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Literary Judgment Marred by Dumb Grammar Myth

February 14, 2012, 12:01 am

The challenge issued by Canada Writes was: “In 100 words or less, write a true story that involves someone in your life, and use that person’s name in your story. It could be a family member, a friend, a teacher, anyone—but the person must still be living.”

The chosen judge was JJ Lee, who writes about fashion and art in Vancouver. The winner was a story by Jennifer Goddard, as tight and gripping as a 100-word story could be. No quarrels there. But the runner-up, by Caro Rolando, was also terrific, as Lee agreed. Unfortunately he forgot the first rule of literary judging (never apologize, never explain!) and cited a reason for not picking her. Ignorance of grammar reared its ugly head—his reason was supremely dumb.

I need to quote the whole of Caro’s story to make my point. So here it is:

When we first made eye contact, I adjusted my oversized Oakland A’s cap and glared at you. You weren’t fazed. “Wanna play cards?” you asked, in Texan twang. From there, we were inseparable. You introduced me to cornrows, Coolio, and Roald Dahl. We created friend-finding quizzes for other kids on the train, with questions like, “Are you scared of thunderstorms?” You agreed to call me “Kat,” just ‘cuz I liked the name. On the fourth night, we wanted a sleepover. But we weren’t allowed. The following morning, you were gone. Where’d you go, Jessica Garrick? I still have your book.

A delightfully bittersweet and touching story of a brief but intense female friendship. Virtually unimprovable, I would say. But here’s what JJ Lee misguidedly said (I’ve boldfaced the bit that appalled me):

I have to give kudos to Caro. In her story, her use of name-dropping rings truest among the entries submitted to me. As a school-boy, when speaking about my classmates, I used their first and last names. Megan Riggs will always be Megan Riggs. Never just Megan. So I like that quality in Caro’s submission. Plus it also reveals a keen yearning. The name feels talismanic. I suspect early mid-life crisis blended with nostalgia in the story and I identify. I believe if Caro had found another way to construct one or two active sentences without the verb ‘to be’, she would have emerged the winner. Regardless, I found her story outstanding.

Remove a couple instances of the copula and make yourself a winner? What’s going on here? My guess: We are looking at another victim (perhaps indirectly) of Page 18.

Page 18 of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is where the section headed “Use the active voice” begins. It starts with an example of a passive deliberately designed to sound ridiculous, and then wanders off topic into talk about “forcible writing.” Rather than use a “perfunctory expression such as there is, or could be heard,” they say, you should improve things by “substituting a transitive in the active voice.”

They then give four examples of “bad” sentences with proposed “corrections.” The reader will naturally think that the ones on the left are passives and the ones on the right are active transitives, but astonishingly, this is not true in any of the four pairs (see “The Land of the Free and The Elements of Style” in English Today 102, Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2010, 34-44 [available here], P. 41). What is true, though, is that the “bad” example always contains a form of be, and the “correction” never does.

The legend has arisen, spread by thousands of writing teachers and TA’s and underpinned by Strunk and White’s blundering exposition, that with each use of copula forms (am, are, be, been, being, is, isn’t, was, wasn’t, were, weren’t) you lose points. With five strikes against her (two occurrences of were and two of weren’t, plus are in a quoted question), Caro was doomed.

This is so stupid. If Jennifer Goddard’s story wins over Caro Rolando’s, fine: The judge’s decision is final. But for the sake of sanity in writing instruction, stop trying to justify aesthetic judgments by reference to Strunk and White’s eccentric and syntactically incompetent stylistic advice.

[Sincere thanks to Fiona Hanington for referring me to the Canada Writes Web site.]

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jpminnc

I’m sure we all have our linguistic bugaboos. ”Jim wrote a letter to Jane and I” sends me through the roof. ”It’s me” purportedly made my grandmother wince. But aren”t these, too, part of the linguistic landscape? I agree that over-being (over-copulation would be funnier, if not exact) is among the silliest, but ain’t it quaint?
Ludo Totem

Caro’s piece is touching, and the judge’s stated reason for not choosing it as the winner is foolish, but I see no real reason to pin the blame for this foolishness on Strunk and White, who, despite their generally sound advice, have inexplicably become the whipping boys of all too many of those who comment on matters of style. In fact, you could just as easily say that the judge here is ignoring one of S&W’s wisest injunctions: against the use of a synonym for no reason other than to avoid repeating a word.

Nobody’s going to emerge from a quick read of The Elements of Style a suddenly better writer (or your money back!), and it would be idiotic and probably impossible to apply each of the prescriptions therein to each line of your own writing, but there’s quite a bit in the book to learn from, as long as you don’t go about it slavishly. In short, I don’t think Strunk and White are in any way to blame for the delusions of their readers (many of whom, it seems, happen to teach composition).

dank48

A book on writing that doesn’t know the difference between “forcible” and “forceful” should be taken with a handful of salt.

tjfarrel

Same point, different take (I once had this exchange with a journal editor): it’s the passive that the judge explicitly objects to. But if the (two instances of) the passive were removed, the beautiful alternation of “you” and “we” as subject is destroyed, the wholly irrelevant “parents” or whatever would be introduced into a story that is–must be–about the bond between two kids. Following the judge’s advice would make the story significantly worse.
sbcarnes

What is the saddest thing here to me is that, unlike “Jim wrote a letter to Jane and I,” which is a straightforward grammatical error – we do still have accusative in English – this judge looked not at the impact of the writing but, instead, brought up the seemingly-inevitable “error” of using too many not-active-enough verbs. tjfarrel hit the proverbial nail on the head. Written this way was beautiful. Writing it with an eye on being sure to use lots of active verbs….well, I can’t get rid of two of them in a way that makes the piece better. If the judge thinks it would be better “if Caro had found another way to construct one or two active sentences without the verb ‘to be’,” I invite them to show us!
3rdtyrant

I don’t know why all this spleen is being vented. It sounds like we had two stories of nearly (if not entirely) equal merit, and one had the flaw of over-using to be verbs. Frankly, I’d've focused on the sentence fragment, and misuse of commas and quotation marks, but that didn’t even get mentioned.

Guest

Honestly. I tried to leave this comment alone. I had my say (above) and went away. I thought I was a recovering addict … but I guess I’m not recovering.

There is no sentence fragment in the piece. And all the rest of the punctuation is rhetorically defensible. 3rdtyrant’s reference to “the flaw of over-using to be verbs” presupposes (wrongly) what Pullum’s essay calls into question (rightly).

I will NOT nitpick the rest. I can just quit. Of course, if I COULD just quit, ……………………………………………………………

Ludo Totem

You forgot to mention 3rdtyrant’s annoying too-cool-for-school pose (“I don’t know why you people are getting so worked up about all this”). Otherwise, good job.

theart

Moral authority was abdicated with their use of the phrase, “100 words or less”, in the challenge.

janfreeman

”100 words or less” is fine. “Distances, sums of money, units of time, and statistical enumerations … are often thought of as amounts rather than numbers” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage). And what does “moral authority” have to do with it, anyway?

theart

A word is not a distance, sum of money, unit of time, or statistical enumeration. Those are only appropriate exceptions, because discrete units have been artificially assigned to continuous measures. You can have half of a dollar or go a third of a mile, but you cannot use an eighth of a word.

The usage is no more correct than “10 items or less” at the supermarket, and anyone who can’t figure that out is unqualified to criticize use of the passive voice.

magyar

One might just as well say that anyone who clings to the myth that ’10 items or less’ is wrong has abdicated the moral authority to comment on this piece…
dank48

How about “I can’t tell you the amount of people who have . . .”? Frankly, I’ve come to the point where I simply don’t care about “fewer”/”less,” but when folks use “amount” for “number” like this, I realize I’m not as tolerant as I thought, or perhaps I mean broken down.

http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com Richard Grayson

It’s a first-person fiction, folks! Grammar don’t matter! It’s all in the voice!

theart

I’m convinced that most people who are this offended by passive voice would be much happier if they stuck to reading and writing toaster oven manuals.

Guest

GP: >This is so stupid.>

Yes, it is. But worse than that: it is so TYPICAL. Composition teachers and those who “train” them to teach others of the species to exercise the language faculty, that sacred whinny-whisper that sets us apart from our cousin apes, are unable to learn the most rudimentary facts about their subject matter. They should be released into the wild along with the chimps and bonobos to forage for nuts and berries. They are no more to blame for their cognitive limitations than the apes who cannot learn to stack up the barrels and use the pole to reach the bananas.

We’ve been running the same experiment over and over now for a full century since the founding of the National Council of Teachers of English in 1911. The very first article in the very first _English Journal_ was written by one Edwin M. Hopkins: “Can Good Composition Teaching Be Done Under the Present Conditions?” (January 1912). His answer was a resounding no, and so it goes.

As poorly paid, as professionally ill-treated, as presumably fine and decent samples of the species as they may be, and as clearly deserving of humane treatment as any lab animal, only a handful of the hairless apes figure it out. Yes, the conditions have been appalling, and yes, a few have done good, even excellent teaching and a few have learned a little, piled up some barrels and –ignoring the pole — have leapt upwards and pulled down some bananas.

Many of us have tried. You yourself have done an excellent job. I commend you. I myself worked at it as hard as I could for as long as I could. We hit the wall. Even failed experiments serve their purpose.

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
gavin_moodie

The plural of TA is TAs.

mollymao

This is a stylistic preference that cannot be deemed correct or incorrect without reference to a particular style guide.
The MLA handbook agrees with you; however, the corporate style guide at the multinational, European-headquartered company that employs me does not.

gavin_moodie

So consistent with the plural of thousands of writing teacher’s!

Guest

If I understand your reasoning, you see “thousands of teacher’s” and “millions of TA’s” as analogous constructions. The apostrophe in “teacher’s” is superfluous and wrong; therefore, the equally superfluous apostrophe on TA’s is equally wrong. Same form. Same “function.” Same analysis: the grocer’s apostrophe. Sorry, but it’s a false analogy.

If you would look it up any number of relevant style manuals, you would find a rule about pluralizing symbols, numbers, letters, abbreviations, words used as words (I’m probably forgetting something from the list). Some will say you MUST pluralize items from the list with apostrophes; some will INSIST that you NOT pluralize with apostrophes; some will say you have a stylistic ALTERNATIVE: make a choice and stay consistent. The fact that nobody (hyperbole!) knows what to do with the “dos and don’ts” shows you how useless trying to follow the rules can be. The near universal compromise on “do’s and don’ts” shows you how effective rules can fail to be.

The phrase “thousands of teacher’s” (you expect me to make a joke about putting the apostrophe “after the s”?) never makes it into the list as a symbol, a number, a letter, an abbreviation, or a word used as a word. (Some people throw names into the list, and end up referring to their families as the “Hatfield’s” and “McCoy’s.” Don’t. If you need help learning to spell the plural of your own name, just ask.)

Because writing/composition teachers are, in fact, poorly trained, I can understand how being told to put the apostrophe before or after “the S” (which, in point of fact, is sometimes a pluralizing S and sometimes the possessive marker “apostrophe S”) that a reasonably intelligent individual could remain confused about why it is “the people’s choice” and “a grocer’s sign” when so many grocers display the signs of their ignorance so baldly and boldly.

In point of fact, you and every other native speaker of English have been blessed with the intuitive ability to distinguish among “a choice of the people,” “a sign of a typical grocer,” and “the signs of many grocers.” Once you learn to access what you already know, you will find the apostrophe a trivial problem easily solved.

Expertise in these matters is highly overrated. Just keep flying by the seat of your pants and you’ll fit right in.
gavin_moodie

I did indeed consult the Chicago Style Manual which prescribes, as I recall -

Ph.D.’s

but

PhDs.

It is time to either choose a style manual that prescribes sensible usage or exercise one’s own judgement in the face of this inconsistency which confuses rather than clarifies meaning by insisting on different usages where there is no difference in meaning.

hlandecker

gavin_moodie: Newspapers that use all-cap headlines add apostrophes to abbreviations like TA because, as you can imagine, a plural like “TAS” would be hard to read in a headline. As would “CVS” (CV’s), “PH.D.S” (Ph.D.’s), CEOS, (CEO’s), and a lot of other abbreviations that appear frequently in our pages. The apostrophe isn’t a perfect solution, as you note, but that’s the reason The New York Times Manual of Style, which The Chronicle follows, uses it for plurals of abbreviations.

gavin_moodie

I don’t concede the headline argument, but in this case it is beside the point. We are considering a sentence in the body of the text which starts: ‘The legend has arisen, spread by thousands of writing teachers and TA’s . . .’.

The author gave TAs a grocer’s apostrophe but thankfully eschewed this barbarism 2 words earlier in ‘teachers’ and 5 words earlier in ‘thousands’.

mollymao

Again, not a barbarism (nor a grocer’s apostrophe), but – according to many style guides – a perfectly acceptable pluralization of an acronym. You might not like it, but it’s not incorrect. Professional writers and editors have to adhere to the style guides of the publishing house or organization for which they write. If, when writing for my employer, I were to omit the apostrophe from “TAs,” my editor would mark it for correction. He’s not wrong to do so (and it doesn’t reflect his personal preference!), he’s merely ensuring that I follow our style guide.
mollymao

Wikipedia says it well: ”The traditional style of pluralizing single letters with the addition of ’s (for example, B’s come after A’s) was extended to some of the earliest initialisms, which tended to be written with periods to indicate the omission of letters; some writers still pluralize initialisms in this way. Some style guides continue to require such apostrophes – perhaps partly to make it clear that the lower case s is only for pluralization and would not appear in the singular form of the word, for some acronyms and abbreviations do include lowercase letters.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_and_initialism#Representing_plurals_and_possessives

dank48

So Lee chokes on a couple passive-voice and a couple active-voice sentences with “to be,” yet has no problem swallowing the loathsome “wanna” and the vile “‘cuz”? Well, well. Of course it would be pedantic to worry about such matters in first-person fiction, but at least there’s a coherent position against so-called phonetic spelling. The weakness of “to be” sentences is, imo, utterly imaginary. Shakespeare, I believe, used “to be” pretty effectively twice in one line, as I recall.

In the sauce-for-the-gander department, let’s check out Lee’s own prose. Three active-verb sentences, followed by “Megan
Riggs will always be Megan Riggs,” which I believe is in the future tense, with the predicate–the horror, the horror–”to be.” Next comes “Never just Megan,” which seems to lack a predicate, so it hardly qualifies as a sentence. The next circle in our descent into hell, “So I like that
quality in Caro’s submission,” seems to be trying unsuccessfully to link up with what came before, but the “so” at the beginning is, shall we say, infelicitous. Ditto “Plus it also reveals a keen yearning,” and perhaps “it” is clearer to others than it is to me. We do have a complete sentence in “The
name feels talismanic,” which may even mean something, not that I get it. In “I suspect early mid-life crisis blended with
nostalgia in the story and I identify,” I suspect that one really ought to be more specific about where or in what one suspects early mid-life crisis blended with nostalgia, not that I’d care for such a cocktail, and unless I’m mistaken, “I identify” could really use a direct object, such being the preference of transitive verbs. (If “identify” is intransitive here, I fail to understand what Lee is becoming identical with. Perhaps Lee means “understand” or even, ulp, “can relate to that.”) Since Lee was doing the judging, “I believe if Caro had
found another way to construct one or two active sentences without the
verb ‘to be’, she would have emerged the winner” must be taken at face value; no one else can say different. I don’t get the point, the function, or the other-than-space-filling function of the first word in “Regardless, I found her story outstanding.”

It seems to me Caro writes at least as well as Lee, at least as far as these samples show.