I have seen the eternal footman...
Sep. 18th, 2005 05:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAn interesting article in yesterday's FT magazine on the semi-colon and how the Americans hate it. I'll admit that I have never noticed that Americans hated it. Maybe they do.
It made me think about writing on how I write, or why I canwrite. Then I thought that it would be too egotistical, even for me. Then I thought, who cares?
Much of writing is craft. Having a reasonable vocabulary is useful. Knowing how sentences should be put together is vital. Being willing to break those rules is also essential. Possessing a logical brain is an underestimated attribute. You have to be able to read something that you have just written and see it with a stranger's eye. "I know what I am trying to say, but have I actually said it?" This is the major fault in most non-writers. Punctuation is ignored and other errors are made, but the writer thinks that the meaning is obvious, when in many cases it is not obvious at all.
But proper writing goes beyond that. It enters the world of rhythm and tone. And here is where the semi-colon and the (alleged) American detestation of it comes into play. Take these sentences:
a) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead; and that was what drew my attention to him.
b) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead; that was what drew my attention to him.
c) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead. That was what drew my attention to him.
d) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead and that was what drew my attention to him.
e) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead, and that was what drew my attention to him.
None of these is technically wrong (although some might aver that (d) is faulty. We can leave that argument for another day). I suspect that many writers and readers wouldn't really care one way or the other which was used. I think that we would expect most modern American writers (particularly in the crime genre) to select (c). I would guess that if I were writing without thinking, then I would go for (e) (probably because my style is more influenced by Orwell than Hemingway). But I can imagine situations where I might use any of the above five. And, perhaps most importantly, when I am proof-reading my copy, I consider minutiae like this. To this extent, prose has a lot more in common with poetry than people think. The full stop is muscular, the comma more conspiratorial,while the semi-colon followed by an "and" leads the second part of the sentence to become more important than the first. If you want to turn your narrator into a ME ME ME character, just throw in a few semi-colons followed by "and"s.
It made me think about writing on how I write, or why I canwrite. Then I thought that it would be too egotistical, even for me. Then I thought, who cares?
Much of writing is craft. Having a reasonable vocabulary is useful. Knowing how sentences should be put together is vital. Being willing to break those rules is also essential. Possessing a logical brain is an underestimated attribute. You have to be able to read something that you have just written and see it with a stranger's eye. "I know what I am trying to say, but have I actually said it?" This is the major fault in most non-writers. Punctuation is ignored and other errors are made, but the writer thinks that the meaning is obvious, when in many cases it is not obvious at all.
But proper writing goes beyond that. It enters the world of rhythm and tone. And here is where the semi-colon and the (alleged) American detestation of it comes into play. Take these sentences:
a) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead; and that was what drew my attention to him.
b) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead; that was what drew my attention to him.
c) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead. That was what drew my attention to him.
d) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead and that was what drew my attention to him.
e) The man who came through the door was wearing a white raincoat and a seriously bruised forehead, and that was what drew my attention to him.
None of these is technically wrong (although some might aver that (d) is faulty. We can leave that argument for another day). I suspect that many writers and readers wouldn't really care one way or the other which was used. I think that we would expect most modern American writers (particularly in the crime genre) to select (c). I would guess that if I were writing without thinking, then I would go for (e) (probably because my style is more influenced by Orwell than Hemingway). But I can imagine situations where I might use any of the above five. And, perhaps most importantly, when I am proof-reading my copy, I consider minutiae like this. To this extent, prose has a lot more in common with poetry than people think. The full stop is muscular, the comma more conspiratorial,while the semi-colon followed by an "and" leads the second part of the sentence to become more important than the first. If you want to turn your narrator into a ME ME ME character, just throw in a few semi-colons followed by "and"s.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-18 01:09 pm (UTC)None is
Date: 2005-09-18 09:38 pm (UTC)Semicolons and Style
Date: 2005-09-18 02:49 pm (UTC)Thank you for noting my article in the FT. I would urge you, if you are not already familiar with it, to track down a copy of "Style" by F.L. Lucas. I believe the novelist Robertson Davies said it was the only book on writing worth reading; I would not be so dogmatic on that point, but it certainly is the best book on writing I have ever read, and it provides the most insightful discussion on the qualities that make prose readable - a long discussion that, I'm afraid, is ill served by being reduced to the maxim that one should neither be too metrical nor doggedly prosaic.
Regards
Trevor Butterworth
Re: Semicolons and Style
Date: 2005-09-18 09:36 pm (UTC)This is very worrying. I start a blog that I assume is being read by just a few people, and all of a sudden the entire city of Bergen hates me and the authors of articles in the Financial Times spot my comment on it within six hours.
Just what is going on? Should I get some kind of hit-meter to find out how many people now know about the trials and tribulations of my tedious life?
Does one
Date: 2005-09-18 07:52 pm (UTC)a) '; and' - yuck.
b) My preferred form.
c) A logical unit has been needlessly split in two; used by criminal, rather than crime, writers.
d) A foul misconstruction; the two 'and's have different uses: this is exactly the sort of disambiguation that punctuation is designed to provide.
e) The only other constrcution I'd feel comfortable using myself.
Re: Does one
Date: 2005-09-18 09:06 pm (UTC)I'm guessing you're american; right?
Re: wearing bruised foreheads
Date: 2005-09-18 09:28 pm (UTC)(d) would only be used by someone, if they knew how to write, for some kind of dramatic effect. Since the first "and" has an entirely different use from the second "and", an Oxford comma is obviously called for. Without it the reader is led down a false trail from which he has to draw back. The impact of this construction would be to make the reader focus particularly on this sentence.
But this raises an interesting point. If the two "ands" were to have the same use, the first "and" should not be there; it should be replaced by a comma. Therefore, one could argue (although I would not) that the use of two "ands" in this way would indicate that the second "and" has a second function from the first.
The reason I would not argue this is that I have on occasion used the multiple "and" to indicate a rant, where the "ands" do have the same function.
But all this is rather irrelevantly pedantic (as,indeed, the whole post has been).
no subject
Date: 2005-09-18 09:12 pm (UTC)Mike
redundancy
Date: 2005-09-18 09:33 pm (UTC)It's the ghastliness of (d) that gives it its strength. As I wrote, it ensures a focus on the sentence as a whole. However, it would be a very unusual situation for me to want to use it.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 11:46 am (UTC)"They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."
--Kurt Vonnegut on semicolons
More Bloody Americans
Date: 2005-09-19 01:19 pm (UTC)All the grammar drummed into me makes me flinch when I get to put punctuation before 'but' and 'and'. In many ways I think the most useful punctuation techniques are how to break the rules. Jane here gets her red biro out whenever I'm composing our newsletters and can be relied on to rephrase all my sentences nd even whole paragraphs that start with a 'but'.
I get the exciting job of proof-reading Steph's Year 11 school essays and she is guilty of some horrendous stuff. However, it's mainly apostrophe abuse and the occasional eight-line sentence that cry out for attention. I don't know quite how you get someone to understand punctuation in an instinctive way, so that they go beyond grammar rules and start to use the language as a set of tools.