Grammar and vocabulary

[Teresa Edgerton]

Why? Because they have internalized the rules to the point where they don't have to think about them, nor do they interrupt the spontaneous flow of eloquence. Only those who have not bothered to learn grammar, who must struggle with it, find that it impedes them.

'm not quite sure about the source of the outrage here. I apologise if I have caused offence.

Not outrage, just a statement of fact. I've been working with new writers for a long time. I've heard all the rationalizations. I know how much they are worth, and I am long past falling for them. If you choose to interpret that as outrage, then there is nothing I can say without bending the facts as I know them.

Besides, considering you've been saying that words mean something different for everyone, I wonder if I can ever know what you really mean by that word, or how we can communicate at all.

Quote:
And yes, "clown" and "jester" can be used interchangeably, despite the undertones each one has.

For me, the over- or undertones are a crucial part of the impression a word creates, thus differing tones can't produce the same effect. Any more than substituting a clarinet for an oboe in an orchestral piece gives the same effect.

But this is exactly what you learn by consulting any halfway decent dictionary: the alternate meanings for a word, and all the nuances they imply.

The are very lax in the way they teach grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary in schools these days (and don't get me started on spelling). I think communication has suffered as a result.

It's unfortunate that we disagree: those people who hold your views won't enjoy my style at all. I like it as as it is, and I think one is cursed to produce writing of the form one enjoys. If I like one option better than another, how can I polish my script by selecting the version I like less?

Pardon me for saying that I've heard that one, too, many times. What you should want to do is present the very best and most polished version of your own personal style. You should work at it until it is not only representative of what you want to write, but it is the best representative. If you make a commitment to do that and you carry it through, you will end up with a version you like more, not less., because it is truer to what you meant in the first place.

 

[slack]

Maybe you are just growing as a writer, Percival -- developing more into an artist than just one who puts words together. None of your earlier examples struck me as anything out of the ordinary. It sounds like you are just developing a greater appreciation for the meanings of words -- their (explicit) denotation and (implicit) connotation. This is great, it means you are developing a sensitivity to the ways words are used -- something all great writers do.

Grammar is a very baseline critique. It's very black and white in a world with millions of colors. Once a certain mastery has been attained -- and you'll know when because your readers won't any longer stumble over your words, but focus on the story instead -- then grammar sort of becomes like workable clay, in my opinion. The point is not to see yourself handcuffed to these rules, but to see the possibilities within them. When you get down to it, punctuation is nothing more than rhythm instruction. It is a visual clue as to how the rhythm of the sentence and the music of the words is to be heard.

 

[Percival]

Not outrage, just a statement of fact. I've been working with new writers for a long time. I've heard all the rationalizations. I know how much they are worth, and I am long past falling for them. If you choose to interpret that as outrage, then there is nothing I can say without bending the facts as I know them.

I think my problem is essentially that I can write grammatically. I have written a great deal of material of various kinds. I read a great deal. Whilst I have not had a formal education in grammar, I am far from illiterate. It isn't difficult for me to produce "correct" material (I admit, I had to learn the details of proper speech punctuation again when I came to write my book, but as far as I know that's the limit of my "accidental" problems).

For the most part, I know the rules. I appreciate that everyone thinks they do, and perhaps everyone says they do, and perhaps its a common obfuscation to claim "unique style". I wouldn't know. I've never edited anything except academic papers.

However, I wasn't posting in response to a bad edit from a reviewer. I was interested in the question: suppose I write in a fashion that I know breaks some of the rules, how much will it bother you as a reader?

It seems clear that it will bother you personally a great deal. And that you feel that the question should never be asked. Perhaps it is arrogance that makes me think I can bend the rules to suit my fancy, perhaps I merely took to heart the adage about making something you love. I don't know that this is germane.

But this is exactly what you learn by consulting any halfway decent dictionary: the alternate meanings for a word, and all the nuances they imply.

I'm sorry, I strongly disagree. I don't mean to string this out, but the nuances cannot be captured by a dictionary. It would take far too much space. And yes, I do have good dictionaries, but to be honest I seldom open them. I know what kind of information is inside, and if I need to consult a dictionary, I'm probably reaching beyond my comfortable vocabulary into something forced. That's my opinion.

The are very lax in the way they teach grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary in schools these days (and don't get me started on spelling). I think communication has suffered as a result.

I don't disagree.

Pardon me for saying that I've heard that one, too, many times. What you should want to do is present the very best and most polished version of your own personal style. You should work at it until it is not only representative of what you want to write, but it is the best representative. If you make a commitment to do that and you carry it through, you will end up with a version you like more, not less., because it is truer to what you meant in the first place.

I don't think I can disagree with the words you have here. It seems sound advice, and indeed it is a path I'm continuing to follow. The implication that bending the rules cannot be a part of that style is I think one I'm going to leave alone. We have beaten this to death.

 

[hopewrites]

Reading this I am reminded strongly of the argument my mother has with all beginning Jazz musicians who happen to whine in her presence about having to learn the most detalied and obscure rules of music theory.
Forgive me the off-topic sounding beginning to my post, but i hope you will see its relevance by quite soon. I only understand the rules of the English language as I can liken them to rules I already understand from various fields in my life; music being the greatest of these.
Percival please don't take offense when i compare the writing you propose to Jazz, what i understand you to be pleading for is the same "expression" at the expense of standard rules that is the essence of Jazz. At the same time i can definitely see the validity of everyone else's argument that the rules must be learned (I am in the laboriously frustrating process of learning the rules myself). Because as my mother so eloquently puts it "How can you possibly break the rules with beauty, if you don't know what they are. Sure you can stand up there and play what ever you feel in the moment, but you'll never be truly great (and here she does some name dropping that always makes the burgeoning Jazz musician blanch because it proves she knows what she is talking about) with out learning the rules just like they did. You have to know how what your feeling applies to the rules you are breaking."
I haven't even got a pebble to trip on when it comes to throwing grammar stones, I actually came to this thread in the hopes of learning some estoic grammar secrets. But I need to learn some grammatical jargon first apparently. Please carry on while I get my dictionary to find out what is being discussed, I'm interested to see how it all shakes out in the end.

 

[Ashcroft]

I was interested in the question: suppose I write in a fashion that I know breaks some of the rules, how much will it bother you as a reader?

It won't! All I care about as a reader is that the visual image portrayed by a sentence is both coherent and interesting; I don't want to have to struggle to understand the picture the author's words (or grammar) are trying to paint, and thus I'll quickly abandon a book that's making me do so. Experimental or deviant uses of grammar are absolutely A-OK -- as long as they're adding to the visual image produced, and not merely forcing me to work harder to discern that image.

Vis-a-vis the perceived hostility in this thread, some of the comments here came across as hostile (or at least condescending) in tone to me too. I think a lot of writers (and editors especially) are likely to get quite irritated with post-modernist text -- they see it as an attempt to flaunt the rules, that they've worked hard to learn, whilst dressing up this lazy approach to writing as revolutionary (think akin to the shoddy Tracey Emin 'art' which hides its lack of skill behind faux intellectualism). However, from reading what you've posted here, I don't think that's what you're doing at all.

I'd welcome your stuff in the critique threads as I'd love to get a look at how it works in depth.

And yes, "clown" and "jester" can be used interchangeably, despite the undertones each one has. "Jester" isn't really used much anymore, true, but its verbal cousin, "jest" is still used heavily today and "jester" can still apply. And beyond the point, you can set into certain genres of writing in which both terms can be accepted.

I've got to disagree here. For me, writing (and reading others' works) is all about the visual images the use of grammar and words conjures up. Jester conjures up the image of one whose comedy ranges between acting the fool and telling jokes; a court jester. Clown conjures up the image of one whose comedy is solely slapstick; a circus clown. I think the connotations of a word are, frankly, the most important reason to chose one word over its synonyms.

Also-I don't know how old you are, but I'm only 25, and I was taught proper grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and punctuation throughout my entire school career, so when you say "I don't know if they teach grammar in school ANYMORE" I'm wondering if you're just fresh out of high school or even younger....just a curiosity.

Maybe you went to a pretty decent school, but I went to a pretty representative inner-city comprehensive school (state highschool, for US readers) and I certainly wasn't ever taught any grammar. That's not hyperbolic, however ridiculous it may sound.

Unfortunately, teaching and syllabi in the UK are abysmal; teachers teach classes of thirty-odd pupils and do so more in the manner of a begrudging jail warden than a scholar. English language classes will typically focus on spoken English (and even then it'll be more about successful public orating than an attempt to teach proper sentence construction), and when they deviate from that course it'll almost always be in the form of a small lecture on what words like 'syntax' mean (without ever explaining, in any depth, the concepts the words describe).

Just to give a quick snapshot of how awful the UK state educational system is these days, I was 'diagnosed' as dyslexic at year two of primary education; within six months with a private English language tutor I was both reading and writing at a year six level. Simply put, the UK education system is a joke.

 

[Hex]

About schools: I went to an excellent school, and I'm a long (*) way past 25. My parents (and husband) are specialists in linguistics -- actually, my husband's PhD thesis was on punctuation, about the way that commas change people's responses to sentences.

The only piece of grammar I was taught at school was using quotation marks, all the rest we were expected to somehow absorb through reading and use.

I've had a lot of formal education -- years and years post-school -- and I am still a bit uncertain about aspects of grammar. You're very lucky, Karn, to have had such an excellent grounding in grammar etc, and I'm very jealous.

(*) and currently have a love affair with using italics for emphasis.

 

[HareBrain]

I've got to disagree here. For me, writing (and reading others' works) is all about the visual images the use of grammar and words conjures up. Jester conjures up the image of one whose comedy ranges between acting the fool and telling jokes; a court jester. Clown conjures up the image of one whose comedy is solely slapstick; a circus clown. I think the connotations of a word are, frankly, the most important reason to chose one word over its synonyms.

I agree, but connotations (which, as someone said, aren't often found in dictionaries) can vary widely from person to person, because of the contexts in which they've come across those words before. It's a joy when they match up exactly, because the author can trigger a complex response in the reader through just a few perfectly chosen words. At other times, even with the same author and reader, the image can fall flat because the connotations aren't shared. To some extent you just have to accept that you'll never have a 100% strike rate, but it's good to get a variety of test-readers to look at your work to find out if some images/connotations are particularly individual to you as a writer.

With the "reptilian" example above, it worked OK for me -- or at least, I could see what it was doing -- because I associate the word "reptilian" more with dinosaurs than modern animals -- or at least in the context of a castle I do. Someone who never had an interest in dinosaurs might go "huh?" because most modern reptiles are low to the ground and pretty small.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I agree, but connotations (which, as someone said, aren't often found in dictionaries)

They are in good dictionaries, and I don't just mean the OED. I believe every writer should have a good dictionary sitting on or near his or her desk.

I've read a number of novels that are very experimental this month, the author broke so many rules there is no use even trying to count them, and none of it mattered because he knew what he was doing. Whether he had learned the rules in any formal setting, or whether he had developed his own intuition, he made it work. One reason was that his word choices were always spot-on. So was his grammar. They pulled me through many a thicket of plot and characterization.

He built his fantastical structure (and it was bizarre and wonderful) on a solid foundation.

 

[Hex]

They are in good dictionaries, and I don't just mean the OED. I believe every writer should have a good dictionary sitting on or near his or her desk.

I ought to second that (although I don't actually have a dictionary right here). I was writing up my PhD thesis before I learned that 'attackative' wasn't a word... (a family friend had coined it when we were all kids, and everyone used it, so I thought it was just a normal word until my supervisor pointed out it was made up. Ahem)

And I'll keep my mouth shut on the number of times I have to look up affect/ effect to make sure I'm using the right one. Not that you need a decent dictionary for that.

I just looked up reptile/ reptilian in the (compact) OED (which is the best dictionary we have) and was interested to discover that most of the entries are to do with grovelling or crawling (although there are a few relating to being menacing). In my head, the reptilian castle was large and hunched and scaly (not actually scaly but with a pattern giving the effect of scales). I don't know what to do with that piece of information now I have it.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

My dictionary is in the downstairs toilet lol I use the OED online though - which includes connatations, usage and origins of words.

I guess it depends why you write. I write to communicate a story to as many people as I can. That requires it to be understandable. Grammar, and clear description are part of that.

As a reader I don't mind learning new words but I want it to be obvious from the context. Nothing bugs me more than having to spend an entire novel being dragged out of a novel to run for a dictionary to check out a word. Personally I don't like to stop and read a description several times until I understand it.

So I am not going to write that way. It isn't that I don't read challenging language I love Burns, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Grassic Gibbon, Beowulf etc but it took getting used to their language to be able to read the stories.

 

[Hex]

So... at the risk of sounding weird and arrogant. Maybe this is a stages-of-writing thing, like reading grammar books and how-to books? I think slack suggested something similar up above (edited to say: argh! I'm not suggesting slack is weird and arrogant -- he wasn't talking about himself. And now I'm tying myself in knots: I'm not suggesting anyone is weird and arrogant, just that I'm worried about sounding... gah.).

I do not currently write with a dictionary because I rarely leave my own cosy little language comfort zone. I know what all the words I use mean, and on the rare occasion when I don't I'll go and look it up. But but but... at the stage I am in writing, the words that make me go 'oooh' are words I'm confident with and happy about using.

I expect this will change because almost everyone on this thread has been writing for a lot longer than I have, and they know a lot more about the process. I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I've only been writing about 20 months. February 2010 before that I had done academic work but that ended in 1997. I had never wanted to be a writer, but one day I wrote some words under a doodle. A month later the words had become about 70 Pukka Pads and a rather rubbish novel.

I have no desire to write literary fiction, but I do experiment with my punctuation when an unusual situation occurs in my fantasy stories, and it is always with the goal of making it more understandable or clearer rather than just experimentation.

 

[JunkMonkey]

See, I don't think "reptilian" will work when describing a building; is it made of lizard skin? Is it a giant serpent? Words such as "reptilian" can be used to describe people very well, as they can have such qualities, but I don't think buildings do.

I beg to differ many of Antoni Gaudí's buildings are very reptilian, some of the roofs explicitly so.

 

[Phoenixthewriter]

Lol, nice Junkmonkey. Of course, unless we had a prior image/description to work off as a reader, I doubt we'd imagine that specifically given those few words.

Good find though. I can't believe something like that exists.

 

[slack]

So... at the risk of sounding weird and arrogant. Maybe this is a stages-of-writing thing, like reading grammar books and how-to books? I think slack suggested something similar up above (edited to say: argh! I'm not suggesting slack is weird and arrogant -- he wasn't talking about himself. And now I'm tying myself in knots: I'm not suggesting anyone is weird and arrogant, just that I'm worried about sounding... gah.).

It's okay, Hex. I am weird and arrogant.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Lol, nice Junkmonkey. Of course, unless we had a prior image/description to work off as a reader, I doubt we'd imagine that specifically given those few words.

Exactly. And, I tend to have a fairly literal mind when it comes to descriptions, simply because I try to avoid confusing readers.

 

[Hex]

It's okay, Hex. I am weird and arrogant.

But in such a great way.

(I won't dig myself any deeper by saying that's not what I meant, because then I might break the full-stop key on my keyboard and that would be catastrophic in grammatical terms)

 

[hopewrites]

I pictured something along these lines, until the word "squat" was mentioned then i kept the texture and darkness and made it more traditional castle shaped with a wall snaking out the back end into a mountain side.
its interesting to me that we all came up with different visuals for the "reptilian castle" as well as for the "jester" and the "clown" (for me jester has a more sinister connotation, someone who manipulates others while playing at being nice, where as a clown just doesn't know when to stop goofing off) which only goes to prove that while words have generally accepted meanings and connotations they also have personal meanings and connotations, which is what makes discussing books with others who read them so much fun.
I for one am always forgetting that Lucy Pevensie has dark hair, because as a child i wanted to picture her as much like myself as possible, and at the time my hair was sunshine blond. So even if you do your best as a writer to make things clear, you might end up with a reader who goes and rearranges them in their mind to suit themselves.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I spotted in the Critiques section that comma splices, something I'd never even heard of, are flagged up as serious grammar errors. (They don't teach grammar in school any longer, at least they didn't in mine.) I was quite taken aback.

I totally emphathise with this - we were taught a little grammar in primary school (around age 8-10) but afterwards the educational focus was on creativity, not grammar.

The result is that as an aspiring I'm lacking confidence on potential grammatical issues of my own works. While I've read widely, and have Strunks, the bottom line is that any writing to be submitted seriously for commercial publication must observe current publishing standards, which means an acceptable standard of grammatical precision.

My approach is therefore to do the best I can, but would plan to get an line editor in to cover any piece before I seriously considered submission to an agent - as it's very important to make a good impression quickly.

Chronicles members such as Teresa Edgerton and John Jarrold offer editing services, so if anyone lacks confidence with grammar I would personally recommend use an editor before submission to ensure full confidence in their MSS.

2c.

 

[Pyan]

I for one am always forgetting that Lucy Pevensie has dark hair, because as a child i wanted to picture her as much like myself as possible, and at the time my hair was sunshine blond. So even if you do your best as a writer to make things clear, you might end up with a reader who goes and rearranges them in their mind to suit themselves.

Um - Lucy Pevensie has got golden hair:

But as for Lucy, she was always gay and golden-haired, and all princes in those parts desired her to be their Queen, and her own people called her Queen Lucy the Valiant.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Ch 17

So you were right to picture her in your own image all along...