Revising closely means looking for questionable choices in both grammar and rhetoric, including how we have designed and punctuated some of our sentences in a draft. Here’s a passage that illustrates both an objective punctuation error and an arguably lesser sentence design. Can you find each of them?
For weeks he talked to me about buying this car he saw parked on the side of the road, a For Sale sign and a phone number scrawled on a piece of notebook paper and taped inside the driver’s window. I had seen the car too and I knew something about that model and year. He called me one day to say he was ready to buy it, and I explained that the transmission was belt, not gear driven and it was forever snapping, even under normal torque. He called me the next day to say he had to have it, and I told him that rust on the frame was also a problem with that year’s model. He should slow down, I said, and look at some other cars. I saw him in town a few days later, and he was eager to tell me about that same car, which he had bought.
We will see in a moment why this example had to be so long, but first let’s dispense with the punctuation problem. In the third sentence, the fourth and fifth clauses read, the transmission was belt, not gear driven and it was forever snapping, even under normal torque. The question is whether there should be a comma after gear, and if so, why. Misreading where a comma should be placed, we might at first think not, on the rule that two clauses having the same subject coordinated to each other through the conjunction and are not to be separated by a comma. Here, the noun transmission is the subject of the first clause, and it is logically the same entity when referred to by the pronoun it in the second clause. This observation, though, would apply to placing a comma after driven, where, on this rule, there should correctly not be one, as there is not in the original.
Nonetheless, the first clause introduces a complication which does necessitate a comma, though this one after the noun gear. The positive predicate of the first clause, that is, what is of logical concern to the writer and what he really wants to assert to convince his friend not to buy this particular car, is that the transmission is belt driven. To make that point more emphatically, he has inserted what is called an interjected phrase to contrast that feature with what it is not, namely, the more common type of transmission which is gear driven. Standard punctuation rules in English require such interjected phrases to be set off with a pair of commas, not just one, and so we should revise the second half of this third sentence to read correctly: the transmission was belt, not gear, driven and it was forever snapping, even under normal torque. This is a frequent error, and such an easy fix can go the distance in keeping the thoughts of a sentence in good working order.
Now to the question of sentence design. The last sentence of the example intends to conclude the account with the news that despite his earnestly making appeals both logical and rhetorical—the type of transmission, the possibility of rust, the need to resist rushing into a purchase he might later regret—his friend decided nonetheless to buy the car. The first four sentences of the paragraph, in other words, build to a climax, and the fifth and final sentence states the disappointing conclusion of it all. The length of the paragraph (and of this example) had to be what it is in order for the paragraph to gain lift and take off to its disappointing destination.
The rhetorical problem lies not in that macro architecture of the paragraph, but in the micro structure of the last sentence. That is made up of two independent clauses and a final subordinate clause, and it is this dependent clause that represents not a fault, but a less effective stylistic choice. Subordinate clauses are subordinate first for grammatical reasons (here the relative pronoun which determines that), but they also risk subordinating the demeanor of their assertions. As a general rule, major ideas, logical or rhetorical, should think twice about taking their place within a subordinate structure, or if they do, some other device—where those elements are placed or how they are punctuated—should be employed to reestablish prominence and effect of the thought. In our example, the thought and implication expressed by this subordinate clause—that in the face of all that he had warned him about, his friend had bought that particular car anyway—are weakened in that dependent grammatical structure, and the news limps offstage instead of proclaiming the irony of it.
So what changes could we make? One choice might be to vary the punctuation: I saw him in town a few days later, and he was eager to tell me about that same car—which he had bought! Another might be still to retain the subordinate clause, but build it out more fully: I saw him in town a few days later, and he was eager to tell me about that same car—which, to no one’s surprise, he had decided in the end to buy. And yet another might be to redesign the sentence entirely, breaking it apart so that the climax stays in its own independent clause: I saw him in town a few days later. He had bought that same car and now he was eager to tell me all about it.
The watchword in revising is form. To express an idea is ineluctably to give it a shape, and that shape, or form, will determine how close our readers will come to seeing and feeling just what we saw and felt as we put our thoughts into language. Rarely does anyone hit the written target in a draft. And thus the importance of revising slowly and closely and carefully.
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