vocab (mccarthy style from the back page)

today a facebook friend told me that he loves jane eyre because of charlotte bronte's interesting use of punctuation. and then, in a seemingly unrelated incident, another friend commented on the story that i wrote about my encounter with a man and his paradox finding device. not to gloat, but she gave me a very big compliment on the piece; she wrote, "Andrew I love this! And, by the way, you sound like...cormac mccarthy. I'm serious." i was feeling very happy, but then i remembered that this particular 17 point scale fan didn't enjoy reading cormac mccarthy. hmm...

anyway, it just so happens that i have a post that i've been meaning to publish on punctuation and cormac mccarthy, and the conversion of these two incidents seems like the sign that i've been waiting for. it is time.

over the course of my blogging career i've written several entries under the heading of "back page." these were blog posts that borrowed their text from the postscripts of occasional wisdom and much long-winded, overblown verbosity that i scribbled in the back pages of the novels that i recently finished reading. although i like the idea of the "back page" posts, i have since stopped writing in my novels, which makes the simple transcription from book to internet nearly impossible. thus, i am phasing out the "back page" posts and using this post as something of a transition...

xii.
THE BORDER TRILOGY, books 1 and 2

all the pretty horses by cormac mccarthy
the crossing by cormac mccarthy

critical accolades:
all the pretty horses won the national book award and the national book critics circle award.

less official acclaim:
greg wolfe, editor of image, has repeatedly described cormac mccarthy as one of the greatest american writers, and the crossing as cormac's greatest novel.

the 17 point scale concurs:
these are my favorite books of 2007, and cormac mcarthy is my favorite author of 2006 and 2007. he is the master of the dark, thoughtful novel of hope. his characters occupy a strange space between passion and stoicism, and his landscapes are quietly authentic.

but i'll spare you a mccarthy lovefest. instead, i'll bludgeon you with another andrew favorite, grammar.

as i was reminding myself about the plots of all the pretty horses and the crossing, i stumbled upon a new word: polysyndeton.

yes, apparently, cormac writes using polysyndeton. i knew this, i've just never put a name to it. he writes of a man walking and stooping and brushing the blood from a horse's hoof. cormac is stylistically spare--he shuns question marks, semicolons, and the ever-helpful quotation mark--but in my attempt at cormacian polysyndeton, you'll note a superfluous and. that's because polysyndeton is the deliberate use of several unnecessary conjunctions in close succession. i've called it the literary and but polysyndeton is probably a more universal term. in any case, passages like this are the bread and butter of mccarthy. they subtly slow down the text and thereby help communicate a sense of quiet. they also a have a distinctly biblical feel.

if you're not mccarthy, you probably write using syndeton or a single conjunction.

or perhaps you're crazy. perhaps you write using asyndeton, that is, the deliberate omission of conjunctions altogether. you know, little jewels like: i came, i saw, i blogged.

(and then i stopped blogging for several months because i was so busy working for that great shining star of online awesomeness, the other journal.)

my vocation

10/18/07

i sometimes wonder about the utility of my vocation. if society is sucked down the tubes of economic ruin, my job would be one of the first to go. if the global market crashed, my wordsmithing skills and knowledge of grammar would make me an eloquent beggar, but a beggar i'd be. and when i'm feeling doubtful about my career path, these thoughts make my skills seem insignificant: i don't have a practical skill, i think, i can't build houses, kill deer, or fix automobiles. i can't heal insomniacs, calculate foreign tax returns, or operate an oil refinery.

i'm not sure where i was going with that--in fact, one of the labels for this post was originally "soccer"; i don't know how that fits in--but i suppose it's all true. if you think of maslow's hierarchy of needs (remember, that pyramid from your freshman psychology class), art is somewhere at the top. but does that mean that my intended profession is less valuable than the professions that may occupy the bottom? or, conversely, does that mean that my intended profession is more valuable than the professions at the bottom? does it matter?

some thoughts on quotation marks and italics

+updated 6/19/08+

I wrote this for another context, but I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd bore the world rather than just my colleagues.

As you may know, my day job is as an editor for a university. In this position I work for a bunch of academics, and over the last five years I’ve developed the bias that many academics are not great writers.

This is compounded by a few factors.

First, the overarching goal of most academic writing is not the creation of good writing, it’s the generation of new ideas, or if I’m a bit less generous, the goal is to sound smart and innovative. Thus, academic writing is by its very nature flush with field-specific terminology and verbosity.

Second, because academics are bright and successful within their field, many seem to naturally assume that they are also good writers. Actually, this is probably true of non-academics also, but in my department, I’ve found that it takes a long time for the higher level faculty to seek editorial assistance. But they all need help, and once I find my way to their manuscripts, they hardly ever bat an eye if I swap some quotation marks for italics or make a few nouns roman type (I suppose they’re usually too busy!).

Likewise, I think the academics that write for nonprofit theology journals could use some help, and I doubt they’ll really care if lowly journal editors assert their will on matters of emphasis. But if they do care, such editors have the big guns in their arsenal: (1) they’re using CMOS, the king of style since the early 1900s—it happens to be the stylebook of most book publishers, the stylebook of most scholarly work in the humanities—and as far as writing style is concerned, CMOS is like the US constitution, and the journal editors are the Supreme Court; (2) they’re attempting to keep all of our articles consistent, so an author could be consoled that there’s nothing wrong with their style, they’d just like it to match the rest of the issue’s content; (3) they’re attempting to make their content relevant to a larger audience than just other theologians; (4) they’re an interdisciplinary journal with a creative writing section, so unlike other theology journals, great writing will never take a backseat to great theology; and (5) even if the author is a big name that they just have to publish, they are still the one’s pulling the strings, so authors are really beholden to their editorial decisions.

My perspective is that academics, especially in the humanities, attempt to compensate for their lack of writing genius by using artificial means of emphasis like the quotation mark. In most instances, a word can be emphasized naturally in the sentence or paragraph construction without stooping to quotation marks or italics. Moreover, by making sparse use of this convention, words that are set off by italics will stand out more. Also, many writers seem to use (or overuse) quotation marks for ironic use (see CMOS 7.58) when it really doesn’t make much sense.

So given that it’s generally best to trim a manuscript of excess italics and quotation marks, here are the guidelines that I'd recommend for a theology journal:

• Foreign words unfamiliar to readership = italics
• Emphasis (try to avoid) = italics
• Terms, words used as words, letters used as letters = italics
• Nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense (try to avoid!) = quotation marks

Of course, ultimately, the author is always right. Editors can usually get away with enforcing matters of style, but if there’s an impasse, an editor's only options are to give in or reject the piece.

blogging hiatus and my novella

in addition to work, christmas shopping, my part-time editing gig, classes at the UW, caring for my ailing house, and rereading the road, i've decided to try and write a novella. therefore, i have even less time for the 17 point scale. historically, however, i've found that the minute i declare a prolonged absence from blogging, i come roaring back with more posts, so i expect that i'll be posting some tidbits in the near future.

(what do you think, should i have written "i've decided to try to write a novella"? the and seemed to flow better, but to strikes me as a better grammatical choice.)

march madness (1) and a clarification (2)

1. here's the st. louis region of my march madness bracket. i haven't watched much college ball this year, so it would be a miracle if i nailed many of these games. but not according to the newspaper industry--i was browsing a forum of angry newspaper editors this afternoon, and those crotchety red inksters insisted that there is no room for miracles in the media. writers, get your religious beliefs out of our stories, they cried. this seemed rather excessive to me. i appreciate that a journalist's duty is to report the news and not reflect on it (that's what the quasi-anchors and pundits do), and perhaps we over-use the term in colloquial speech, but as one poster suggested, miracles have been around since chaucer, why should they stop now?

(despite the presence of a few upsets, the closest thing to a miracle in my bracket is the prospective advancement of UNLV into the sweet sixteen.)


2. i hope yesterday's post wasn't misleading. i started the post by describing authorial out-of-body experiences in which writers swap the self for the other and then i concluded with a subtle variation on that idea: rather than dwelling within another soul, my next step is to sample others' experiences and make them my own. thus you won't find me speaking in an unfamiliar dialect or complaining about cramps. i'll still be expressing some sense of myself, but i'll be using new avenues for this exploration. that is, if i follow through and actually write something....

the something that i wrote

because

i edit like a blind guy. i feel my way through a paragraph, listening to the sound of consonants, words, and ideas; the squawk of a renegade comma or miscreant phrase. i have a knack for this sort of thing. but a blind knack ain't always good enough. writers are notoriously protective of their work, and every so often they may challenge an edit. and when they do, it doesn't pay to say "oh, i play by ear--it just sounds better this way." therefore, i'm quickly learning to combine my instincts with science. i've become a bit of a grammar junkie. my drug of choice is fowler's modern english usage, but i've got all kinds dictionaries, websites, and stylebooks to keep me company.

thus, one day it came to pass that i was merrily editing a schizophrenia manuscript, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a because came flying onto the page. "what's this?" i asked. the because sat in the middle of the sentence, separated from the main clause by a big ghastly comma. as i moved to strike the comma, i wondered, "gosh, is there actually a reason to delete this comma?"

little did i know that such a simple question would lead to an avalanche of becauseness. indeed, if you scour the internet for because, you will probably find that i have compiled the most comprehensive online resource for this silly subordinating conjunction. because of its size, the because reference is being stored at the 17 point scale appendix. but to whet your interest, here's a table of contents:

I. because answers the questions why? and how?
II. because at the beginning of sentences
III. commas
IV. confusion with other words
A. because versus as and since
B. because versus for
C. because versus inasmuch as
D. because (of) versus due to
E. because (of) versus due to the fact that
V. the reason is … because (no!)
VI. because and negatives
VII. references

andrew david. "misplaced modifier" shekinah, saskatchewan.

the show

hey, does anyone have an opinion on the verb "show"?

i'm having trouble determining whether there's an actual grammatical or stylistic basis for my dislike of this word. for example, would you keep the verb "show" in these sentences or attempt to change it:

"Gross neuropathologic examination showed brain weighing 1230 g, mildatherosclerosis....

"The substantia nigra (SN) and locus ceruleus (LC) showed a moderate loss ofpigmented neurons....

"Initial laboratory studies showed normal thyroid tests, B12, chemistries....

the author uses "show" about a billion times. i think my problem is that it (a)sounds sloppy and vernacular--this may be personal taste--and (b) it isn't always literally accurate (the SN and LC don't actually do any showing). however, there's a chance that "show" might have special neuropathological meanings, but i haven't found anything of the sort, and it's unclear from the literature whether neuropathologists are using it techinically.

andrew david. "doh" saskatchewan, canada.

sighhhhhh

alright, no more politics. for the next two years years i'll try to make this a politics-free zone. i may stray into the political realm if there's news about my beloved sonics, but otherwise, i'll clamp the lips and silence the keys until the exciting day when obama and mccain announce their presidential bids.

in other news, i was editing a grant recommendation letter today and it read "dr. raffinoogin is a well rounded clinician-scientist." so, like any good editor, i tossed a hyphen between well and rounded, but then i got a little confused. does well rounded mean well-rounded or, as i thought when i made the replacement, does it mean nicely fat? that is, does a hyphen really preclude us from thinking pretty and porky?

a rainbow, a storm, and some bright sunshine
andrew david. "a storm (R) or a rainbow (D), it's all a matter of perspective" saskatchewan, canada.

SEAHAWKS are goin' to the SUPERBOWL!

the idea of a seattle team playing for the national football league superbowl is far, far outside the scope of my cerebralsphere. in other matters, i had an interesting conversation with conybeare about punctuation this morning. he was wondering how to punctuate something like this:

can you tell me how to get to sesame street (is it scary there?)?
can you tell me how to get to sesame street (is it scary there?)
can you tell me how to get to sesame street (is it scary there)?

any opinions?

[1.25.05:]

2 votes (beth, mari) for item one. 1 vote (joel) for: can you tell me how to get to sesame street? (is it scary there?) i agree with everyone; based upon my initial grammar god consult (CMS, the everyday writer, and a forum), i think that item one is technically correct. and i strongly agree with joel in that the best way to avoid awkward structure is to just recast the sentence. still, i wonder if can you tell me how to get to sesame street? (is it scary there?) may result in a subtle change in meaning. structurally, it puts a bit more space between the two sentences and thereby may increase the difference in meaning between the two. joel, do you ALWAYS make parenthetical sentences their own sentence or only at the end of sentences? (e.g., would you alter this: the dinosaur (scholars continue to insist that 'dino' means terrible and that 'saur' means lizard) groaned once and was silent. okay, that's a horrible example...

to make matters even more confusing, the cms might actually campaign for item two; here's a similar example from the CMS (well, almost):

Who shouted, 'Fire!'

that's right, no question mark. here's another interesting one:

here favorite songs are 'hello dolly!' 'chicago,' and 'come with me.'

A lesson

Any linguist will tell you that there are several universal steps in language acquisition. Like puberty and death, speech (and sign language for that matter) progresses in a relatively similar fashion for everyone. This should be no surprise; monkeys, marmots, and your aunt's cursing pet parrot all learn to communicate in a predictable fashion. However, humans are unique. We lack feathers, fur, and a universal ceiling for language acquisition. (per linguists, we also have the uncanny ability for infinite creativity; that is, rather than mimicing others or reciting a preprogrammed response to certain stimuli, we string thoughts together in our own independent way. there, if you get nothing else from this blog, you've at least learned enough linguistic fundementals to obviate the horror of an actual linguistics class). Thus, some folks stay at the plateau of language fluency. These unlucky souls never experience the birth of language consciousness, the appreciation (or lack thereof) of language mechanics. Unfortunately, many of those that consider language get stuck questioning the comma. So many rules and restrictions -- put a colon here, capitalize this, check your tense there. But there is life-changing news for all but the most hard-core language anarchists: the minutia of grammar is sensible. It is poetic logic that supports grammar, not some powerful coalition of grammar gods making senseless decisions in their ivory thrones. And I have proof...

On September 16th, I referred to my blessed moment with the AMA Manual of Style. While there I (re) discovered the following procedures:

1. Spell out all numbers at the beginning of sentences
2. Spell out all numbers less than 10 in literary writing
3. Spell out no numbers in scientific writing (unless there is some other reason to do so, like #1)

Okay, why the strange rules regarding numbers? Why does Andrew think this isn't simply a stupid random decision by grey-bearded academicians? I suggest taking a look at the AMA MoS cause I feel like a bit of hack spoiling their tasty tidbits. Oh well, I suppose it took a number of well-meaning monks to pass down the original Bible, and perhaps they didn't get every word in its original most eloquent self. Then again, they probably did. But they were God inspired and in case you couldn't tell, I'm defnitely AMA inspired

In literary writing numbers function as yet another building block to the sentence. Authors intend for words to flow into sentences to flow into paragraphs to flow into pulitzer prize winning pieces. In contrast, the scientist reads/writes with attention focused on the particulars -- how many patients participated in how many procedures? The words are necessary only in a secondary function, to convey the meaning behind numbers.

I'd give a link to the AMA Manual of Style, but I doubt you can find it for free online...

an INTRODUCTION (and the wanna' be bible)

so, if i were really writing a blog, i'd have something witty to say. some hooker to draw you in. a clever analogy or personal antidote. or maybe you might just like me, and to humor me, you say 'yeah, andrew, i'd love to be the 1 person to read your blog this year.' actually, i tend to edge my way off the sidewalk and into traffic when i see hookers. apparently it takes someone of quite strong character to walk freely and unihibited in hookerland. the judgmental phobiacs teeter on sidewalk cornices, risking automobile rub, while the sexually enthusiastic leer or creep into the waiting arms of wantonness. okay, besides quaffing a gallon of verbosity juice, i'm also stretching the truth a bit. i doubt that i really alter my course perceptibly, but my steps might fall a shade quicker as i tunnel away. in any case, i hope that my blog won't cater to any particular sidewalk style. almost all are welcome here. doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

ummmm...so, today at work i was faced with the intriguing dilemna of numbers. Is it three chickens or 3 chickens? perhaps one of the more pressing questions of science. that is, when submitting a manuscript to the archives of neurology, do you spell out 'three' or leave it in numerical form? After a frustrating google search, I visited our delightful VA librarian (ex-technical writer, ex-Navy recruit, ex-Nepal peace corp vet) to acquire the bible of scientific writing: the AMA Manual of Style.

Christmas list:

One manual of style, 1 ipod, and 1 piano