Many years ago, a friend of mine had a particularly unpleasant experience on a flight to Europe. She wrote the airline a letter, and they made amends by sending her a voucher for a free flight in the future. The question for us is, why did I just use the verb wrote in the last sentence instead of has written?

Both forms, wrote and has written, are past tenses of the verb write. Both direct the reader to an action, and both place that action in a time before the present moment. The difference between the two, though, has to do with the distinction we make between an action and its consequences.

Modern English organizes our conventional experience of time (past, present, and future) into six tenses, and divides these six into two groups, three simple and three perfect. The simple tenses work like a needle piercing cloth: they pinpoint the reader’s attention simply to something that happened in the fabric of time, and they mean to say no more about it. Simple tenses, therefore, are sometimes called indefinite because they don’t intend to refer to other actions or moments of time. The verb wrote is the simple past tense.

The perfect tenses, on the other hand, refer not only to what has happened at a particular time, but to what might follow from that action as well. For this reason, the three perfect tenses in English grammar are said to be completed tenses (the word perfect means finished in all respects), because an action is thought to be complete only when its consequences, its aftereffects, are taken note of too. The perfect tenses needle the cloth, but then they pull the thread of the action forward to another point in time. Hence perfect tenses both state an action and imply its consequences. The verb has written is the present perfect tense.

So how does all this apply to my sentence? Context is critical in language, so the answer to why I chose the verb form I did has to do with the opening adverbial phrase of the sentence before it: many years ago. This short phrase set the scene far back in time, sufficiently far from the present moment that the consequences of writing to the airline—how they would respond—are now long lived out, like waves that are spent when they reach the shore. But had this anecdote occurred more recently, perhaps yesterday when the consequences cannot yet be known, then I could have chosen the present perfect: she has written the airline a letter. The recency of the event would dictate now that the consequences remain open: how will the airline respond to this letter of complaint? So the present perfect carries with it an energy of expectation that the simple past often does not.

Questions of grammar like this have an interesting way of teaching us to look more closely and more exactly at the world and how we perceive it. If it is true (and I am convinced it is) that writing and thinking are obverse and reverse of the same coin, then it behooves us to understand the forms of grammar in order to be able to communicate the nuances of a situation we are writing about.

***

What does it mean, really, to think clearly? It’s an important question because writing and thinking are so closely associated. To ask what thinking clearly means is also to ask what writing clearly means.

If we confine our discussion here to expository prose—the explanatory composition most of us undertake most of the time in emails and letters and reports—writing and thinking clearly mean making distinctions and showing connections, seeing something for what it is and showing how it stands in relation to something else. If it is true as the philosophers say that “life flows,” then making distinctions and showing connections means stepping out of the flow and onto shore for a moment to see and understand what is going on.

This is why conjunctions and punctuation play such an important role in clear writing. Take this unassuming sentence, for example:

I spoke to him last night, we will meet Tuesday.

Here is one sentence of two clauses joined by a comma. Every clause is a thought, and the writer has succeeded in making a clear distinction between two different acts: speaking and meeting. But what is the connection between these two ideas? We’re justified in assuming they are logically related in some way because the two clauses have been put in the same sentence; we don’t know how they are related, though, because there is no conjunction to show the logical relationship. Conjunctions, not commas, connect.

This is an example of the infamous run-on sentence, where a comma is used to sort clauses instead of a conjunction. It’s reasonable to assume that the Tuesday meeting is a consequence of last night’s conversation. Consequence, or result, then, would be the logical connection between these two clauses, and there are a number of conjunctions, some more formal than others, to indicate that connection: therefore, as a result, so.

We can now revise the sentence in at least three ways. The first is to supply, somewhat heavy-handedly, the most obvious conjunction of consequence:

I spoke to him last night; therefore we will meet Tuesday.

This will never do, though, given the simple circumstances being conveyed. So next we can use a less formal conjunction of consequence, this one in the form of a phrase:

I spoke to him last night, and so we will meet Tuesday.

Better, but still not best. Exactly because both ideas in the two clauses are so simple, the best revision is simply to stand the two ideas next to each other (as the author originally sensed), but connect them properly now with a semicolon, not a comma:

I spoke to him last night; we will meet Tuesday.

And here we come to a requirement for standard English: replace an omitted conjunction with a semicolon, not a comma. When we omit words that are logically necessary (a stylistic device called ellipsis), we bring a slight sophistication to our writing; we want the reader to know something without telling them directly, so we wink with the semicolon, showing we trust them to see the connection.

I often tell students that after the verb, conjunctions are the most important part of speech, and in some ways more interesting and difficult because they involve thinking critically. If we don’t signal our thinking to the reader through the right conjunction and punctuation, then the ideas we are writing run on and on without effect, and both we and our reader are none the wiser.

***

There are usually many paths up the same mountain and rarely only one way of doing things. Some will say that rules and measures weaken our creativity as we write, and others maintain that ignoring the rules of grammar and composition will produce only anarchy (what a teacher of mine once derisively referred to as idiosyncratic writing).

I take a position between these two extremes: creativity and the abandon it sometimes requires is what we need to get started on a piece; from this arises our draft. But rules and the designs they produce are part of an analytical frame of mind, and that belongs properly to our revision work. One unhampered draft and a number (usually) of more disciplined revisions. I think that’s a good route to take.

Design work in writing, then, refers to the judicious changes we make to our draft. One such sentence design tells us to arrange like grammatical elements in groups of three. The technique is called a triad (or tricolon), and you’ll read and hear it everywhere (it’s a particular favorite with the politicians). Here is the opening paragraph in chapter one of Martha Nussbaum’s The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis, published in 2018. It illustrates this triadic design:

There’s a lot of fear around in the US today, and this fear
is often mingled with anger, blame, and envy. Fear all too often blocks rational deliberation, poisons hope, and
impedes constructive cooperation for a better future.

The triadic figure is actually employed twice in this short paragraph. The second clause of the first sentence finishes by naming three things with which fear is associated: anger, blame, and envy. The design, remember, requires that all of the three members be of the same grammatical construction; here, each is a noun unqualified by any adjective. Then, in the second sentence, the design appears again, this time not in the form of three nouns, but three verbs: blocks, poisons, and impedes. Each of these, moreover, is a transitive verb, pointing to an object and establishing a parallelism that is innately satisfying to us.

The result? We are confronted by a paragraph very much in control of its ideas. The triadic arrangement not only organizes our thoughts, but presents them with rhythm and balance. It is often a very good idea to read (or mumble if you have to) your work aloud as you revise, the better to hear the cadence and pace of what you’ve written. We respond psychologically (some would say even more deeply than that) to beat and measure, as we do, surprisingly, to the configuration of many things in groups of three (think of the “rule of three” in graphic design, humor, and mathematics). Try reading Nussbaum’s paragraph aloud, and listen to the stress you instinctively place on anger, blame, and envy. This triple downbeat concentrates our attention and implies that the writer has done the hard work of thinking, that she has come to certain conclusions which we are now asked to consider for ourselves.

The tricolon is only one of many such stylistic designs. An excellent work to consult on this topic, and one that I have used for many years with students and clients, is Thomas Kane’s New Oxford Guide to Writing (reissued subsequently as The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing). You’ll find a discussion there of the triadic design, along with many other techniques you can use to strengthen your sentences. I recommend Kane’s work very highly.

***

We agree, I hope, that writers work in words. Words are the writer’s raw material, and like the sculptor’s clay, words have to be shaped into meaning. Choosing words and arranging them is the sum and substance of the practice of writing. This is why some of the fine old grammars of English said that the whole subject can be studied neatly under two headings: the parts of speech and syntax.

We’ve discussed here before what is meant by the parts of speech. Grammar, at least the grammar of English and many other languages, works by the presumption of naming up the world: nothing can pass through our experience without having a word applied to it, and thereby saying what it means to us. Quite a presumption that is, and certain reaches of philosophy will have nothing to do with it. But we make and live our lives with words, so it’s better to know how we do it than have it done to us. The parts of speech give us a way to understand every word we use by its grammatical function. And when two or more words come together as we compose sentences, we involve ourselves next with syntax.

The word syntax may look familiar. The computer scientists took it from the grammarians and the grammarians took it from the generals in ancient warfare. It comes to us from classical Greek meaning put together in order, so programmers must arrange their code correctly and generals must station their troops effectively. For us as writers it means our words must be placed and ordered in such a way that our sentences convey exactly what we intend.

All of this points up the idea that writing is designing. Shape is meaning, and it is the better part of valor to accept the fact that we almost never compose a draft that needs no revision. But how do we revise efficiently? By seeing the structure of what we’ve managed to get down on screen or paper and redesigning what isn’t working. Take this simple sentence which at first glance may pose no problem at all:

Flying at night, the sky always seems so vast and terrifying.

Let’s keep our attention on the word flying. One of the parts of speech, we know, is the adjective, a word that describes a noun. We revise by asking our sentences questions, so here we ask, what is it that is flying? An idle question, perhaps, because I surely mean that when I’m flying at night, I am awed and afraid. But that is not what the syntax of this sentence conveys. The adjective flying refers to the noun sky, so I am telling the reader that the sky is flying, a notion that flies in the face of our everyday logic. So in realizing now what is wrong with the structure (there is no I for flying to modify), we can redesign the sentence to say what I really intended:

When I fly at night, the sky always seems so vast and terrifying.

By knowing the parts of speech, we know how a word can act grammatically in any sentence. By keeping an eye on the syntax of what we’ve actually drafted, we can revise it more efficiently. The two work together, in complement and cooperation. Writing always means rewriting, and writing by design can produce more accurate and compelling work.

***

If you are interested in private instruction
in English grammar and writing, please email me directly at ultimo@writingsmartly.com. I would be happy to arrange a free consultation in person or by Zoom video conferencing
to discuss what you would like to achieve.

It’s a curious thing: we’re a culture that prizes science highly, yet when it comes to language, the very instrument of our scientific culture, we are often reluctant to learn something of its own science, grammar. The result? We take the long way home.

Consider, for example, the common problem writers seem to have in deciding between every day and everyday. Do I walk my dog every day or everyday? One way to decide the issue, of course, is to say it doesn’t matter: who in the world could possibly care about a matter so minute, especially when the reader will be able to figure out anyway what it is we’re trying to say? And that is true to some extent, for under the eye of eternity, whether two words or one is of little concern.

But the matter is important to the craft of writing, because every craft, or art, follows a procedure, a way of doing things, to achieve its end successfully. If we don’t know how language works, we work haphazardly, by guesswork, opinion, or apathy, and this obscures the reader’s vision; we forget that we are trying to show someone clearly in language what we see in our mind, and the way to that vision is often beset with misunderstandings. Few readers are content for long to see through a glass darkly, and they will abandon us if we can’t work according to the rules of the game.

Grammar, then, is the science that organizes the facts of language, the prime fact of which is words and how they work together. Part of the technology of grammar is a device called the parts of speech, nothing more than a set of eight categories into one or more of which we assign words to understand how they function in a given statement. If we apply this technology to the problem at hand, we can decide between every day or everyday quickly and assuredly.

Two of the eight parts of speech are the adjective and the adverb. Adjectives answer the question what kind of? and adverbs answer when? The word everyday is an adjective and the phrase every day is an adverb. And by applying that simple grammatical science, we will never have to think through the question again: I walk my dog every day, for that is when I walk my dog. And it’s an everyday activity, for that’s what kind of activity it is. A mayor deals every day with the everyday problems of running a city, and watching what I eat is an everyday challenge, although I go to the gym every day.

Questions like this abound in English, and left to our own devices, we can’t work with the confidence we should. Grammar is complex, but it’s not complicated, and if we can jump over our reluctance to learn a little about it, we will find ourselves able to make our own decisions as apprentices—and even masters.