The study of language is not the study of etiquette, anymore than is the study of carpentry or surgery or flight. That is to say, when we study a language, and more particularly its grammar, we should be concerned not so much with how we appear to others, but with understanding the objective structure of …
Author Archives: rultimo
Listening for a Deeper Tone
I have long looked for a better way to explain a compositional figure writers use to heighten the effect of a phrase, and I think I finally found it the other day in a work by the poet Mary Oliver. First, though, an example to illustrate it. At the close of the first chapter of …
Making Smooth the Path
The department of language study which has to do with spelling and punctuation, capitalization and formatting and myriad other miscellaneous but essential matters of presentation is called mechanics. As the indispensable Garner’s Modern American Usage puts it, the mechanics of language constitute the “devices that lend clarity to writing.” Too often we mistake such niceties …
A Written Voice
We forget too often that the written word is merely (merely!) an attempt to represent the spoken word in the absence of a human presence before us. The technique of writing includes the device of punctuation to replicate the pulsations of breath which bring life to that presence, and that is why there is some …
Getting Used to Used To
A friend of mine asked me the other day to explain the difference between I used to run every morning and I am used to running every morning. She understood, of course, the different meaning each had, but she wanted to know how the grammatical structure changed in order to change the meaning so clearly. …