Collings Notes: So You Want to Turn Your Readers Off--Its Easy ...

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So You Want to Turn Your Readers Off--Its' Easy!

There are rules, and there are rules.??????? Some, writers may break or ignore, as I suggested in ?Seven Grammar Rules It is Safe to Ignore?When Needed? (http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2012/09/seven-grammar-rules-it-is-safe-to.html).Others, writers ignore at their peril. Breaking these rules??words to watch,? actually?can carry serious consequences.For about twenty years, I regularly taught Business Communication at Pepperdine, sandwiched with composition courses, literature courses, and Creative Writing. I had the opportunity to speak with presidents of businesses about the importance of writing and particularly of effective writing. Here are a few of the words they identified as crucial.Its,? It?s, and Its?:Confusing these three can be a death warrant in writing. One business leader I spoke with simply said that if these were not used properly on a resume, there was no chance the writer would be invited for an interview. As an editor, I respond much the same way. One misapplied term, and I am willing to accept it in a manuscript as a typo. Another, and I begin to question the writer?s skill. A third, and the manuscript faces major revision and re-writing, at the least.In fact, these words are not complicated, confusing though they might seem.Its is a possessive pronoun: ?The bear raised its snout and growled.? Bear is treated as neuter since its sex is irrelevant in the sentence; and the pronoun referring to it is it. No problem there. The difficulty arises from the fact that in English, almost all possessives require an apostrophe: ?This is the boy?s book.? The apostrophe indicates that letters have been omitted. In this case, the omitted letter(s) actually disappeared centuries ago, when English shifted from being a synthetic language (meaning determined by word-endings; word order in part irrelevant) to being an analytic language (word endings largely irrelevant; meaning determined by word order). Much like Latin, Old English had a number of endings to indicate whether a word functioned as subject, possessive, object, indirect object, etc.; whether it was grammatically masculine or feminine, which had little to do with gender; whether it was singular or plural.Most of these endings have dropped from the language. Most words retain the simple ?s or ?es to indicate plural: tree/trees, box/boxes. We generally do not have endings to differentiate subject from object: ?Mary hit the boy,? ?The boy hit Mary.? Word order alone identifies hitter and hittee.The one place where endings remain is in showing possession. Almost all nouns require the apostrophe, frequently replacing an Anglo-Saxon ?es? ending, as in st?n (the stone) and st?nes (of the stone or the stone?s). The following ?s has nothing to do with plurality; it is a remnant of older two-letter possessive endings. Thus, today we have a kind of linguistic dinosaur in our midst, the possessive apostrophe.Except for one small class of words: pronouns.Pronouns stand for nouns, so one might reasonably assume that they would have similar grammars, including the possessive apostrophe. That assumption leads to the mistake: It?s instead of Its.Actually, the opposite is the case. While nouns are notorious for changing form and meaning over the centuries, the pronouns have remained remarkably stable. And none of them take the possessive apostrophe: my, mine, his, hers, yours, theirs, ours, and?perhaps regrettably, considering the number of writers who seem to wish it different?its. Few writers slip the apostrophe into any of the other possessive pronouns; its seems singled out for that dubious honor.I think the reason is that its compatriot word is more common than those formed by the other pronouns. We do not have contractions for he is or she is, but we do have one for it is?it?s.Therein lies the problem. It?s looks like a possessive noun, even though it is not.? It is a contraction for several phrases: It is, It has, It was. The first is the most common by far, but I?ve seen all three. They all have in common missing letters: the i- in is, the ha- in has, and the wa- in was. In each case, the missing letters and the empty space between the words have been replaced by a non-possessive apostrophe.The best test to make sure whether its or it?s is appropriate is to speak the phrase or sentence containing it aloud, saying ?it is? rather than ?its? or ?it?s?: ?The book is mine. It?s/It is mine, I say!? Makes sense, and the form chosen is correct. ?That is my book. It?s/It is cover is missing??makes no sense, so the form chosen is incorrect and should be replaced with Its.As to the third?Its?. This one is a dead giveaway, since it does not exist in English. It is a fabricated structure that does nothing more than tell readers that the writer has no idea what is going on. I suppose that if one examined it for meaning, it would come closest to being the plural possessive of a singular pronoun; but even if that were somehow intended, the word would have to be spelled Its?s and pronounced ?It-zez.?Back in the bad old days of handwritten essays, I frequently came across a fourth permutation on the words:? It?, with the comma strategically placed over the s, presumably so that I could put it wherever seems most appropriate to me. Fortunately, with computers, that one has pretty much died a well-earned death.The problem with these three is analogous to the difficulty with the It-family. They look pretty much the same; they sound the same; but they mean entirely different things.Their, like its, is a possessive pronoun: ?This my side of the road; that is their side.? As with all possessive pronouns, it never takes an apostrophe, even when it is completed with an ?s: ?This is my side of the road; that is theirs.? One mnemonic device that might be useful is to note the appearance of heir within the word. Both their and heir relate to people.There is an adverb of place: ?He?s searched here and there and still not found his machete.? As the sentence indicates, it is frequently used to define a place further from the speaker than ?here.? And the mnemonic for this word is even simpler than the one for their. There contains here; both refer to place only, not to people.They?re, like It?s, is a contraction, this time for they are or they were. The mnemonic?simply replace the term used with the full phrase they are and see if the sentence makes sense. ?They?re/they are coming at noon? as opposed to ?I will meet you they?re/they are.? The first is meaningful; the second is not.These two are often confused inadvertently, as accidental typos or because they sound quite similar in speech. As with each of the others discussed, however, they can change the meaning of a phrase or sentence if misused.Then is an adverb of time: ?They will meet us then.? The mnemonic is based on the similarity in spelling and pronunciation between then and when. If then can be replaced in a sentence with when, and the result is a grammatically and syntactically proper question, the word has been used correctly. Using the example above: ?They will meet us then? may be transformed into a legitimate question??When will they meet us?? Than is one of those words that can perform several functions. It is most commonly misused, however, when it appears in comparisons: ?The whole is greater than the sum of its parts? often becomes ?The whole is greater then the sum of its parts,? a sequence of words that makes no sense. Again, in spoken language, then and than would generally sound almost identical in these examples, and that similarity carries over into written language, causing the error. There is a mnemonic for than, although it is less direct than most of the ones suggested so far. The principle indicator of comparisons in English is as, in phrases such as ?as far as,? ?as much as,? ?as rich as?.? Both as and than are comparators?and both contain the letter a. Not very witty perhaps, but it sometimes helps writers remember. The prime difficulty with these two words is conceptual rather than grammatical; they frequently appear where they simply have no justification for appearing. Usually, the sentences in question are truncated attempts at definition.?What is freedom?? someone asks, and most common answers begin either ?Freedom is where?? or ?Freedom is when?.? Actually, freedom is neither when nor where. When and where, in this context, denote either ?time when? or ?place where,? and freedom is defined by neither. In fact, the more accurate definition would begin, ?Freedom is a state of being in which?.?We find much the same kind of misuse when writers approach generalizations and idealizations. ?Democracy is when,? or ?Democracy is where?; actually, democracy is a form of government in which?.?What looks to be a rather wordy, certainly more formal statement, is necessarily so to complete a valid definition. When and where are not designed to do the job. The key to effective usage: Remember that when and where rarely do other than what they claim. When tells time: ?When should we meet?? ?Meet me at ten o?clock.?Where tells place: ?Where should we meet?? ?At the corner of Fifth and Main.?The proper phrase is two words: ?All right.? It is adverbial, indicating something about the accompanying verb: ?All right, the genetically-engineered slime monster is dead!? The trick is that this form finds itself most at home in formal prose, in edited writings that attempt to present the speaker at his/her best.When writing dialogue, however, writers frequently slip into a secondary spelling, alright. The spelling is little more than a century old, developed most probably by analogue with similar-looking words: altogether, albeit, already. In a sense, this is the preferable form for certain moments in dialogue, since we can more easily envision the victorious monster-slayer stabbing the air with a fist and screaming, ?Alright!??probably pronounced more like awwright?than we can imagine the same person, rather finically enunciating two words.One of these phrases is possible in English; the other is not. Formally, a lot may indicate a vacant stretch or land or a place where one might buy a Christmas tree or a used car. Informally, it may indicate a superfluity, an excess. Alot, on the other hand, does not exist, except in weak or careless writing.There is no mnemonic here. Just never use alot.English can be tricky. Any number of words come with baggage that makes them difficult. The words discussed here are? not particularly cumbersome or unusual; in fact, their commonness and the frequency with which they appear are in part underlying causes of the problems they create. Fortunately, a little thought, a bit of careful proofreading, and most of the false starts can be easily removed.It?s easy?more or less.Michael R. Collings is the Senior Publications Editor for JournalStone Publishing; an Emeritus professor of English from Pepperdine University; author of the best-selling horror novels The Slab and The House Beyond the Hill, as well as other novels and collections of short fiction, poetry, and literary essays; and an inveterate fan of all things grammatical and syntactical. His writing are available here, at starshineandshadows.com, at journalstone.com, and at hellnotes.com.

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Source: http://michaelrcollings.blogspot.com/2012/09/so-you-want-to-turn-your-readers-off.html

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