Placement of modifiers (12)

Careless placement of modifiers is a frequent cause of unclear (and annoying) writing. Don’t make your readers rely on interpretation or guesswork.

Example of the careless placement of a modifier

An article about the 2009-2010 Toyota recalls contains this paragraph:

“Now, the agents of the government, which controls GM, are publicly castigating Toyota in an attempt to smear the company and increase their own profitability. As a direct competitor with Toyota by way of involvement with GM, the assault against Toyota represents one of the most public conflicts of interests the business world has experienced.” (Boldface added.)

Critique of the example

The reader may correctly guess that “As a direct competitor with Toyota by way of involvement with GM” is a prepositional phrase acting as an adverb and modifying the verb represents. The reader also may correctly guess that the preposition as at the beginning of the prepositional phrase probably means “in the role of” and therefore must refer to a person or group of persons, specifically the person or group of persons that represents. But this person or group of persons is not present in the sentence; the subject of the verb represents is the word assault.

If the reader is persistent, he may look back and guess that the preposition as probably refers to government, which is a group of persons and could logically and grammatically be the subject of the verb represents.

The second sentence should have been something like this:

Because the government is a direct competitor with Toyota by way of involvement with GM, its assault on Toyota is a conflict of interest.

The Takeaway: Place every modifier carefully. When a modifier is a phrase, construct the phrase carefully. Making your readers work harder to read a sentence than you worked to write it is indolent and rude. Your readers may resent you for it.

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Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing

Here are a few thought-provoking quotations of general interest to writers.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
~ George Orwell

“It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pictured)

“Simple illiteracy is no basis for linguistic evolution.”
~ Dwight MacDonald

The Takeaway: Keep an open mind. Have a great day.

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Straight talk: an example (6) – John Randolph of Roanoke

For educational purposes, we writers should occasionally read or listen to an example of straight talk. It doesn’t matter whether we agree or disagree with the content – what matters is the expression. Reading or hearing straight talk can help make us more aware of the evasive diction that besets us every day.

Example

John Randolph (1773-1833), known as John Randolph of Roanoke, was a United States Senator from Virginia, 1825-1827.

In 1826, Senator Randolph said this of John Quincy Adams, then United States President:

“It is my duty to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration... They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted... deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring.”

Another Example

Here is a better-known example of straight talk from a senator. Thomas Gore, a blind man, was a United States Senator from Oklahoma, 1907-1921 and 1931-1937. He was the maternal grandfather of author Gore Vidal.

In early 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt was secretly planning to repudiate the U.S. Government’s promises to pay its bills in gold. When Senator Gore heard of the plan, he said, “Well, that’s just plain stealing, isn’t it, Mr. President?”

The Takeaway: Many of us are startled when we read or hear straight talk. We react this way because we have been habituated to euphemistical, effete, evasive diction. I advise you to occasionally read or listen to some straight talk. By contrast, it will help you remain consciously aware of evasiveness – and therefore less likely to unconsciously absorb and imitate evasive diction.

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Your customers want clarity

Clarity – clear and honest communication – can be your secret weapon in business. Why? Because your customers really want it, and your competitors don’t deliver it. Heck, your competitors may never have heard of it.

In other words, you can stand out just by acting a little more human than a bunch of stuffed shirts.

Author Daniel H. Pink (pictured) tells more in a superb opinion piece in last Sunday’s Telegraph (UK), drawing on software entrepreneur Jason Fried. Both men are incisive observers of language.

Mr. Pink writes:

Not too long ago, Fried saw [an accident] in a Chicago cafe. A woman had just purchased a large cup of coffee. On the way to sit down, she tripped, and spilled the entire contents all over another customer.

Here’s what she said: “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“If someone is really, truly sorry,” says Fried, “that’s how they respond.”

But in business we rarely talk like that. Instead, we resort to a weird and inadvertent bilingualism. We speak human at home and “professionalese” at work. And that might be hurting our businesses more than we realise.

[Consider] that all-too-common phrase: “We apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused.” Would you say that to your daughter when you were late picking her up from football practice?

Later in the piece, Mr. Pink quotes Mr. Fried again: “The real winners in business are going to be the clear companies. Clarity is what everybody really wants and appreciates.”

I urge you to read the entire piece. It could inspire you to deliver (or more frequently deliver) what your customers really want.

The Takeaway: Write and talk naturally in business, as you do in your private life. Natural, clear language will surprise and delight your customers. If your corporate lawyers want to convert your language into “professionalese,” ignore them.

See disclaimer.

Update, later the same day: My browser, Mozilla Firefox, crashed. It had never happened before, so I was seeing the error message for the first time. It began, "We're Sorry." Good show, Mozilla!

Concise writing is usually clear writing (14) – Joseph Mitchell

Here’s another good example of clear, concise writing. It’s a selection from My Ears Are Bent (1938), by the late Joseph Mitchell (pictured). Using only 339 words, he tells us a great deal about the career and personality of a New York pickpocket.

Harry Lewis, an unobtrusive, well-mannered fellow from the Lower East Side, has been one of the country’s most accomplished pickpockets for thirty-five years. Frequenting such places as theatre lobbies, rush-hour subways, and skyscraper elevators at noon, he has slyly pulled wallets from thousands of pockets. He has worked in many Eastern cities and a “yellow slip” at Police Headquarters shows that he has been arrested at least fifty-three times; the slip is by no means complete.

He is forty-eight years old and he looks years younger, despite the fact that he is almost completely bald. The terse slip shows that he has worked under six aliases. The first time he was arrested he called himself Noah Berns. That was in 1901, and he was charged with being an incorrigible child. The last time he was arrested he called himself Harry Lewis. On this occasion he was standing in a hallway of the National Broadcasting Company’s studio on the eight floor of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. At the time of his arrest, according to the complaint, he “has his left hand in the left trouser pocket of an unknown man.” The charge was jostling.

A court stenographer telephoned me about Lewis. He said he thought Lewis was “unusually bright for a pickpocket.” I went up to talk with the pickpocket in the Seventh District Jail, a grimy structure beneath the Sixth Avenue elevated tracks at 317 West Fifty-third Street. Lewis was in a cell, waiting to be sentenced. When he was taken before Magistrate Michael A. Ford in West Side Court he refused to say anything except, “I guess I’m guilty.” In his cell he had two tattered wild west magazines and four packages of cigarettes. The stenographer said that when the jailer came to take him out of his cell to stand before the judge, he turned down a page in one of the wild west magazines to mark his place. After putting in his guilty plea he went back to his cell and resumed his reading.

The Takeaway: To improve the clarity of your writing, spend at least ten minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly. You will see, hear and feel the stark contrast between careful, grown-up diction and the careless, infantile diction that besets us every day. If you would like a list of recommended writers and works, please email me at joeroy(at)joeroy(dot)com. Ask for my “List of Writers to Absorb.” I will respond via email.

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