My Computer's (Lack of a) Way with Words

At my freelance job, I used to be able to double-click the time on the task bar to call up a monthly calendar. Once launched, that calendar let me change the computer's date and time. But I never did. I just used it as a plain-old calendar.

A few months ago, my work computer got a security upgrade. Now when I double-click the time, the computer tells me, "You do not have the proper privilege to change the System Time."

You've won this round, rude, belittling, inarticulate computer ...

Fun Stuff Shamelessly Pilfered from Twitter

Bryan Garner, author of "Garner's Modern American Usage," tweeted this morning:

Two of my favorite words: "ultracrepidarian" and "mumpsimus." They're closely related.

ultracrepidarian = one who pretends to greater knowledge than he or she actually possesses; esp., a know-nothing know-it-all.

mumpsimus = one who persists in error despite irrefutable correction. President. G.W. Bush was a mumpsimus when it came to saying "nuclear."

Neither Webster's New World College Dictionary nor Merriam-Webster contained either word. But Dictionary.com had 'em: ultracrepidarian

mumpsimus

My New Book's Out Today!

It's called It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences.

It teaches how to improve writing at the sentence level. I based it largely on the writing problems I see in my copy editing work. It talks about upside-down subordination, passives, weak verb choices, weak noun choices, how to pare down flabby prose, how adverbs can backfire on a writer, and more issues that make good writing go bad.

I also use real-life examples of badly written sentences (many of them by professionals) and show how to break them down into parts and rebuild them better.

Here are links on Powell's, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Borders, and IndieBound.

It Was the Best of Sentences scored back-cover endorsements from literary agent and author extraordinaire Donald Maass (author of The Fire in Fiction), Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty (author of Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing), and Elizabeth Little (author of Biting the Wax Tadpole, which, by the way, is a fascinating read for anyone interested in foreign languages).

I really hope It Was the Best of Sentences will help some struggling writers become great writers!

More Parson Larsson: Million-dollar Dialogue – Five Cops, a Killer and a Here’s How It’s Done

Here are some dialogue excerpts from Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest." The first five are cops -- all different cops, believe it or not -- and the last is a thug who runs a sex slavery ring talking to someone he’s about to kill.

After that, for contrast, are dialogue excerpts from James Cain’s “Double Indemnity” and from my friend Christa Faust’s novel “Money Shot.”

* * * * *

“He made it very clear that this was a matter that required the greatest possible discretion and that we should get as few people involved as possible. Bjurman should never have had anything to do with it -- it was way above his level -- but since he already knew what was going on it was better to keep him on rather than bring in somebody new. I assume that the same reasoning applied to a junior officer like myself. (Officer Bjorck, “Fire” p. 527)

“Salander has been subjected to a number of infringements on her rights, starting when she was a child. I do not mean for this to continue on my watch. You have the option to remove me as leader of the investigation, but if you did that I would be forced to write a harsh memo about the matter.” (Officer Bublanksi, “Hornet” p. 27.)

“His injuries seem to be similar to those of a car crash victim -- it's hardly credible that anyone could do such damage with his bare hands.” (Chief Spangberg, “Hornet” p. 29)

“I have met Mikael Blomkvist on several occasions in the course of this investigation. I have found him quite likeable, even though he is a journalist. I suppose you’re the one who has to make a decision about charging him. All this stuff about insults and resisting arrest is just nonsense. I assume you will ignore it.” (Officer Modig, “Hornet” p. 31)

“I agree with Sonja. I too think Blomkvist is a man we could work with. I’ve apologized to him for the way he was treated last night.” (Officer Erlander, “Hornet” p. 31)

“You set up your observation post on precisely the spot where we’d positioned alarms. It’s the best view of the farm. Usually it’s moose or deer, and sometimes berry-pickers who come too close.” (Organized crime boss/pimp Alexander Zalachencko, “Fire” p. 599)

“If they called us up, we’d cancel on him wouldn’t we? You bet we would. We’d return his unused premium so fast you couldn’t see our dust, and he knew it. Oh no, he wasn’t taking a chance on our doctor going out there to look at his leg and tipping things off. That’s a big point.” (Insurance inspector Norton, “Indemnity” p. 58)

“I had an aunt named Lia. But she was a fat, religious woman with eight kids and more hair on her chin than I have on my pussy.” (Porn actress Tabitha Moore, “Money Shot,” p. 116)

More Parsing Larsson: Querying the Great Beyond

Below is the first page of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Below that is the same page with the copyedits and queries I would have made had it been my job to do so. Below that is a sample rewrite.

The edits are similar to what I do to some of the feature articles I work on. The difference is that, with a full-length novel, no one really has the time to do the detailed, extensive line-editing Larsson’s work requires. (I base that on the first two books in the Larsson’s “Milennium” series, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” which I recently finished reading.) In the book world, most editors would simply reject the manuscript with a note like, “Good story. But the writing’s not quite there.”

Yet an editor acquired Larsson's three manuscripts, and the series became one of the biggest blockbusters in years. (This is where my explanation would go if I had one.) Here’s the page, the edited page, and the sample rewrite.

****************************************************************
Friday, April 8

Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. It was just before 1:30 in the morning.

“What? he said, confused.

“Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.”

“All right,” Jonasson said wearily.

Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Gotegborg. It had been a strenuous evening.

By 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients and then gone back to the staff bedroom to try to rest for a while. He was on duty until 6:00, and seldom got the chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. But this time he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light.

Jonasson saw lightning over the sea. He knew that the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. All of a sudden a heavy downpour lashed at the window. The storm had moved in over Goteborg.

He heard the sound of the chopper and watched as it banked through the storm squalls down towards the helipad. For a second he held his breath when the pilot seemed to have difficulty controlling the aircraft. Then it vanished from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to a land. He took a hasty swallow of tea and set down his cup.

Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area. The other doctor on duty took on the first patient who was wheeled in -- an elderly man with ….

***********************************************************************
Friday, April 8

Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. (PROBABLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO START WITH TWO PASSIVES IN THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE. PLS REVISE.) It was just before 1:30 in the morning.

“What? he said (ASKED?), confused. (IS THERE SOME SIMPLE WAY TO SHOW HIS CONFUSION?)

“Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.”

“All right,” Jonasson said wearily. (HAVING HIM SAY “ALL RIGHT” SEEMS UNNECESSARY. WOULD IT BE MORE INTERESTING TO SAY WHAT HE DID RATHER THAN WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT?)

Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. (ALTHOUGH? SEEMS TO ME THAT SLEEPING FOR JUST A HALF HOUR COULD BE WHAT MADE HIM GROGGY.) He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Gotegborg. It had been a strenuous evening. (VAGUE. SHOULD WE THROW IN A DETAIL OR TWO ABOUT THE EVENING AND PERHAPS ABOUT THE HOSPITAL, TOO?)

By 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases (SEE NOTE ABOVE) had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients (DELETE “THE STATE OF”) and then gone back to the staff bedroom to try to (DELETE “TRY TO”) rest for a while. (I’VE NEVER HEARD OF A “STAFF BEDROOM.” ANY WAY TO MAKE THIS MORE VISUAL?) He was on duty until 6:00, (DELETE COMMA) and seldom got the chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. (WHY NOT? WHAT OTHER WORK WOULD KEEP HIM SO BUSY ON THE GRAVEYARD EMERGENCY ROOM SHIFT?) But this time he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light. (“BUT THIS TIME” DOESN’T MAKE SENSE HERE. YOU’RE CONTRASTING A SENTENCE ABOUT NEVER HAVING THE CHANCE TO LIE DOWN WITH ANOTHER THAT SEEMS TO SUGGEST THAT LYING DOWN AND TURNING OUT THE LIGHT IS COMMON AND THE ONLY THING DIFFERENT IS HOW FAST HE FELL ASLEEP. PLS. FIX.)

Jonasson saw lightning over the sea. (YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN THE READER ANY SENSE OF PLACE – MUCH LESS ONE THAT INVOLVES A STAFF BEDROOM IN A HOSPITAL WITH AN OCEAN-VIEW WINDOW. ONCE YOU’VE EXPLAINED THE PHYSICAL LAYOUT THAT MAKES THIS POSSIBLE, PLEASE PLACE HIM AT THE WINDOW BEFORE SAYING WHAT HE SAW THROUGH IT.) He knew that (DELETE “HE KNEW THAT.”) the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. All of a sudden a heavy downpour lashed at the window. (1. SO MAYBE THE HELICOPTER ISN’T COMING IN THE NICK OF TIME? 2. “DOWNPOUR” USUALLY REFERS TO A WHOLE STORM AND NOT JUST A WAVE OF RAINDROPS HITTING A WINDOW. 3. “LASHED AT” SEEMS LIKE THE RAINDROPS CAME NEAR THE WINDOW BUT DIDN’T ACTUALLY TOUCH IT.) The storm had moved in over Goteborg.(DELETE WHOLE SENTENCE.)

He heard the sound of the chopper and watched as it banked (WHERE IS HE? SEEMS AWFULLY CONVENIENT THAT HE CAN SEE BOTH THE STORM ROLLING IN AND THE HELIPAD.) through the storm squalls(THAT WAS FAST) down towards the helipad. For a second he held his breath when the pilot seemed to have difficulty controlling the aircraft.(WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT DID HE SEE?) Then it vanished(UNCLEAR. EXPLAIN.) from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to a land. He took a hasty swallow of tea (KIND OF WEIRD THAT A JUST-SLEEPING MAN HAD SOME TEA HANDY. ALSO, SHOULDN’T HE BE SCRUBBING UP OR SOMETHING?) and set down his cup (ON WHAT?)

Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area.(DETAILS?) The other doctor on duty(DETAILS?) took on the first patient who was wheeled in(MIGHT BE BETTER IF WE DID THIS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER: FIRST THE PATIENT WAS WHEELED IN, THEN THE DOCTOR “TOOK ON” THE PATIENT, BUT FIND A MORE SPECIFIC ALTERNATIVE TO “TOOK ON”—an elderly man with ….

*************************************************************************

Here is a rough sketch of how I suspect other authors might have approached the page:
************************************************************************

April 8

Nurse Helga Olsson placed a firm hand on the sleeping doctor’s shoulder and shook him gently.

“Chopper coming in,” she said. “Two patients. An injured man and a woman with gunshot wounds. They’ll be here in five minutes.”

Dr. Sven Jonasson sat up and looked at the digital clock on the steel surgical tray that served as a nightstand. It was 1:28 a.m.

He felt groggy. He had only slept for half an hour on a cot in the small room next to the doctors’ lounge. It had been a rough night. Sahlgrenska Hospital’s ER had treated two stabbing victims, a couple of broken bones, and a peanut allergy reaction so severe Dr. Jonasson had to insert a breathing tube in the patient’s bloated neck to save her life.

By 12:30 a.m. the emergency cases had eased off. Dr. Jonasson made a round to check on his patients then went into the small room and lay down. He had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light.

He stood and watched nurse Olsson leave, then he walked to the window and looked out over Dorn Bay. A flash of lightning illuminated the water and he could see the torrents moving in. Within seconds, rain was lashing the window.

He heard a chopper and watched as it slowly came into view over the water. It banked through the storm squalls toward the helipad at the north end of the hospital grounds. Suddenly, the copter dropped about thirty feet, then it wobbled back and forth. Dr. Jonasson gasped and then held his breath as the chopper leveled and headed toward the helipad, where it landed safely.

He reached for the cup of tea he’d left on the makeshift nightstand and took a sip. It was cold and milky. He grimaced and set down the cup.

He arrived at the emergency room the same time as Dr. William Sorli, a skinny, wide-eyed intern who had been working the ER for about six months. They watched as a breathless EMT wheeled in the first patient—a crumpled old man who …

Copy Editor Confessions

It's tough to admit that I had no idea how to spell a word I've used all my life, but there I was sitting at my desk this morning wondering why my spell-checker wasn't questioning the word "temperamental."

I was also patting myself on the back for my eagle-eyed spotting of that little A before "mental," messing up a word that should of course be spelled "tempermental." Then I looked it up.

Ouch.

temperAmental

tempermental

Copy Edit du Jour

At present, the university has 15 schools and 52 departments.

... changed to ...

The university has 15 schools and 52 departments.

Feels so good to do that ...

The ABCs of Editing: Always read at least the first sentence

Granny submitted this boo-boo she found here on ABCNews online.

President Obama took on House GOP Leader John Boehner’s call for repealing financial reform before it’s signed yesterday.

Never thought I'd see a boo-boo that made me long for a "t'were." I wonder if this was an editor-inserted error. (They happen. Take it from an editor who's inserted her fair share.)

Copy Editing Conundrum du Jour

I'm still not sure what to make of this sentence I came across in my copy-editing work today:

Guests are given glowsticks to guide their way through the already freaky figures and dioramas—a gauntlet that’s pretty scary to run even with the lights on.

It's weird enough that it seems to be based on a metaphor mixing "run the gamut" (range, scale) and "throw down the gauntlet" (glove). But "a gauntlet that's scary to run"?

I changed it to "a course that's pretty scary to run." But it'll be a while before I'm confident about it ...

Call Me King Christie Dickens

I just learned of a website that analyzes a sample of your writing to tell you which famous writer you write like. Supposedly it analyzes "your word choice and writing style" to make the comparison.

I have no idea how much effort the creators put into making it scientific, but it's definitely fun. A chapter from my last book in which I wax philosophical about pudding shakers was compared to the work of Agatha Christie. A sappy column I wrote after Vonnegut died scored me a Stephen King comparison. And two paragraphs from my brand-new book (which I just got in the mail today!) was written in the style of Charles Dickens.

But here's the funny thing: The book is called "It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences" -- a play on Dickens! And, no, the excerpt did not include those words or any other Dickens stuff. Spooky.

Here's the site: http://iwl.me/

More Parsing Larsson: Verb Inventory

After yesterday’s post about Stieg Larsson, I got an itch to compare his verbs to some other writers’. Not that verbs are the biggest problem with Larsson’s writing. Far from it. Still, I was curious. So here is an inventory of verbs from a page of Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” a page of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and a page of Stephen King’s “Just After Sunset.”

I list these verbs in their base forms -- i.e. “had been” and “were” are listed as “be.” Verbs forming independent clauses are in all caps. Verbs forming subordinate clauses are lowercase. Participial modifiers are not counted as verbs.

Larsson, page 414 -- 18 sentences:
1. BE
2. BE
3. RECALL, HAVE, be
4. BE
5. UNDERSTAND
6. BE, FIND, find
7. BE, gnaw
8. NOTICE, take, keep
9. BE, BE, summarize
10. HAVE, BE, clear out, throw
11. THROW
12. BE, FIND
13. SEE, remove, deal with
14. SPEND, MISS, COME, HAVE
15. FIND, contain
16. GO, try, find
17. BE
18. DISCOVER, GO, USE

McCarthy, page 136 -- 15 sentences
1. bend, see, FEAR, be, put
2. GO, CROSS
3. SET, TAKE, PUNCH, PUNCH, DRAIN
4. PULL, POUR
5. TWIST, MAKE, POUR, PUT, SHAKE
6. POUR, TAKE, STUFF
7. TAKE, GET, STRIKE
8. TRY, STOP, POUR
9. FLARE, say
10. NOD
11. RAKE, BLOOM
12. REACH, BLOW, HAND
13. SAY
14. TAKE
15. DO

King, page 61– 27 complete sentences
1. HOLD, LOOK
2. LOOK
3. cut, SAY
4. LOOK, CUT
5. CUT
6. TRY, scramble, go, thump
7. PIVOT, BE
8. SEIZE
9. DANGLE
10. GET, TURN
11. WAIT
12. BRING, WANT, MAKE
13. REMEMBER, choke up
14. BE
15. BE
16. BE, be, SOUND, slacken
17. HAPPEN, BEGIN
18. STARE
19. STARE
20. do, SAY, REACH, take
21. SAY, SWING
22. HAMMER
23. BURST, snap
24. RUN, PATTER
25. stop, SAY
26. LOOK
17. SAY, BRING

25% (ten) of Larsson’s verbs are “be.” Just over 25% (eleven) are nonphysical or mental actions like “recall, “understand,” “summarize,” “discover” and “find.”

2-1/2% (one) of McCarthy’s verbs are “be” and 2-1/2% convey a state of mind (“fear.”)

10% (five) of King’s verbs are “be” and most of the rest are actions.

The process I used to choose these pages probably wasn’t fair. I started with a Larsson page I had already noted as bad then flipped through McCarthy and King for pages that looked about as dense with narrative as the Larsson page (that is, pages that didn’t have much dialogue). Still, I bet that a fair and complete accounting of the verbs in all three books would show similar -- if not quite as marked -- tendencies. That is, McCarthy and King rely more on action verbs while Larsson’s work relies more on verbs that convey being, seeming, or thinking.

That’s partly why I prefer reading McCarthy and King.

Larsson structures a lot of his sentences like this:

“The reason for her visit to the crime scene was to get two pieces of information” and “Second was an inconsistency that kept gnawing at her.” (p. 414)

Notice how, in both, he hangs the main clause on “was” and crams the more interesting stuff into less-prominent parts of the sentence. Imagine he had written them:

“She visited the crime scene to find two pieces of information.”
and
“An inconsistency kept gnawing at her.”

See how the noun “visit” can be made into an action? See how “gnaw” can be made the main action in the sentence instead of just part of a relative clause in a sentence whose main verb is the ho-hum “was”?

I think there’s a lesson in here …

Parsing Larsson

I'm reading Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire," though I don't know why. It's the second in a trilogy, after "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

The prose in "Dragon" was pretty bad. But the story was fast-paced enough to distract me from the writing. Not so with "Fire." As the story drags on, I've started noticing sentences and passages I want to fix. (It's a copy editor thing. A disease, really.) I started dog-earing examples of problem sentences and paragraphs, figuring I'd analyze them here. But soon, it seemed that every other page was dog-eared with examples too bad to pass up. And I could feel my chest tightening: It's too much. The writing's too convoluted. I can't possibly fix all this. But I can't just let it go, either.

So, in the interest of maintaining healthy blood pressure, I decided that I didn't have to fix all Stieg's problem passages. I could just share some here (tinkering only if it didn't seriously affect my heart rate). So here's an example of Stieg prose (which is also an example of how often huge sales success goes hand in hand with bad writing).

Larsson wrote in Swedish, was translated into English, and then the manuscript presumably passed through the hands of an editor and copy editor. I'm not sure where the blame goes. That said, here's the passage from "The Girl Who Played with Fire."

Salander soon discovered that the person who had leaked the information to the media was Ekstrom himself. This was evident from an email in which he answered follow-up questions about both Salander's psychiatric report and the connection between her and Miriam Wu.

The third significant piece of information was the insight that Bublanski's team did not have a single lead as to where they should look for Salander. She read with interest a report on what measures had been taken and which addresses had been put under sporadic surveillance.

Note how the pivotal verb in three out of four of those sentences is "was." Here's one way that, I suspect, a lot of writers might have written it:

Salander skimmed Ekstrom's emails until she saw one with the subject line "Re: Psych report, Wu connection," addressed to a reporter at a local paper. She opened it. "No," the first line read, "Salander's doctors never used the word 'sociopath' in the report. But they did consider her violent. Re your other question: Miriam Wu admitted she and Salander played 'sex games,' as she called them."

So Ekstrom was the rotten son of a bitch who blabbed to the media.

Salander also found on Ekstrom's computer a list of the places police had been staking out to find her: her old apartment, Miriam's place, Mikhael's cabin. The condo wasn't on the list. They had no clue where she was hiding. Good.

Oy.

NY Times' Sassy Apostrophes

I'll never stop marveling at NY Times' use of apostrophes to form plurals of initialisms. It's a valid choice. I just don't get the why.