “No other restaurant has better service? Better ambiance? Is it the variety of items on the menu? How perfectly they are cooked? Have you tried enough items on the menu to be sure? Or are you talking about value for the money? Maybe it’s just that the restaurant is the right length of a walk from our hotel?”

Dan sighed. “I really like the menu and the food, and it’s exactly the quality and degree of informality I was hoping for, on our last night in Barcelona. I can’t imagine a better place for us to be having dinner tonight.”

I sighed and smiled. “I feel the same way.”

What to use instead of adverbs

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Adverbs, particularly those ending in -ly, have gone out of fashion these days. Many advisors to writers are now advising that we not use them. Preferably not at all. Or, if we must, then as seldom as possible. Naturally (oops), this leads to the question: What should a writer should use instead?

Here are some answers.

  • When the adverb is a qualifier (mostly, somewhat, possibly, very, extremely, actually, etc.), just don’t use it. Most sentences are stronger without the qualifier. Try it and see. I promise you: You NEVER need “very”. Ever.
  • Use strong, picturesque verbs, nouns, and adjectives instead of weak ones with descriptors. For example, replace “He spoke loudly” with “He shouted” or “screamed” or “ranted.”
  • Use metaphors. Instead of “He looked at her vacuously” try “He looked as if he hadn’t had a thought in weeks.”
  • Substitute an adjective. Thank heavens adjectives are still in fashion. Many writers do this these days. Instead of “She glared at him angrily” they write “She glared at him, angry.” Personally, I think this is a bastardization of the language, but many of these writers otherwise know their craft.
  • Substitute a prepositional phrase. “She glared at him in anger.” Hey, now you’ve got a rock-solid NOUN here!

If you are beginning to find this list arbitrary and even a bit nonsensical, please join the crowd. Many writers, published and not, rightly find the current campaign against adverbs unwarranted. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that all the great writers used adverbs. Even Shakespeare used adverbs.

This is a fashion we’re talking about, folks, and like all fashions, it will pass. Take the good parts and ignore the nonsensical ones. Lose the qualifiers. Strengthen nouns and especially verbs. Choose dynamic adjectives. Find metaphors that wake your readers up. Then, if you still have a place for them, use adverbs that sing. And use them effectively.

Gimme Grammar 2

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There are a number of differences between British English and American English when it comes to grammar and punctuation, but none is so annoying (to a person on the left side of the ocean) as the rules applying to punctuation adjacent to quotation marks at the end of a sentence.

In this case, the Brits are completely logical. And the Americans are, well, Americans.

I refused to accept this for years, but I’m older and more mellow now, and I try to do what I’m told.

Here are the rules.

If you’re British (and I think but I’m not sure, also Canadian) you do the right thing: Terminal punctuation adjacent to quotation marks goes where it logically makes sense. If it closes whatever’s in the quotation marks, then it goes inside the quotation marks. If it closes the sentence as a whole, then it goes outside the quotation marks. I feel a bit silly including examples since this is so bloody obvious, but, well, maybe not to the Americans. So here you go:

  • She let out a scream and cried, “Help!”
  • The grammarian sighed. “I can’t help you.”
  • “Why on Earth not?”
  • What is the definition of the word “abecedarian”?
  • [Watch this one carefully] “I don’t know the definition of the word ‘abecedarian’.”
  • Here is the definition of “abecedarian”.

Now, for you Americans, the first three of these work the same way. So does the fourth, because the rule is this: regardless of the logic of the sentence, if the terminal punctuation is a question mark or an exclamation point, it goes outside the quotation marks.

But the final two examples are different. If you’re an American, the rule is this: Regardless of the logic of the sentence, if the terminal punctuation is a period or a comma, it goes inside the quotation marks.

  • [Watch this one carefully] “I don’t know the definition of the word ‘abecedarian.'”
  • Here is the definition of “abecedarian.”

Oh, that last one really hurts.

Verbage

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While reading this article in The New Yorker, I experienced a pang of angst as sharp as a knife. How much I love words has overwhelmed me. I know what Luddites are, but this is the first time I have come to understand in an immediate and personal way that they are attacking me, that all the stuff they are against, that stuff is the air that I breathe. Words are, to use Rilke’s phrase, the “rind, rondure, and leaf” of my being. The beauty of a turning phrase. How the tongue delights on the rhythm of words, and the mind on their improbably origins.

So, what shall we make of this:

“The most revealing moment happened earlier, when she was asked about Obama’s attack on McCain’s claim that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. ‘Well,’ Palin said, ‘it was an unfair attack on the verbage that Senator McCain chose to use, because the fundamentals, as he was having to explain afterwards, he means our workforce, he means the ingenuity of the American people. And of course that is strong, and that is the foundation of our economy. So that was an unfair attack there, again, based on verbage that John McCain used.’ This is certainly doing rather than mere talking, and what is being done is the coinage of ‘verbage.’ It would be hard to find a better example of the Republican disdain for words than that remarkable term, so close to garbage, so far from language. ”

I think I want to cry.