Monthly Archives: August 2011

August 31, 2011, 4:07 pm

Clichés Are the Poster Child for Bad Writing

Which, of course, is itself a cliché. Clichés are bad because they’re tired, overdone, unoriginal, dull, and mindless. They make you seem like everybody else, not like an individual with an interesting perspective and voice. But they’re hard to avoid because they express a concept in a vivid and effective way (otherwise, they wouldn’t have become so popular), and one that the reader is sure to understand. The combination of aptness and familiarity means that clichés are constantly occurring to a writer. Some of them get excised (or exorcised) by one’s internal editor, but quite a few make it to the computer screen or legal pad, where they need to be vigilantly smoked out.

But you can never get rid of every single one—the best you can hope for is to manage them.

To that end, it’s useful to take a look at the life cycle of clichés. They are born as fresh, vivid,…

August 26, 2011, 10:45 am

I’m Relatable, You’re Relatable

By Lucy Ferriss

Like so many other neologisms, this one arrived by stealth and then took over. I first noticed it about three years ago, in several of the online postings I require for literature classes. “I like the plot,” went this sort of comment, “but I just don’t find the main character relatable.”

For a while I chalked the term up to clumsy language use. The students meant that they could not identify themselves with, or “relate to,” Bigger Thomas or Daisy Buchanan. I don’t grade these postings on their syntax or argument; the point is to draw out the shy students and to acquire some basis for discussion between class sessions.

Then the term leapt the abyss between casual posts and academic papers. “In terms of the relatability of Munro’s characters. … ”; “Though Forster’s premise is clever, his story is not very relatable”; “A major achievement in Updike’s…

August 26, 2011, 10:40 am

I Wish I’d Said That

By Geoffrey Pullum

Stealing is, of course, wrong. I abjure it. But sometimes a piece of language is just too good not to be … well, we won’t say plagiarized, let’s say recycled. (“I wish I’d said that,” said Oscar Wilde once, admiring a witticism of James McNeill Whistler’s, and Whistler replied: “You will, Oscar, you will!” And I bet he did, too.)

I recently heard the University of Manchester computer scientist Ian Pratt-Hartmann handle a cellphone lecture interruption with the coolest line. I knew immediately I would thieve it. I’ll share it with you, but don’t tell anyone else (this is a brand new blog; it probably has about 12 readers including the editor and you; keep it under your hat).

We were in a seminar room at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Ian was presenting a technical paper about the computational complexity of logical reasoning in ordinary English, to an audience of 30 or so. I…

August 26, 2011, 10:39 am

An Unexpected Truth About Copy Editors and Consistency

By Carol Saller

Don’t ever tell a copy editor that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. To begin with, anyone who knows the context of that chestnut knows that Emerson wasn’t thinking about whether website has a hyphen when he wrote it, and second, it’s rarely a good idea to make your copy editor think you’re an ignorant jerk. Third, whatever the stereotype, copy editors do draw a line when it comes to consistency, even to the point of having to explain to a writer sometimes why consistency is not a goal in a given instance.

Let’s say I add a comma after “In 1945” because it’s followed by a parenthetical clause: In 1945, as the story goes, Grandma ate eggshells to keep her bones strong. So the writer helpfully adds a comma after every “In 19xx” in the manuscript to take care of my “inconsistency.” No harm done, other than the writer’s waste of time and my annoyance …

August 26, 2011, 10:35 am

Some Rules Are Nice and Simple. But . . .

By Allan Metcalf

If there’s one thing we know for sure about good health, it’s that we should drink eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day. A very nice rule. Simple, easy to remember, and anyone can do it. Just line those glasses up.

To be sure, not that many of us actually drink the eight eights, but we know we should.

The only problem is, there’s no basis for this rule, scientific or otherwise. Yes, we do need water every day, but not necessarily eight eights. And we certainly don’t need plain water; we get the necessary water in our food and in all sorts of drinks.

In most cases, there’s no harm done if we drink eight glasses. But it can be a nuisance.

Rules of grammar are like that. The ones we remember best are nice and simple. Easy to remember, and anyone can do it. Not many of us actually follow them, but we know we should.

For example, there are some nice simple rules a…