It was all she could do to...

Narkalui

Narkalui

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Whenever I see this phrase in a book it completely upsets my concentration, interrupts the flow and leaves me screaming in my mind at the author. If I had started a sentence with “It was all he could do to get up,” in a primary school (elementary school) creative writing exercise, my teacher would have circled “It” in red ink and written “What?” in the margin.

And they would have been right too. You can’t use “it” without first defining what “it” is. The fact that the definition of “it” is implied is irrelevant and I think we are talking about lazy writing.

I mean, what sounds better:

“It was all he could do to get up.

Or

“He pushed his hands against the floor and shoved, his arm muscles screaming their protest with sudden white, hot agony.”

Am I wrong? Am I right but making a storm in a tea-cup? Or do you agree?
 
Storm in a teacup.

It is a widely used formation. After all, 'it is a long way to Tipperary' could be rewritten as 'Tipperary is a long way away'. or 'it is difficult to find adequate examples' as 'Good examples are thin on the ground' :D, but the unspecified neuter pronoun isn't all that worrying. Tiis is in no way criticizing your pedantic educator (as a pedant myself, and one who is at present fighting a rear-guard action against comma splices, I sympathise. Rules must be driven in with a heavy hammer - don't worry about over conformity, sloppiness will eliminate that fast enough). Language is alive, and ever-changing, and while pedants are required to slow the process (and a first line of defence against textspeak and extreme geekspeak), maintaining a continuity between generations, rigid obsevance of outmoded rules leads to monstrosities like l'Académie Français and classical Arabic.
 
That's a great line::
Narkalui said:
“He pushed his hands against the floor and shoved, his arm muscles screaming their protest with sudden white, hot agony.”
Click to expand...
However::
Being who I am I would be tempted to follow it up with a summation.
He pushed his hands against the floor and shoved, his arm muscles screaming their protest with sudden white, hot agony. It was all he could do to get up.
 
tinkerdan said:
Being who I am I would be tempted to follow it up with a summation.
He pushed his hands against the floor and shoved, his arm muscles screaming their protest with sudden white, hot agony. It was all he could do to get up.
Click to expand...

In my book that would be fine: you have defined “it.”
 
It’s just me isn’t it? I’m the only person in the world who reads that sentence and screams “THAT IS NOT A SENTENCE! WHAT IS “IT”?”

The panda has well and truly eaten, shot and left ;)
 
I'm not sure how many would vote for that line as an opening line for a book or story.

Chapter 1​

It was all he could do to get up.


Note: There is a question that arises as to whether this conveys what is meant.

What I mean by that is the one could try to unravel it by:
To get up was all he could do. (As though he can't to anything else.)

However they might really mean:
It was a struggle to get up. ( so he couldn't or just barely could do that; however he could still breath and other things.)

However there is still a matter of context.

The fire and smoke overwhelmed the building and he knew he needed to get up. It was all he could to breath.

It was all he could to breath. The fire and smoke overwhelmed the building and he knew he needed to get up.
 
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Narkalui said:
Am I wrong? Am I right but making a storm in a tea-cup? Or do you agree?
Click to expand...

You're right. The phrase is jarring, simply because it is untrue hyperbole 99% of the time it is used. "It was all she could do to get up. But she forced herself to stand, raise her blade, and face her enemy." Well then, it wasn't all she could do, was it?

It's just one of those phrases that has been so overused and misused that it is now in cliché land. "Scrabble for purchase" is another one.
 
Narkalui said:
my teacher would have circled “It” in red ink and written “What?” in the margin.
Click to expand...


Did your English teacher also red-pen A Tale of Two Cities to death?

It's been a long time since I diagrammed sentences (see what I did there?) but I believe there is some connecting doohickey to show that "it" is being defined as "to get up". As in, to get up was all he could do.

But really, it's just a colloquialism either way. Breathe. :D
 
It's Saturday morning and it's grey and wet outside, as I look out of the window.
It's the first time I've seen this question.

You have to expect a certain level of understanding or guesswork from your reader.
Clearly the car is not Saturday morning, nor is my cat grey and wet and outside, even if she is grey.

I did not define above whether I was talking to you Narkalui, or you who have already posted, or you the general public.
Should I be accused of lazy writing for that too?

(P.S. I actually look through the window not out of it.)
 
All he could do was get up, that was it. He made it to his feet, but it was no good. It, whatever it was, was making him dizzy, and as it all went black, it was the end.
 
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