What Exactly Do You Mean?

I was reading an opinion piece in one of the major newspapers online recently and I came upon a sentence whose grammatical construction is curious, but correct. The subject was medical treatment for the coronavirus, and the author wrote that in medicine transparency, candor and humility is paramount. So why is paramount instead of are paramount?

The subject of a clause may be simple or compound. Simple subjects refer to one thing only, and require accordingly a singular verb in their predicate; so, for example, transparency is paramount. Compound subjects, on the other hand, refer to more than one thing, and demand a plural verb: transparency, candor and humility are paramount. This is the basic rule of subject and verb agreement, and it represents a construction of English grammar so fundamental that we should disregard it only when we have reason to do so.

And such reasons to break the rule do, in fact, exist. When the author of the opinion piece wrote transparency, candor and humility is paramount, she combined a compound subject with a singular verb, obviously disregarding the law. What results, however, is the implication that these three moral qualities share one common nature—and so they can be regarded as one idea requiring only a singular verb. What that common nature might be, how these three qualities are so closely related that they can be considered inseparable, is not (and likely should not) be explained in such a short piece, but the suggestion has been made in the grammar. And unless we are prepared to regard the sentence as an outright mistake and nothing more, we are given something interesting to think about: the physician who is transparent is inevitably candid and humble; see one quality and you see the other two; and in medicine, the author maintains, such balanced reciprocity is important above all.

We tend to regard grammar as unbendingly strict, but it is important to remember that how we write is connected to how we perceive the world. The purist, the grammarian as martinet, would reject out of hand any use of a singular verb with a compound subject: rules are rules to be obeyed. But this narrow and tight-minded belief works havoc on the constant play of our perceptions. And the subject of grammar itself recognizes this under a principle called synesis. When logic, or meaning, takes precedence over syntax, we see synesis at work. Bryan Garner, in his masterful Garner’s Modern American Usage (p. 578), explains that the principle of synesis “allows some constructions to control properties such as number according to their meaning rather than strict syntactical rules.”

We write not only about the objective world, but of our understanding of that world as well. Without the chance to carefully and judiciously step past the lines at times, the ideas we have will congeal and calcify into the shape of the rules, not the shape of reality. The challenge for us is to discern the difference between a mistake and making a refined perception, and understand too whether the distinction is worth the making when we find it.

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Upcoming Seminars: October 13 and October 20

The second Writing Smartly seminar, Writing a Good Sentence, will be held on October 13, at 7:00 p.m. This one-hour discussion will review the fundamental structure of every well-written sentence and explain how to sharpen the focus of a statement by examining its subject and verb: an exact noun, a strong verb, and fewer prepositions make for clear and compelling sentences. Participants will receive a handout that summarizes the presentation and includes exercises and answers for private study. A few minutes will be set aside at the end of the discussion to answer questions. If you wish to enroll, please email me at ultimo@writingsmartly.com. Tuition is $25.

On October 20, again from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., the next Writing Smartly seminar, Nouns and Adjectives, will clarify the difference between concrete and abstract nouns, and explain how that knowledge can keep your ideas exact and clear. Adjectives make nouns more specific, and using them skillfully depends on where they are placed and how they are punctuated. We will also discuss how best to use a comma in listing a series of nouns and adjectives, and highlight the misunderstanding that can result in not punctuating accurately. Participants will receive a handout that summarizes the presentation and includes exercises and answers for private study. If you wish to enroll, please email me at ultimo@writingsmartly.com. Tuition is $25.

In addition to these weekly seminars, I offer private instruction online. If you would like to examine more closely a grammatical concept or particular document you are struggling with, or if you wish to discuss a work of literature or nonfiction you are currently reading, please email me directly at ultimo@writingsmartly.com to arrange a meeting. We can often get past stubborn hurdles when we explain to someone else the difficulties we are having. I have worked for many years with students and professionals to help them think more critically and write more clearly. Both onetime and ongoing arrangements are possible.

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Revising Is Investigating

You will know immediately, as I did, what this sentence posted at the entrance of a store means to say: Help stop the spread of Covid and stand six feet apart. We are being told to do two things, help and stand, and we understand, without being told anything more, that those two actions are closely related.

Revising what we write is not always about correcting errors. It can also be about hunting for hidden meaning, so that by looking closely at the words we’ve composed, trying alternatives and seeing what new meaning results, we might decide that the revised design says even better what we had intended—and surprising ourselves to find that we didn’t say that in our original. Or perhaps it will happen that the revision, upon inspection, doesn’t really improve our draft in any material way. Revising is investigating, and sometimes an investigation concludes that there was nothing to be investigated after all.

So let’s look for a moment at the conjunction and in the sentence we began with. This coordinating conjunction carries a tremendous burden in English; we often ask it to bear a lot of meaning, much more than it’s really responsible for, because we naturally sense that some meaningful relationship exists between things closely associated. That is why we should get in the habit of investigating it closely, especially when it joins two clauses, as it does here.

Grammarians classify and as a cumulative conjunction, meaning that its sole function is simply to join or gather together or amass elements that are presumably related in some way. Here, it joins two clauses, and since every clause is a thought, we suspect that it is carrying some logical meaning: perhaps it represents a conditional sentence (if you want to help stop the spread of Covid, then stand six feet apart), or perhaps it is meant to introduce not a clause but a prepositional phrase that will tell us how to reduce the contagion (help stop the spread of Covid by standing six feet apart). Both those ideas (and a few more as well) are implied by this very basic and common cumulative conjunction.

Our close investigation, then, has yielded other possible versions of the original, all grammatically correct but all different in their complexity. Conditional sentences require some logical thought, some amount of time to comprehend their intent; and given the circumstances of the sentence (a sign at the entrance of a store), we could rightly judge that the writer would be working against himself in expecting busy shoppers to stop and read a complex idea with consideration. The second revision, producing a prepositional phrase, simplifies matters a little, but it risks wordiness, as all prepositional phrases do, and that again may stand as a barrier to getting the attention of shoppers. This second revision tells us that something will help stop the spread of Covid, but it’s not directly telling us to do it.

So after a little testing, revising, and trying, we might just rightly conclude that the original gets done what needs to get done in the circumstances. It is telling us directly, frankly, seriously to do what we know we should do—help and stand. The two imperatives preclude the niceties of reason because we should be way past the need for rational convincing. The structure of the original sentence implies that what we need to do is obvious, and at the entrance of a store, it serves simply to remind us of what we already know. The original, then, should stand—but now we know why.

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Ambiguity

When we say that something is ambiguous, we mean that it can be understood in more than one way. The word is built from Latin pieces that mean to move around, and so what we call ambiguous is something that won’t stay put long enough, so to speak, to make a commitment.

Take, for example, this brief sentence: He watched her play with pride. Imagine that the statement is referring to a father watching his daughter playing baseball. Can we say with certainty which of the two people involved, father or daughter, is acting with pride? We could conjecture, of course, that the sentence probably means that the father is watching with pride, because the idea that parents are proud of their children is a common assumption. But we could just as well conclude that the daughter is playing with pride, because of the energy and enthusiasm we often associate with youth. Ambiguity is moving about here.

Now language is not mathematics. Although we always have to be ready to move elements around so the reader will have a clear path to our thought, words and phrases and clauses do not always add up together with the severe correctness that 2 + 2 = 4, not 4.1. And that just means it’s all the more important to be aware of exactly where we are placing certain elements, particularly prepositional phrases like the one in our example. In finding the right place for an element, we are best served by the principle of proximity: elements that work together stay close together. And so if we apply this principle to our original sentence, He watched her play with pride, we can only conclude that the daughter played with pride, because the prepositional phrase with pride is taking its place immediately next to the element it intends to modify—and the principle of proximity keeps it there.

But if the writer had intended to say that he, the father, watched with pride, then the prepositional phrase should take its place elsewhere, again according to the principle of proximity: With pride, he watched her play. That revision, though, may seem to move in too literary a direction (and we would certainly fall off the expository cliff into poetry if we move the phrase around more violently: He watch with pride her play). So when we reassemble elements, but still don’t find the clearest, cleanest statement, yet another possibility always exists: to step into a different sentence structure entirely. If we transform our original simple sentence into a complex one, the father’s pride is secured: He watched her with pride as she played.

Writing clearly is all about commitment: we think hard about what we want to say, we discover, one revision after another, what was really behind that first hunch, and we do all that with an awareness of what confusions could arise in the way we are putting our sentences together. For we work to no one’s advantage—including our own—when we inadvertently sow doubt by writing ambiguously.

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Upcoming Seminars: October 6 and October 13

A reminder that on October 6, the first Writing Smartly seminar, Teaching Grammar, will be held online from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. If all the changes in the way we go to school now have put you in the role of English grammar teacher or tutor, this seminar can help. Participants will receive a handout that presents the basic concepts that should be explained to a student—high school, ESL, or adult—and the order in which they are best introduced, together with exercises and answers to reinforce the ideas. A few minutes will also be set aside to answer questions and suggest other resources. If you wish to enroll, please email me directly at ultimo@writingsmartly.com, and I will send a registration link. Tuition is $25.

On October 13, at 7:00 p.m., I will be offering a second online seminar, Writing a Good Sentence. When we’re good at something, we keep returning to the basics. This one-hour discussion will review the fundamental structure of every well-written sentence and explain how to sharpen the focus of a statement by examining its subject and verb: an exact noun, a strong verb, and fewer prepositions make for clear and compelling sentences. A few minutes will be set aside at the end of the discussion to answer questions. If you wish to enroll, please email me at ultimo@writingsmartly.com. Tuition is $25.

And, of course, if you would like to examine more closely a particular document you are struggling with, or if you wish to discuss a work of literature or nonfiction you are currently reading, I offer private tutoring sessions online as well. We can often get past stubborn hurdles when we have to explain our difficulties to someone else. I have worked for many years with students and professionals to help them think more critically and write more clearly. Please email me directly at ultimo@writingsmartly.com to arrange a meeting.

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