Honest Tense...

[Izmir Mike]

Grammar is a scary beast that every aspiring writer must make an attempt to tame. Although it is a subject. like punctuation, that can sometimes be paralyzing and somewhat inhibiting to your creativity initially, it is important to research the mechanics of your craft and to know how to apply those techniques to achieve the desired results.

If a writer choses to by-pass this step, he or she is likely to end up with very short sentences for children, boring, repetitive sentences or poorly constructed nonsense, creating confusion in the minds of your potential readers.

Asking questions is a good idea unless you wind up more confused. Studying a few grammar books is even better, especially if they have a few exercises so that the ideas remain fixed in your mind.
An aspiring writer's goal isn't to learn the different names of the parts of a sentence and all that malarkey, but every writer should, I believe, be able to master the principles of his language. Joseph Conrad, after all, wrote his masterpieces in a foreign language.
Having said that, perfect grammar is probably unattainable and, when choosing between perfect grammar and perfect expression, it is usually better to choose the latter. In a ideal world, the two should, of course, work together.

 

[2ndchance]

Okay people, just making sure I have this correct. I prefer the first sentence below, it reads smoothly compared to the second (in my opinion). So, the second sentence is clearly past, because she screwed her face up. How about the first sentence, does the glanced make it past because glanced is the first word that follows she, or does the screwing mix the tenses? Or is screwing okay because it's an adverb? (no silly jokes)

Screwing her face up, she glanced at her mum and muttered quietly. 'Whoops.'

She screwed her face up, glanced at her mum, and quietly muttered. ‘Whoops.’


Thanks Steve

 

[Ursa major]

The answer is yes, the first sentence is in the past tense.

(I'm not too hot on grammar terms, but I believe the first few words - "Screwing her face up," - constitute a subordinate clause; in any case, its main feature is that it does not seem to be complete, whereas the main clause - "she glanced at her mum...." - can stand on its own.)


Not sure about the first full stop, but that's probably me, not the rules.

Oh, and how eaasy is it for one to screw up one's face and then glance? Try not to picture this, but I'm trying to do it and it feels far from natural: as your eyes crease - and begin to close - it's far from easy to glance anywhere with one's eyes and I (rightly or wrongly) tend to associate the action of glancing with eye movement.

 

[The Judge]

Yes, as Ursa says, both sentences are in the past tense - the fact that the 'glanced' follows the 'screwing' makes no difference to the rules we gave in earlier posts.

My knowledge of grammatical terms is not far above my knowledge of physics, but I think Ursa is also right in calling it a subordinate clause. What I am sure (sure-ish) about, is that 'Screwing her face up' is a participial clause and while, as you say, they read more smoothly -- and I am in fact addicted to them -- they have to be used with caution. The three problems that beset them are, in descending order of importance:

1. Dangling participle: where the subject of the participle and the subject of the sentence don't agree eg 'Driving home, the light traffic told me it wasn't rush hour after all.' The subject of the main part of the sentence is the traffic, but obviously I'm the one doing the driving, not the traffic - so this should read 'Driving home, I realised from the light traffic it wasn't...'

2. Non-continuing participle: where the participle describes something which is over and done with before the next part of the sentence is begun, so the use of the continuous '-ing' is inappropriate eg 'Running up the stairs, I went into the bedroom.' To be accurate this should be 'Having run up the stairs, I went into...' It would be OK if the two actions happened together eg 'Running up the stairs, I whistled the National Anthem.' This may be behind the problem Ursa notes with screwing a face up and glancing - Ursa is assuming that the two are coterminous from the structure of the sentence, whereas you may have thought that one follows the other.

3. Irrelevant participle: where the participle describes something which has no (apparent) connection with the rest of the sentence eg 'Being a first-class athlete, I was born in Leicester.' This just looks amateurish.

'Screwing' isn't an adverb, Steve, so I'm not sure why you thought that. Participles can be adjectives, as I noted with the 'blooming' crocuses, or eg 'working women' but that's when they are describing a noun, not when they are still being used as a verb as here.

And if the 'Whoops' is what she is muttering quietly and not something separate, then Ursa is also right about the full stop, except that it isn't just him, it is the rules. The full stop is wrong -- it should be a comma, or possibly a colon.

Hope this helps

J

 

[2ndchance]

Thanks Ursa & J,

I am trying to understand the principles, rather than just remembering it per-se. If I know what should be rather than remembering the order, it should become auto-pilot. That is where I want to be.

As I am sure you know I am editing and as such want to avoid every sentence starting with a she/he 'ED' i.e. she said, she hurried, she washed, which makes the whole thing clunky, almost a series of events: she hurried upstairs into the bathroom, and washed her hands; or worse still; she hesitated, narrowed her eyes, peeked over the fence, and muttered. This may be okay here and there, almost a boom, boom, boom effect, but you can’t do that every time something happens. Hence why I wanted to use the participle; narrowing her eyes, she hesitated etc. This I feel is a tad more cinematic, which is another subject he-he.

Steve, getting there...

 

[Peter Graham]

Hi Steve,

An adverb is just a word which describes or amplifies a verb:-

"Peter walked slowly to the Magistrates Court."

"Slowly" is an adverb as it tells us something about the verb. You can walk quickly, slowly or whatever else you fancy.

"Screwing" is not an adverb. It is what my old English teacher used to call a "doing word" - a verb. it doesn't stop being a verb just because it has "ing" on the end. The "ing" just means that the verb is being used in a particular way.

By way of an example to show that verbs cannot become adverbs (and vice versa):-

"You can screw your eyes up tightly, but you can't tight your eyes up screwly!"

Regards,

Peter

 

[2ndchance]

Thanks Peter,

Hmmm, I can tight my eyes up screwly, especially when I am getting my head around this, he-he.

Seriously tho' thanks, this all helps me understand the principles and as such, do it on autopilot... I like your teachers suggestion, makes it simple and clear. I think we use many words that stick, but, don't really get the point over. I prefer to know, rather than think. Does that make sense?

Tell me something, if; Slowly Peter walked; is slowly still an adverb if it comes in front of Peter even though it is a doing word, or is a doing word purely frowning - smiling - shouting, i.e. a bodily function? And slowly (verb) is how we perform said doing-word walked (adverb).


BTW, I hope you have avoided the horrid weather up your way...

Steve

 

[2ndchance]

Okay, a little test to see if it’s working...

Before turning into Vista Drive, Rebecca took a deep breath and peeked over the hedge. ‘Damn,’ she thought, as she spied a bouncing football, quickly followed by a wisp of long blonde hair bobbing between the parked cars. She knew this could mean only one thing, her annoying 11-year-old brother, Tommy.

All day he’d aggravated her at school, and fed up with the constant bitching, she just wanted to get home quick, and most importantly avoid another clash. Having missed lunch again, and knowing hunger equalled easy to wind-up, she crossed the road and put her head down. Just as she’d forgotten about her silly brother, she caught sight of his football hurtling towards her, causing a horrid taste in her mouth. Ducking instinctively, she scathed her right hand on Mrs. Howe’s wall, and fuming in pain, she hollered. ‘Thomas, keep that damn ball away from me.’

Should the; causing a horrid taste, be, that caused a horrid tatse?

Steve

 

[The Judge]

Steve, I am 100% with you on the 'She [verb]ed' problem, which is why I personally use the '[verb]ing, she...' so much. I wasn't trying to stop you using it, just pointing out it does have its own issues, so you have to ensure you are using it correctly.

Should the; causing a horrid taste, be, that caused a horrid tatse?

Very often you could choose either depending on the flow and rhythm of the sentence, but in this instance you have to keep with 'causing...' the reason being the 'that' creates a problem. If you read it back: 'she caught sight of his football hurtling towards her, that caused a horrid taste in her mouth'. Firstly I think 'that' would have to be 'which' though I can't for the life of me explain why. More importantly, the structure of the sentence means 'that' (or 'which') must relate back to the football itself, not the sight of it -- so you have a sentence which suggests the football causes a horrid taste. Has she eaten it? This is one of the problems you have in your writing, Steve -- you fail to read it back to yourself and think about what it actually says.

Incidentally, in that paragraph, you've made the same mistake with putting a full stop instead of a comma before the speech where you have the attribution coming first.

[SIZE=3][FONT=Calibri]Rebecca took a deep breath and peeked over the hedge. ‘Damn,’ she thought[/FONT][/SIZE]

The full stop is fine, because the 'over the hedge' sentence is separate from the speech-thought and you have 'she thought' following the 'Damn'.

fuming in pain, she hollered. ‘Thomas, keep that damn ball away from me.’

The full stop is wrong because 'Thomas' is what she hollers, so the two sentences have to run on -- the first isn't complete so can't be ended with the stop. You need a comma or a colon.

As to your other post, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns remain what they are no matter where they appear in a sentence, so 'slowly' remains an adverb whether before or after the verb it qualifies. Thanks to the fluidity of the English language, a verb can become an adjective or a noun, and a noun can become a verb but what they are is shown by what they do. Just to recap on what Peter said:

An adverb describes how someone/thing is doing something eg 'quickly'. Usually recognised by '-ly' at the end.

A verb is what the person/thing is doing so is a verb eg 'walking'. The verb comprises the whole of 'to walk' and its tenses 'I walk', 'he walked', 'they will walk'. Verbs are anything which 'do' or 'are', not just in relation to people eg 'the Earth spins' - 'spins' is a verb; 'the TV blared' - 'blared' is a verb.

A noun is a thing eg 'Earth'. In this context people are things, so 'person' is a noun as are things like 'rain', 'sunshine' etc. If 'the' or 'a/an' can go in front of it, then it's probably a noun.

An adjective describes a thing eg what it looks like eg 'beautiful'.

So 'The green adjective grass noun grows verb quickly adverb in this lousy adjective weather noun.'

'Grass' is a thing so is a noun; 'green' describes the thing so is an adjective; 'grows' is what the thing does, so is a verb; 'quickly' is how the verb does it so is an adverb.

Steve, write out these sentences over and over - like writing lines at school. That will help fix them in your mind. Then try changing the example sentence and do it for yourself - with a good dictionary to hand. If you can't decide if a word is an adverb or a verb (and with 'And slowly (verb) is how we perform said doing-word walked (adverb)' you got it completely the wrong way round) then look it up there and then.

I know you say you prefer to know rather than think, but for now, you have to think -- it will only become instinctive when you keep doing it and thinking about it at this point.

J

 

[Ursa major]

I know you say you prefer to know rather than think, but for now, you have to think -- it will only become instinctive when you keep doing it and thinking about it at this point.

I agree.



I vaguely recall a company training course (possibly two decades ago ) where the lecturer talked about the four stages of competence:

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Conscious competence
4. Unconscious competence**

To quote from Wiki (Four stages of competence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia):

1. Unconscious Incompetence The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.
2. Conscious Incompetence Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.
3. Conscious Competence The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.
4. Unconscious Competence The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

Interestingly, the Wiki article then goes on to state:

Natural language is an example of unconscious competence. Not every native speaker who can understand and be understood in a language is competent to teach it. Distinguishing between unconscious competence for performance-only, versus unconscious competence with the ability to teach, the term "kinesthetic competence" is sometimes used for the ability to perform but not to teach, while "theoretic competence" refers to the ability to do both.

** - Which came first: the term, "Unconscious competence", or the phrase "I can do it in my sleep"?

 

[The Judge]

That was interesting, Ursa. I'd never heard of that before. (You obviously went on better training courses than I did!) I wonder, though, whether there is a stage 2(a), where the individual still doesn't understand or know how to do something, but recognises the deficit and is attempting to address it. A kind of conscious unsuccessful-competence.

J

 

[Omphalos]

She walked, considering. > Don’t know. I my head I have set past tense with walked so therefore considering must be past; however, I suspect it is a mix of tense...

This is a mixture of the perfect tense and a gerund

 

[2ndchance]

Okay guys, bare with me please I am consciously aware how frustrating this may be.

Right, I already have the noun /adjective thing sorted, ish.

I realised I had put the verb / adverb the wrong way round before I had time to edit it. This is one of the problems with dyslexia; you see things that aren't there. How can I explain this better? I knew what I wanted to write and had the [slowly adverb / walked verb] set in my head and typed it wrong and then when I read it, it looked right because I knew what I had written, but obviously hadn’t. In essence I skipped over it. Hmmm, I know what I mean.

Now this confuses me...
Just as she’d forgotten about her silly brother, she caught sight of his football hurtling towards her, causing a horrid taste in her mouth.

Surely, this says it is the football hurtling toward her that causes the bad taste. If I had written, she noticed the football, causing the bad taste, then I can see it’s the football which causes the bad taste. So what you are saying if I changed it to which caused the bad taste, it would be the football. This I can see, I think, either way I would have dumped the bad tatse by now as it's clunky.
Anyway, other than that and the full stop before a speech mark in a follow-on sentence, i.e. she hollered, 'Leave me alone.' The rest is correct?

I think I am between 2 and 3 BTW, but I will get there. (semi-unsuccesful) he he
Steve

 

[2ndchance]

Earth to Steve, derr penny drops.

[Ad]verb (adds) to a verb i.e. slowly (adverb) she walked (verb)... Same as [ad]jective (adds) to a noun...

So...

She grimaced, (verb) as she carefully (adverb) walked (verb) slowly, (adverb) on the horrid (adjective) shingle (adjective) beach (noun).
What if the beach was sandy, if it was a lovely sand beach or even a lovely sandy beach, would the sand be a noun and sandy be an adjective? I suspect if I removed the beach, the sand would become a noun, but as it’s followed by a noun, beach, it stays as an adjective.

This is how I have to unravel things and this is what I meant by getting it in my head. Association if you like.

I feel like Eliza Doolittle... By Jove...

Steve

 

[Peter Graham]

Tell me something, if; Slowly Peter walked; is slowly still an adverb if it comes in front of Peter even though it is a doing word, or is a doing word purely frowning - smiling - shouting, i.e. a bodily function? And slowly (verb) is how we perform said doing-word walked (adverb).

Yes - "slowly" is always an adverb in this sentence. It's what the word is rather than where it is placed which is crucial.

English is a largely non-inflected language. What this means in layman's terms is that word order is absolutely crucial in order for something to make sense. Latin, by contrast, is an inflected language, meaning that the words themselves tell you how they are to be read in conjunction with one another.

Examples always help. Let us take the sentence:-

"Mark is in the dining room".

The Latin equivalent would be:-

"Marcus est in triclinium".

But because the ending of "triclinium" as a word can change depending whether you are in the dining room, at the dininng room or by the dining room, the word order of the Latin sentence is totally unimportant. We know from the endings that Marcus is the subject of the sentence and triclinium is the object, so:-

"Triclinium est Marcus in"

means exactly the same thing.

This doesn't work in English, becuase the words themselves don't tell us whether they are objects or subjects or whatever. So:-

"Dining room is Mark in"

looks horrible. At best, it might be read as a Yoda-esque question, which is not actually what we are trying to say.

So where you put "slowly" in your example sentence might affect the meaning, but won't change the fact that "slowly" is a word which amplifies or expands on a "doing" word, which means that it has to be an adverb. The next test for the reader is to work out which verb it attaches to in sentences where there are more than one verb. So as a writer, you can help the reader by putting the adverb as near as possible to the verb it describes. Consider the subtle differences in meaning between these two sentences:-

"Slowly, Peter gouged out the holes and Steve whacked the fence posts in with a sledgehammer."

"Peter gouged out the holes and Steve slowly whacked the fence posts in with a sledgehammer."

In the first example, we are both acting slowly, but in the second, only you are.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Peter

BTW, I hope you have avoided the horrid weather up your way...

Thanks, Steve. We've all had a fun time to a greater or lesser degree. In the local parlance, it's been "a bit rough". The last time things in Cumbria were "a bit rough" was when Bonnie Prince Charlie came prancing through with a horde of claymore-wielding clansmen at his back.

 

[2ndchance]

Thanks Peter,

I am learning my way, quickly I feel.

I have a myriad of tales to tell and the tanicity too, just get this write right, especially my comma issue and bingo. What I do know is I can take you so close to my players you can smell what they had for supper last night, in my case too much coffee. I have actually just been diagnosed with swine-flu. Its just hiting home so I am off for a while and if you dont see much for a few days you'll all know why.

Cough, splutter, need to exit elft<<<

Love and kisses to all, well the gals, pat on the back for the guys, he says with a manly tone...

 

[crystal haven]

I have actually just been diagnosed with swine-flu. Its just hiting home so I am off for a while and if you dont see much for a few days you'll all know why.

Cough, splutter, need to exit elft<<<

Love and kisses to all, well the gals, pat on the back for the guys, he says with a manly tone...

I hope you feel better soon. Swine-flu is not nice.

 

[ventanamist]

Dear all

I felt the urge to throw a little question in here that is either profound or profoundly stupid, depending on your viewpoint. Whatever. I feel that greater minds than mine need to cope with it.

Why isn't science fiction written in the future tense???

PS I'm now nine days into Swine Flu. I feel for you.

 

[2ndchance]

Thanx Vent' I am just coming back to the surface, 8 days in, ouch.

Interesting point you raise. My first attempt at SF was in present tense. For me it kinda suited. Thats said I hadn't noticed any future tense attempts per-se, but then I am dyslexic, so what would I know, my brain only thinks in present and re-writing my 2nd novel in past is like climbing a moutain, a big one at that. Its a plan you should run with, try it, pitch it, and see.

What I do know, is with the help of these here guys, I am getting there, fatser than if I was under my own staem. I believe it's called team work he he.

Hope your feeling better to pal.

Steve

 

[Ursa major]

Ignoring the joke (I know; I too must be ill): Writing narrative in the future tense(s) sounds like an exercise in predestination or prophesy, which (to me) would definitely suit SF less than fantasy. Probably. (Or possibly. )