AT THE AIRPORT
A young man waits at the fringe of a queue of passengers boarding a plane for Denver. He’s somber, with that indefinable look of some foreigners . . . hard, raw cheekbones, a curious haircut.
The long line dwindles, the passengers boarding in groups from priority to coach to open boarding to last call. And still he waits. And watches, scanning the long terminal corridor, growing concern showing in the creased forehead and solemn line of his mouth.
Then he is alone, his boarding pass in hand, the flight attendant looking his way, her own expression not yet anxious. Most of the travelers seated nearby, like me, are waiting for a later plane to another destination and are drowsing, reading, tapping computer keyboards, fiddling with their mobiles. But some have caught the aura of drama around the young man and are watching with him, gazing down the long corridor as if they might be able to call up the person he awaits—a young woman maybe, breathless with apology. But maybe not. Maybe a friend, an aging father. But why didn’t they come to the airport together then? A business colleague? No, pleasure surely, and adventure—he’s wearing casual dress, a back pack. Headed for Denver.
The flight attendant says something I can’t hear to the young man and, checking his watch, he moves a little closer to the gate’s double doors and draft and subdued jet roar. A voice over the intercom announces last call for the flight to Denver: All passengers are aboard, and the doors will close in three minutes. The young man pulls his roll-on to the door of the gate and stands with one foot in the terminal and the other on the ramp.
My eyes meet those of another traveler; her expression is grave. She glances at the young man and down the corridor and back again at me, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. I blink hard and look down. The voice on the intercom continues: If Denver passengers Tasir Sopha or Ashley Anderson are in the terminal, they must report to the gate for an immediate departure.
Now I see a slender elderly man in a hat and with a wide snowy mustache coming down the corridor as fast as his bandy legs will carry him. He is dragging a roll-on and waving a boarding pass.
My eyes fly to the young man, whose expression does not change. No.
“Mr. Sopha?” the flight attendant asks the elderly man. The young man pulls his foot from the ramp and backs up a little to make room for the older man to pass, then resumes his stance on either side of the threshold.
The intercom calls yet again for Ashley Anderson.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the attendant says to the young man, then something else I don’t catch.
“I know,” he says. And stands for a moment, looking as if he could jump either way. Then, with another long glance down the corridor, he decides. He bumps his roll-on across the threshold and, planting both booted feet onto the ramp, enters the gateway. The flight attendant presses him from behind, and he moves out of sight.
The attendant pulls the door closed behind them, and the latch catches with a soft chink.
It sounds final.
# # #
FUN WITH TOM SWIFTIE
People who love words usually love word play. That often means word games, whether Scrabble or crossword puzzles or other brain teasers such as acrostics or anagrams. And word lovers usually—whether they admit it or not—like puns.
One word game that needs no equipment and that even children can play is the Tom Swiftie, so named from the Tom Swift adventure stories of the 1920s. Many young people, especially boys, grew up reading about Tom Swift, a noble young hero created by Edward Stratemeyer. The Tom Swiftie, also called an adverbial pun, spoofs the habit of Swift characters never to simply say anything. Rather, they say it excitedly, sadly, happily, loudly—you get the idea.
The Tom Swiftie turns that adverb—such as excitedly, sadly, happily, loudly, etc.—into a pun. For example: “The stock market is going through the roof!” said Tom bullishly. Or: “Who ate all the apples?” asked Tom, fruitlessly.
That’s the basic Tom Swiftie. And here are others:
“I just drank a huge pot of coffee,” said Tom perkily.
“Our hostess fed us fake turtle soup,” said Tom mockingly.
“I’m going to cash in my chips,” said Tom winningly.
“My pencil lead is broken,” said Tom pointlessly.
“I hate the taste of unsweetened chocolate,” said Tom bitterly.
“I have to visit the cemetery,” said Tom cryptically.
“Be sure to put plenty of starch in my shirts,” said Tom stiffly.
“I can’t find my CD player,” said Tom tunelessly.
“Could I have some of that dark bread?” asked Tom wryly.
“They’ll never guess I made this basket myself,” said Tom craftily.
“I’m sort of fond of modern art,” said Tom abstractly.
“Those atomic tests were something!” said Tom glowingly.
Some Tom Swifties depend upon the names of well-known businesses or products. Here are examples of that sort of Swiftie:
“I forgot my toothpaste!” said Tom, crestfallen.
“Are we eating at McDonald’s again?” asked Tom archly.
“I wish we had some pineapple,” said Tom dolefully.
“Hey, we’re out of laundry detergent,” said Tom cheerlessly.
Another kind of Tom Swiftie is a pun in which the verb—rather than an adverb—provides the humor. That kind of Swiftie usually focuses on the verb of attribution:
“Hey, get this dog off me,” Tom barked.
“My oil well just came in!” Tom gushed.
“Where’s my bullfrog,” Tom croaked.
“Can’t you darn your own socks?” Tom needled.
Yet another kind of Tom Swiftie—and the most challenging—is the double Swiftie. In this sort of Swiftie, both the verb and the adverb are puns. For example: “How did I do on my final exam?” Tom quizzed testily. Here are a few more double Swifties:
“That dog is nothing but a mongrel,” Tom muttered doggedly.
“I love sweet potatoes,” Tom yammered starchily.
“This meat is so tough!” Tom beefed jerkily.
Word play of all kinds is not only fun and funny, it’s especially valuable to children and young people. Something as elementary as the Tom Swiftie can help them appreciate words and how words work. It also can enlarge their imaginations as well as their vocabularies. But the best thing about such word play (as you can see) is that any age can play. 
FOR THE FATHERS
We have celebrated Father’s Day for nearly a century, yet this tribute became an official national holiday only in 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation declaring the third Sunday in June Father’s Day. Even later—in 1972—Richard Nixon signed a law making Father’s Day a permanent observance.
The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane, Wash., in 1910. The commemoration was the creation of Sonora Dodd, whose father, William Smart, was a farmer who was widowed and raised his six young children alone. As an adult, Sonora Dodd realized how selfless and courageous her father had been, and she wanted to thank him and all such fathers.
She chose June for the first Father’s Day because it was William Smart’s birth month.
In preserving, protecting, and nurturing his family, William Smart not only did what good fathers do, but he also did what the word “father” means.
“Father” has been an English word for as long as there has been an English language—and its root predates English by untold centuries. How do we know? Because it came from the Indo-European tongue, a major taproot for English. The word’s form and pronunciation changed as Indo-European branched into different languages, but root and meaning stayed the same.
Simply stated, father descends from the Indo-European word for father, pater, which incorporates the ancient root pa, meaning to feed and protect. From this same source came various forms—the Greek and Latin pater, the Sanskrit pitar, the Old English faeder, the Germanic fader, the English father. The Indo-European pater became father because a consonant shift in the Germanic branch of Indo-European changed P to F, and T to TH. (The P to F shift is seen, for example, in the P of pyr—as in pyromaniac or funeral pyre—becoming the F of the Germanic fire.)
So such renderings of father as fater, fader or fadre share the same root and meaning as the Latin pater, Spanish padre, Greek pappas, and French pere. And whether transcribed as P or F, that ancient pa root denoted food or foodgiver in languages sharing Indo-European roots—extending logically over time to mean protector, progenitor, teacher, counselor, and the like.
From this root also came the Germanic food, fodder and forage, and the Greek foster. In Latin (the consonant shift generally was not seen in Romance languages), it generated panis, meaning food; pascere, to feed; panarium, breadbasket; and pasture. Pan, panne and pain mean bread in different languages. The English have pasties, the Americans pastries, and the French pattisseries. We cook in pans, and we keep food in the English pantry, the French paneterie, the Latin paneteria.
A repast is a meal, and antipasto is what we eat “before the meal.” Pamper originally meant to feed too much.
Patriarch, paternal, patron, pastor and pope also derive from this root and denote fatherly benefactors. The Paternoster, the Lord’s Prayer, literally means “our father.”
So: Happy Father’s Day to all you paters and papas who feed your brood—not just daily bread, but food for the heart and mind as well. You are a blessing in what you do and in what you teach, as basic and indispensable to our culture as your name is to our language. As the proverb declares: “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”
So Lois Lane and reporter Brown from The Sun meet on the street. Does Lois Lane say: “In the wake of spiraling confusion spawned by an unprecedented rise amid . . .”? And does Brown from The Sun respond: “Following cautiously optimistic reports, anonymous sources launched an unprovoked attack on . . .”? No, they don’t. Journalists don’t speak as they write—which is too often in hackneyed, warmed-over media clichés. The reason they don’t speak as they write is that they know if they did, nobody could stand it—or them. But if they did speak as they wrote, here’s how it would sound:
Hack: Hi, Frack. What’s ongoing at your journalistic facility?
Frack: Amid a burgeoning crisis spawned when the editor disliked a story I wrote, he hurled a litany, even a laundry list, of verbal insults at me and launched an unprovoked attack on my copy editor, 45. That triggered a firestorm of criticism from staff members, who weighed in on the issue and unleashed a new round of difficulty.
Hack: Sounds like sort of an unprecedented development. Such a heated exchange can quickly escalate into a defining moment, or even a critical mass.
Frack: You bet. In the wake of the controversy, my boss suggested I could level the playing field by an immediate withdrawal—by resigning!
Hack: Whoa, the R word! Worst-case scenario! Even a bizarre twist!
Frack: I hotly contested the suggestion and mounted a staunch defense. But the idea was hailed by high-ranking sources who said it might send a very clear signal to the rest of the staff. I don’t know who the architect of that idea was.
Hack: Send a clear signal, eh? More like a chilling effect. But, at the end of the day, this must be a daunting challenge.
Frack: We’re in the midst of negotiations, and I hope to hammer out an agreement on key provisions. And their hard-line stance does seem to be softening. So the bottom line may be that there’s a thin line between a soft and a hard line.
Hack: But things may yet turn in your favor—if not in a sea change, maybe in a ground swell. Instead of a staggering defeat, it could be a stunning victory!
Frack: Or I could get shipped off to the oil-rich Middle East.
Hack: Or to delegate-rich New York.
Both: Yuk, yuk.
Hack: Does this storm of controversy decimate your hopes for a promotion?
Frack: I think that hope has suffered a sudden downturn. Or a steep decline. Or a sharp decrease. Maybe even a free fall. Let’s just say I’m hopefully optimistic.
Hack: So, going forward, the outcome is unclear. Or it remains to be seen.
Frack: Arguably.
# # #
FACEBOOKERS VENT: WORDS WE HATE
SO, WITH NO IDEA I was triggering a discussion thread of more than ninety comments, I posted the following note on my Facebook profile:
“Here’s a word that I’m thoroughly sick of: TOTALLY. Here’s another word I’m thoroughly sick of: AWESOME. Here are two words I’m thoroughly sick of: TOTALLY AWESOME.”
A cascade of responses followed. It was as if my FB friends were just waiting for a chance to air their own language grievances.
Ed offered OMG, Denise countered with are you serious, and Dave weighed in with you know and right.
Donna wrote: “We watch this house-hunter show on cable and actually count the number of times someone says awesome. Last night: 15. Recently saw an edited clip of how many times awesome was used on ‘The Bachelor.’ Incredible number of times. Now, about incredible . . . .”
Henry nominated narrative, Paula added backstory, and copyeditor “Byliner” asked us to take (please!) the word amid.
Stacy asked (with an emoticon grin): “You’re totally sick of such awesome words?”
Sylvia wrote: “What about AMAZING!?! Notice how often it is used in print and especially television. Please put it at the top of your sick list! It tops mine.”
A consensus: What is commonly described as “amazing” is not amazing at all. I thought about my new tee-shirt’s emblazoned front: “HYPERBOLE! THE BEST THING EVER!”
Byliner wrote: “Incredible means ‘not believable.’ It does not mean ‘totally awesome.’ I hear incredible, like, you know, in every other sentence on the Sunday interview shows. ‘And then she goes . . . and then I went . . . .’ ”
Britney: “And they always preface their points by saying: Look.”
Paula: “Going forward. Reach out instead of contact.”
Terry: “I hate going forward and all its variations, especially ‘on a go-forward basis.’ Oy, and don’t get me started on reach out. And literally—I love to hate literally, as in ‘I was so mortified, I literally died.’ One can only wish . . . ”
Byliner: “I should be editing, but the wheels are turning: added an additional. . . unnamed sources. That should be unidentified sources—they have names!”
Britney: “It’s interesting how Google, Wiki, You Tube, Facebook, etc., have become VERBS! ‘I’ll Google it.’ We have a new vocabulary with social media.”
Chuck: “I’m tired of people misusing words. Transition is a noun, not a verb.”
Paula: “Ditto for impact. A friend who hated coining words with the suffixes ‘ize’ and ‘wise’ warned: ‘Don’t verbize a noun.’ ”
Byliner: “Incentivize. ”
Paula: “A news story said the victim would be funeralized Tuesday.”
Terry: “Funeralized? And I thought ambulanced (he was ambulanced to the hospital) was bad.”
Mark: “And to think I was sure I was the only one who hated those words!”
Harry: “This thread beats about 95 percent of what I hear or read. Thanks, guys. I had a student in my public speaking class say like 36 times in a five-minute speech. No, she wasn’t aware of it, but I promise she won’t do it the next time. I’ve got a clicker that I will use every time I hear it. And my contribution to the ‘banned’ list: WTF, MF, or effin’. Who determined that this was clever?”
Donna: “I’m sick of every use of the ‘F’ word—noun, verb, adjective, etc.”
Lois: “I don’t even like the proliferating friggin’.”
Alan: “Far out, like, for sure, dudette.”
Roy: “Cool.”
James: “Gimongus.”
Alan: “You know.”
Greg: “Dude. Sweet.”
Edward: “Dude! I’m totally with you on that . . . and I would find it awesome if I never heard ‘on the ground’ and ‘collateral damage’ again.”
Ed B.: “I’ve always hated feisty and zesty.”
Ellen: “Ever listen to women in a clothing store? What’s the ONE word you hear over and over again? (This is a test.)”
Susan: “I have banned the word countless. Because most of the time what’s being described can actually be numbered . . .”
Ellen: “No guesses? Cute. Cute. Cute. Everything is cute.”
Chuck: “Another word I’m fed up with is ‘arguably.’ So many people parrot this word . . . Another thought—if someone is explaining something, they shouldn’t use words like obviously, naturally, of course. If the person doesn’t know, then it is not obvious, etc.”
Paula: “Arguably is a weasel word—favored by media folk when making claims they can’t support. What does it mean? Maybe/Maybe not. And you make another good point about such words as obviously, naturally, or of course—especially in argumentation, where they condescend or patronize. Other offenders: clearly and everybody knows.”
Janet: “What totally awesome posts!”
Byliner: “I learned something about language; thanks.”
Mark W.: “I think you have a book here! May I suggest a title? How about Weasel Words and How to Avoid Them?”
Paula: “Or maybe: How to Avoid Being a Weasel.”
# # #
(Previously published in April 2011 as one of Paula LaRocque’s regular columns on writing and the language in Quill magazine, the magazine for the Society of Professional Journalists.)
KNOWING YOUR ABCs
The English alphabet seems completely different from some other languages—Chinese characters, for example, or Egyptian hieroglyphs. But experts in the origin of our alphabet say the ABCs, too, were originally tied to pictures, difficult as that may be to imagine now.
The great distinction among writing systems is whether a symbol stands for a sound or for a thing. A symbol in some writing systems is not a letter—it may represent, as I just suggested, the whole word. So a sequence of symbols is not necessarily an alphabet, in which you can arrange any number of individual symbols (letters) together to make one word. It may just be a sequence of symbols.
Let’s say, for example, that a simplified figure with a flat top and four legs represented a table in some system of writing. If that symbol came to stand for the sound of the “t” in table—rather than for the thing—the table itself—the symbol would be a letter rather than a picture, and therefore one unit in a potential alphabet.
Our alphabet, of course, stands for sounds—and that enables us to combine any number of sounds to write any number of words.
The English alphabet is ancient and its origin obscure. Through Latin and Greek, however, it’s traceable in part to the Phoenicians of about 1300 years before Christ. And its letters originally were simplified or stylized pictures of things.
Let’s take our capital A, for example. (And we’re speaking only of capitals here. The rounded, lower-case forms came later and were developed for script rather than for carvings.) Now, the A originally was upside-down from the A we now know—sort of an inverted triangle with two horns. That Phoenician symbol stood for an important animal, the ox. If you draw a capital A and turn it upside down, you can see the picture (in this case, the ox’s face) in the symbol. The Greeks took that Phoenician symbol to represent the sound of their alpha, or first letter. In time, they turned the symbol upside-down so it would mesh better with the Greek style of writing. Hence, the stylized animal head with horns became our letter A.
In the same way, our letter B comes from the early symbol for house. The original symbol was a sort of box with a triangular roof. The forms gradually rounded and changed into our capital B.
And so on. Our C was originally a symbol for camel—the hump of the C representing the hump of the camel, maybe? D was a picture meaning a door, E a window, F a hook, H a fence. If we use our imaginations, we can see the hook in F, or the fence in H.
And some other letter representations also seem logical upon reflection. L was the symbol for whip. T represented the cross mark that illiterate people used in lieu of a signature. M comes from the pictorial representation of water; imagine a set of waves and you’ll see why. And if you can see the M in the waves picture, you’ll also be able to see W as the symbol for teeth.
Human body parts were well represented in the alphabet. The capital I, for example, was a symbol for the hand. And K originally was a sort of on-its-side symbol for the palm. If you wonder why, turn your hand over and look at the lines marking your palm. From one perspective or another, you’ll see a K. Our O was originally a picture for the eye, and P was the mouth.
Some of the ancient word-pictures that went into the English alphabet are as delightful as they are logical. Q, for example. Experts say that for the Phoenicians, that cute little word-picture symbolized the monkey. Sure. A little circle with a tail. Young children often draw certain animals that way even today.
MORE ON THE PASSIVE VOICE
Part 2 of 2
My last blog discussed misunderstandings concerning the passive voice—even among professional writers and editors. For example, some think that any sentence containing a “be” verb is passive. Others think that any weak, static, or unassertive expression is passive. Still others, that we should avoid the passive voice whenever possible.
None of that is true. And the only question concerning the passive voice worth asking is this: Is it more effective in this case than the active voice?
But before we consider that question, let’s de-mystify the passive voice:
• Active: John ate a hamburger.
• Passive: The hamburger was eaten by John.
• Passive: The hamburger was eaten.
The first example shows that the active voice is a straightforward subject-verb-object structure—or, described another way, actor-action-acted upon. The subject is “John.” The verb is “ate.” The object is “hamburger.” This is English at its most basic, dynamic, and lucid. Everything necessary to a clear message is here, in its usual and predictable position: S-V-O.
It’s important to distinguish between a subject and an agent. The doer or initiator of the action in a sentence is called the agent. Notice that in the active voice, the subject and agent are one and the same.
Not so the passive voice. There, the agent is tacked onto the end of the sentence with the preposition “by,” or it disappears altogether. See the passive examples above. In the first, the agent (John, the eater) and the object (hamburger, the eaten) have changed places. And in the second example, the agent has vanished.
It’s that simple. It’s a structural matter. So why all the blather and bafflegab about the passive voice? Why do so many wrongly identify or fail to recognize it? I believe the confusion derives largely from ill-expressed and misleading definitions and discussions of the passive voice—both in print and on the Internet. Google “passive voice” and fish around in the results for a few minutes and you’ll read that in the passive voice, “the subject receives the action,” or the action is “performed upon the subject.”
That language is confusing and unhelpful. Why? We’ve all cut our grammatical teeth on the idea that subjects are doers, and objects the done to. So when we read—without further careful explanation—that a subject “receives the action,” we’re bamboozled. We wonder: Why is it called the subject if it receives the action—isn’t that the function and definition of an object?
Better to say simply that in the passive voice, a sentence’s subject and object change positions—which in our examples places hamburger in the usual subject position (before the verb) and John in the usual object position (after the verb). Visual concepts are more helpful than slippery abstract language.
Back to the question of effective passives: It’s true that the passive voice can be vague, weak, wordy, awkward, and can even blur responsibility (“mistakes were made,” instead of “I made a mistake”). But the passive voice is still, as Strunk and White remark in The Elements of Style, “frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.”
An obvious example is when the subject/actor is irrelevant or gets in the way of the main point: “John’s memoir was considered a masterpiece.” Who, exactly, considered the memoir a masterpiece? Who cares? The emphasis is on the artistry of the work, not on those who recognized its artistry. The active voice would distort the statement’s intent by emphasizing the wrong elements: “Some people considered John’s memoir a masterpiece.” Thus, the active version evokes an off-the-point response: “And some people didn’t?” More examples:
• The company’s mission statement has been completed.
• The suspects were cleared.
• Brad Pitt was elected president.
Again, what matters in those examples is action, not actor. Who completed the mission statement, cleared the suspects, or elected Brad Pitt is less important than the action.
Similarly, the passive voice is often preferred in scientific or technical writing because such writings usually focus on finding, process, or method—on action rather than on actor:
• Active: The [whoever: researcher, technician, lab worker, scientist . . . does it matter?) then heats the compound and adds the catalyst.
• Passive: The compound is then heated and the catalyst added.
We see at once that the passive voice is better in this case—it’s both clear and concise.
Even writers who decry the passive voice often use it—and to good advantage. George Orwell, for example. His “Politics and the English Language” is considered by many (considered by many!) to be a model of fine writing. In that essay, Orwell inveighs against the passive voice. Yet, an unusually large number of Orwell’s own sentences in that piece are passive—20 percent, according to Wikipedia contributors, and 17 percent, according to my computer’s grammar software.
Oh, dear! We can only surmise that while so eloquently condemning the passive voice, Orwell failed to notice how often he himself used it—probably because he did it so well.
There’s a lesson there.
# # #
[Parts of this blog originally appeared in another form in Quill magazine.]
UNDERSTANDING THE PASSIVE VOICE
Part 1 of 2
Years ago, the managing editor of a Midwest newspaper for which I was conducting a writing workshop confided that he’d recently banned a certain usage in his newspaper and that the newsroom staff had met the ban with resistance and hostility.
“It would be a great help if you supported the ban,” he said.
“What did you ban?” I asked warily. I’ve seldom met a language ban I liked.
“The verb ‘to be.’ ”
That stopped me.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“Am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been?”
“Yes.”
At first I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I was considering the implications—and whether anyone could write at all, let alone well, under the strictures of such a ban. Then I asked the obvious question.
“Why?”
“To get rid of the passive voice.”
Now, the active voice and passive voice are matters of structure. Active voice: subject/verb/object (or stated another way: actor/action/acted upon). Passive voice: object/verb/subject—or merely object/verb:
Active: The pitcher threw the ball.
Passive: The ball was thrown by the pitcher.
Passive: The ball was thrown.
It’s true that the passive voice uses an auxiliary verb plus a past participle of another verb, and that the auxiliary is usually a form of the verb “to be.” (Notice the “was thrown” in the passive examples above.) But the active voice also uses plenty of “be” verbs. Banning “be” verbs to get rid of the passive voice is like blasting away on a blunderbuss to wipe out a gnat.
The bottom line is that this editor had banned something without understanding what he’d banned. Not that he’s the first to misunderstand the passive voice. Nor is he the first to suggest there’s something inherently wrong with “be” verbs. Apparently, some people—and some software designers—think that any sentence containing an auxiliary or “be” verb is in the passive voice. But that’s absurd. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is in the active voice—despite the “to be.” Subject (we), verb (hold) and object (truths) are in their active and most logical positions. Again, the passive voice identifies a certain structure—the subject of the verb, if present, is in the object’s position. To be passive, this passage might read: “These truths are held to be self-evident.” Or: “These truths are held by us to be self-evident.”
This celebrated passage does go on to use the passive voice, however: “that all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” To be active, that passage might read: “The Creator made human beings equal and endowed them with certain unalienable rights . . . among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But is that version more effective than the original?
The misunderstanding of the narrow terms “active voice” and “passive voice”—and the terms’ unwarranted broadening—has also led to the mistaken belief that any weak, static, or unassertive expression is “passive.” Or that hiding behind the language—refusing to be accountable—involves the passive voice. That may be (“mistakes were made!”), but not always and not necessarily.
Grammar checker software adds to the problem. Those programs hunt for auxiliary verbs and when they find one, announce that the sentence may be passive. In many cases, it isn’t, but the grammar checker’s caution further muddies already murky waters.
The result of all this confusion is a good deal of blather about the “passive” in writing—and avoiding it. Look at the opening line of the column you’re reading. It contains the words “for which I was conducting a writing workshop.” The editor’s ban of “to be” verbs would cause that clause to be rewritten, ostensibly because it is “passive.” But is it? No. Is it vague or flat or flabby by virtue of its “be” verb? To the contrary, I bet you didn’t even notice that was. That’s because, properly employed, “be” verbs are both indispensable and invisible. (Yes, I could have written “for which I conducted a writing workshop.” That version loses was as well as the “ing” suffix on conduct—and in many constructs, it would be preferred as cleaner and more concise. But the simple past tense “conducted” makes the workshop seem an event in the past whereas I wanted to capture the sense of something ongoing: This thing happened while this other thing was happening. Such writing concerns are subtle but well understood by both writer and reader, if only in a tacit and subterranean way.)
How might one meet the editor’s ban, and would it be worth the trouble? I could write: “a newspaper for which I’d agreed to conduct a workshop.” That’s a bit different to be sure, but is it better?
Let me add that there’s good reason to be wary of the passive voice – it can be vague and withhold vital information. And when the subject/actor is absent, it can be spineless, even cowardly. And it can be awkward, abstract, or wordy. Who would prefer the clunky “this column was written by me” to “I wrote this column”?
Rather than try to avoid the passive voice, however—which cannot sensibly be accomplished—we should spend our efforts not only on understanding its virtues and shortcomings, but also discerning when the passive voice is more effective than the active.
We’ll discuss some of the more complex aspects of the passive and active voice in the second part of this blog.
Meantime, a postscript: During our workshop, the managing editor lifted his ban on “be” verbs—to the great relief of his staff.
# # #
[Parts of this blog originally appeared in Quill magazine.]
GOOD FOR OUR GRAY MATTER
I recently attended a fascinating talk given by Dr. Sandi Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas. She spoke in part about brain “conditioning”—exercising and strengthening the brain. Dr. Chapman said that we neglect our brains, in part because our whole idea of fitness stops at the neck.
The talk was interesting throughout, but the most important take-home message for me was the negative effects of multitasking. Contrary to what we might suppose, doing several things at the same time does not present a healthy challenge to the brain, nor does it exercise and strengthen it. We might pride ourselves on our ability to simultaneously set a meeting agenda, field a phone call, and send an e-mail. And our young might train themselves to do homework and text their friends to the background clamor of loud and distracting music. But the fact is that because none of those activities gets our full attention, each is necessarily superficial, fragmenting our focus. In terms of exercise, it’s like lifting weights without the weight.
If multitasking doesn’t exercise and strengthen the brain, what does? Deep, fully focused concentration on one subject or activity.
During the Q&A portion of the presentation, a man in the audience asked: Should I do crossword puzzles? And the ensuing dialogue went like this:
Dr. Chapman: If you do lots of crossword puzzles, you’ll get better and better at working crossword puzzles. But it won’t be of generalized benefit to your brain.
Man: What should I do if I want to keep my brain pliable and healthy into old age?
Dr. Chapman: You should practice your passion.
Man: How do I know what my passion is?
Dr. Chapman [after the laughter subsided]: Anything you do that’s so engrossing that you lose track of time—that’s a passion. It could be any number of creative or intellectual pursuits.
She went on to elaborate—suggesting that when we concentrate fully and our brains are chugging away to the point that we lose track of time and surroundings, that’s deep focus. And that’s that kind of exercise that strengthens and conditions the brain.
It strikes me as a paradox. When we focus deeply, we lose time, but because of the benefit of the effort, we aren’t wasting time. On the other hand, when we try to save time by multitasking, that’s when we in fact waste time.
This emphasis on practicing one’s passion reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. That book posits in part that even geniuses, even seeming child prodigies and overnight successes, must intensively practice their passion before achieving mastery. Gladwell writes that along with talent and ambition, we must also have the opportunity to cultivate our special skill before we become masters, and that this is so whether we are Mozart, the Beatles, or Bill Gates. Gladwell and others have even calculated about how long we must practice to achieve mastery: ten thousand hours. If my math is right, that’s about three hours a day for ten years—with only an occasional day off.
We’d better get to work.
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GOOD WRITING: MUSIC TO THE EAR
Flannery O’Connor was once asked if our university writing programs were squelching young writers, and she responded that they were not squelching enough of them.
A foray into media writing is bound to recall O’Connor’s quip. Not that there isn’t wonderful writing in the media. There is. But there’s also a lot of tin-ear writing—a jarring ugliness that goes beyond mechanical error and yet is written by professional wordsmiths. Take the following examples (please!):
“The man who blew away half of a woman’s face last week was released from a mental hospital several weeks earlier.”
He blew away half a woman’s face? What, he just huffed and he puffed and he blew her face in? Why write in such shoddy idiom? Also, considering the sequence of tenses, “was released” should be “had been released”—since that action precedes the sentence’s main action. More sensible: The man who shot a woman in the face last week had been released from a mental hospital several weeks earlier.
On the subject of being blown away, check this out: “She said that when she saw who it was, she was literally blown away.”
Really. Literally blown away? Surely not. Literally means . . . oh, never mind.
Read the following passage aloud, and you’ll hear what’s wrong immediately: “A 13-year-old girl was kidnapped by a group of youths and raped in a vacant apartment in East Hills complex on Friday—the latest reported attack in a series of sexual assaults in the neighborhood by teenaged boys since June.”
A plethora of prepositions leads to a sing-songy fuzziness. Most sentences can support only several prepositions—and the fewer the better. The following revision reduces nine prepositions to just two and improves clarity and rhythm: Teenaged boys kidnapped and raped a 13-year-old girl in a vacant East Hills complex apartment Friday. Police said it was the fourth such attack reported in that neighborhood since June.
More tin-ear: “A final deal hinges on ongoing talks. Company executives said they expect upcoming products to sell well in coming months.”
The echoes of “on/ongoing” and “upcoming/coming” are easily corrected: They will work out the final deal in ongoing talks. Company executives said they expected upcoming products to sell well.
Tin Ear: “Let’s take stock of those NFL aristocrats who have got one foot out the door and one eye on the waiver wire. They have got themselves a new . . . .”
“Got” is an ugly word and doubly so when redundantly paired with “have.” If you’ve got it, it’s better to just have it: Let’s take stock of those NFL aristocrats who have one foot out the door and one eye on the waiver wire. They have a new . . . .
Tin Ear: “Not only did she have her friend murdered, but she also had to cope with three other tragedies at the same time.”
She had her friend murdered? Wow. Serves her right. Better: Not only was her friend murdered, but she also had to cope with several other tragedies at the same time.
As that sentence shows, “had” structures can suggest the subject caused the action: He had his car stolen. She had her leg broken. They had their house burned down.
You want to say: Why would they do this—for the insurance?
Here’s another example: “A laborer sentenced to the electric chair for the murder of a Portsmouth store manager in May 1985 had his death sentence overturned yesterday.”
He had his sentence overturned? Bully for him. Wonder why he didn’t do it sooner. Better: A federal judge overturned the death sentence yesterday of George Wayne Thomas, convicted in . . . .
Tin Ear: “When they returned, they looked in the box and found the necklace gone.” They found the necklace gone? No. They didn’t find the necklace at all—gone or missing or otherwise. What did they find? They found the box empty.
What we learn from such examples as those above is that graceful prose comes from writing for the ear as well as for the eye—and that reading our writing aloud to ourselves will catch many graceless words and phrases the eye may miss.
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(Parts of this blog appeared in another form in LaRocque’s Quill magazine column.)