The Right Tool

A while back I came across the word "brisance" in a manuscript. I was not familiar with the word, nor did the context supply enough information for me to know, so I looked it up in the dictionary closest to hand. "Brisance" was not to be found; nor did I find a word similar enough that made sense in the context for me to believe it was a typographical error. (Digital dictionaries make that sort of search so much easier than they were in the Grammopticon's ill-spent youth.) On to Google. (Another modern miracle.) There I learned that "brisance" is the measure of destructive power of an explosive, specifically its shattering power: how quickly it achieves maximum pressure to form a shock wave that will shatter or fragment materials that come in contact with the propagating wave. Very precise. Very useful if one is discussing the fine points of explosives. I don't expect to be using it in conversation often.

I don't expect to be hearing or reading it often, either. I don't spend much time on the finer points of intentional destruction. (The Grammopticon may occasionally terrify, but she is not a terrorist.) 

Should the author, then, have used a different word? I did, after all, stop reading the book to go on a search for the word. Did that serve the author's storytelling intent?

This is the tension every writer must occasionally address, whether writing novels, technical manuals, or emails to Aunt Sadie. Who is your audience and what may you assume?

In this case I do think the author used the right word. Although I may not know much about weapons of mass destruction, the character did, and was assessing whether he had the right tool for the (destructive) job at hand. Moreover, it was one unfamiliar (to me, at least) word within a paragraph in which the character considered other, more familiar attributes of explosives. Were I not the Grammopticon, I might just as easily let the unfamiliar word slide past without stopping to question its meaning and still grasped what was going on. And if I were a reader knowledgeable in the use of explosives (perhaps an Iraq War veteran, in which case the information might have been both essential and vivid), I would have trusted the author and believed fully in his character--the man clearly knows what he's talking about. In this case using "brisance" served the author's storytelling intent just fine.

But look again at the reasons I agree:

• It was appropriate to the context.
• The reader could follow the story without understanding it.
• It added verisimilitude.

Using the unfamiliar word wasn't just okay: it improved the text. It demostrated persuasively that the character has technical knowledge of explosives (at least exceeding that of the Grammopticon). It was a case of superb word choice: the word conveyed meaning precisely while also conveying something about the character.

One can use words that are likely to be unfamiliar to your audience to serve a number of purposes.

• To convey expertise
• To teach
• To flummox

In the case above, the author clearly conveyed expertise: that of his fictional character, and the author's own knowledge of the subject at hand. It made for a better book.

One often learns new words by seeing them in context. An author writing for young people might use a word his or her audience is unlikely to have encountered, with the hope that the readers will learn from the context (or from looking it up) what it means. Lemony Snicket does this masterfully. No matter how old you are, you might pick up some new vocabulary from the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Had I found "brisance" in a nonfiction book about explosives, I would likely have learned the meaning there because the author intended me to learn it, along with a lot of other things about explosives.

As for flummoxing or confusing your readers, well, there might be a place for that now and again--perhaps if the point is that something is confusing or incomprehensible. If your real point, however, is to prove that you're smarter than other people, well, you may or may not succeed at demonstrating that. You will definitely prove yourself to be an ass. That's valuable: it saves the rest of us the trouble.

P.S. I will Google "brisance" in a few days to see how many people read this and then found uses for their new vocabulary word.

Capital Idea

We do like our initial caps, don't we. (No question mark: it's a statement, not a question.) Despite abandoning them completely in texts and assorted other informal communication, so many people still feel the need to overuse them in more formal writing. (Perhaps not having used one's minimum daily requirement of capitals because of all those tweets and texts, one feels the urge to spend them before they expire. Fear not. They don't go bad.)

Although, as with all things Grammopticonical, there are nuances and special cases, I feel safe supplying a few guidelines.

Remember proper nouns? The nouns that refer to a specific instance of something as its name? Like Dubuque, Iowa (a specific instance of town, to wit, the one in Iowa that is named Dubuque), or Grammopticon (a specific instance of grammar blogger, not to be confused with Grammar Girl or your aunt the English teacher who lives in Dubuque).

Proper nouns are names. They get an initial cap. Dubuque and Grammopticon and the Parthenon and Suzy Snowflake.

Titles of works generally get initial caps (though there are matters of style at work here--but that can be a conversation for another day). The Sun Also Rises. The Great Gatsby. Transformers 2. (Note that I said "works," not "works of art.")

Trademarked product names should be capitalized. (There is an entire association dedicated to reminding you of that, not least because brand names that become commonly used to mean that type of product can lose their protection. Did you know that aspirin used to be a specific brand of acetylsalicylic acid pain reliever? No, of course you didn't. But now you do. Trot that one out the next time conversation flags at a party.) So one should write Kleenex, because that is a brand of tissue. 

However, if a product name is not capitalized, or is capitalized in an unusual way (I'm looking at you, iPhone, iPad, and all the rest of the iDevices), one should follow the style of that product's name. Same, for that matter, for personal names: we call people what they want to be called. Examples include the poet e. e. cummings. You would, however, cap the first e if it appeared at the beginning of a sentence. Similarly, iPhone used at the beginning of a sentence should have a capital I. In both those cases, that's going to look weird. Solution: Rephrase so the problematic name doesn't appear as the first word in the sentence. See what you nonconformists are making us do?

When does one capitalize job titles? This is a frequent source of confusion. Generally, a job is generic--not capitalized. However, if it is used as part of a person's name (Senator Jane Doe, President Smith, Dr. Jones), one caps it. One would also cap it if it's being used in direct address: "Senator Doe, what's your opinion on this?" However, when the title is used descriptively, it is not capitalized: "Jane Doe, the senator from Alabama, stated her opposition to the abuse of capital letters. Mary Jones, a doctor of literature, lauded her stance."

Family relationships work the same way (in terms of capitalization, at least; I cannot comment on your family relationships and their resemblance to job titles). One capitalizes when using the title as part of a name or entirely in place of a name ("Hey, Dad, pick up the phone. It's Aunt Matilda.") or in direct address ("Hi, Aunt Matilda!"). One does not, however, cap when using the relationship descriptively or generically. How do you know it's being used that way? The presence of a possessive is a good clue.: your mom, his dad, my aunt Matilda. Easy-peasy.

This is hardly a comprehensive list of situations in which one does or doesn't use initial caps. But I have to save something for future blog posts.

Take a Peek at This Peak, or I'll be Piqued

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Or at least three (oft confused) words.

PEEK: sneak a look
Polonius peeked at Hamlet from behind the curtain.
Let me take a peek at your Shakespeare paper, so I know what happens next in the play.

PEAK: pinnacle
The action of the play peaks with a duel.
Meet me at the peak of Mount Trashmore, and I'll give you my paper.

PIQUE: excite (verb) or anger (noun)
My interest was piqued right at the beginning, when the ghost appeared.
I know this will cause you a fit of pique, but I won't share my paper.

So there.

Blaming the Victim

We have a word for "sad." That word is "sad." Why is it then that so many deaths or other saddening events in the news are deemed "tragic"? Is "sad" no longer sufficient to express the pain of loss before its time? ("Sad" serves the purpose just fine. On learning of the recent death of our cat, my vet left us a voicemail message in which he said, "I'm sad." Simple. Effective. It made us cry all over again.)

Although it is increasingly coming to be used this way, "tragic" is not simply a longer (and more hackneyed) synonym for "sad." Tragedies are plays in which the hero comes to a bad end as a result of a flaw in his or her (mostly his; we're not talking modern drama here) character. Think, for example, of Hamlet, in which almost everyone ends up dead as a result of greed, schemes, arrogance, envy, and an assortment of other sins. Tragedies are sad, but they had it coming.

Meantime, in search of a stronger word for "sad" ("very sad" apparently not doing the trick), virtually every television news story is deemed "tragic." It does capture, by way of its theatrical origin, the drama--in some cases melodrama--the program is intended to evoke.

But "tragic" is not the right word, in my view, for the Tucson shootings, for example. The murder of a bright nine-year-old who wanted to meet her congresswoman is heartrending, infuriating, and deeply saddening. The story of the man who died shielding his wife from the assailant's bullets is poignant and sorrowful. The families, friends, and neighbors of Representative Giffords and all of the other victims are no doubt anguished and devastated. The fact that people were cut down so easily in the course of exercising their rights under our laws is terrifying and deplorable to all of us.

You see? Our language has plenty of words to encompass these events with power and precision. There is no need to abuse the word "tragic" with constant use for everything from a runaway dog to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. Moreover, given the origin and meaning of the word, tragedy leaves a bad taste in my mouth in these situations, with its lingering sense of blaming the victim. Better to use our words to be clear about feelings and cautious about blame.

Caffeinate Your Sentence in Five Easy Steps

As we said in our Back to Basics posts, a sentence is a tiny story. Like any story, it can be well told or it can be meandering and dull. A key to making your sentences good stories--communicating effectively--is choosing the right words.

The action takes place in the verb. Think of the verb as a strong cup of good coffee: it should be full of flavor (not overroasted or watered-down swill) with a jolt of caffeine to keep things moving. To keep sentences lively and action-packed, use verbs well. Make them the gourmet coffee of your sentence. Here are five tips:

Choose the Right Verb

There are many ways to say one thing in English; each carries distinct shades of meaning. Pack maximum meaning into each word and you'll keep the pace of your sentence brisk.

Speaking of a brisk pace, let's take a walk. How shall we walk?

walk
saunter
march
perambulate
trudge
strut
meander
stride
tramp
amble
roam
slog

These are just a few of our choices. Each summons a different picture and a different pace. Most suggest how the walker feels about the journey: the purposeful, focused walker strides while the heavy-hearted walker trudges and the relaxed walker ambles. (Think too about what these words suggest about place. When you picture someone ambling, do you see them on a country road in summer or in Midtown Manhattan at rush hour? You can use these associations to supply information or to upset expectations and thereby tell your reader something different about the character or situation.)

The more you read, the more words will lodge themselves in your brain, ready to be summoned when you need just the right one. If the right verb isn't in your mental RAM, consult a thesaurus for options. (Another reference the Grammopticon likes is the Random House Word Menu. It is not exactly a thesaurus. It is exactly what its name says.)

Use the Right Tense and Person

Review our Back to Basics post on Conjugate Bliss--use the best form of the verb to load it with information about when and who. Axy the axe-wielding murderer thanks you.

Take a Stand

Sometimes, as we have seen elsewhere, the action of the sentence is the simple act of being. Don't use that as an excuse to weasel your way around with verbs like "seems" or "appears" if you can avoid it. The thing is or it isn't. Choose one. Take a stand.

Which of these tells a better story?

• He seemed like a shady character.
• He was a shady character.

The weasel-word "seemed" version begs for further explanation: he seemed shady because . . . ? He seemed shady, but in fact he wasn't? The author doesn't quite want to commit to saying he's shady, but why? Is he shady or isn't he? Tell us so we can get on with our lives!

Take Action

Similarly, don't let the simple act of being turn into your weasel word by making your sentence passive. Which of these is a better story?

• There is a tree growing in Brooklyn.
• A tree grows in Brooklyn.

Readers of a certain age may recognize the latter as the title of a book and a movie. One sees why the author did not call it "There Is a Tree Growing in Brooklyn."

If there is action in the sentence, let it happen in the verb. Don't push your reader away from the action!

Notice how expressions like "seemed" and "there is" are often used intentionally to distance the speaker/writer from the content--and from any responsibility. When you see or hear weasel words, look for a weasel nearby.

Aside: The French have an even better way to weasel. If one is genuinely sorry about your situation, s/he says, "Je suis desolé(e)" (I am sorry). If one is a customer service rep who doesn't really care and neither does the corporation s/he represents, s/he would say, "On est desolé(e)" (one is sorry). They don't even maintain the pretense of saying "we" to mean the faceless corporation that isn't the least bit sorry.

Don't Drown Your Verbs in Adverbs

If the verb is the perfectly brewed cup of gourmet coffee, adverbs (modifiers we add to verbs) are the cream and sugar. You'll never taste the coffee if it's drowning in cream and sugar. The perfect coffee will taste like swill if you dump a bunch of chalky fake creamer and bitter artificial sweetener. If you must season your verbs with adverbs, choose good ones and use them in moderation.

Do you need an adverb at all? Or could a better verb solve the problem?

• She walked to school slowly and deliberately.
• She trudged to school.

• He ate his meal quickly and messily.
• He wolfed his meal.

If you can put the information in the verb, do. Sometimes you can't. Then we add information with an adverb.

• Chop the vegetables coarsely.
• Chop the vegetables finely.

• He danced jerkily.
• He danced gracefully.

• Mark your corrections neatly.
• Supply your corrections promptly.

In each case, the adverb supplies more information about the action--it adds to the verb.
Choose adverbs as carefully (look, an adverb!) as you do verbs. If you find yourself using a long string of adverbs, consider whether one might serve for two or more. Don't dilute your coffee with three kinds of sweetener when one will do.

• The Grammopticon writes correctly and thoroughly and accurately.
• The Grammopticon writes precisely.

At least she endeavors to do so.

Noun Sense

We're back to basics again, remedying the lapses in your basic education. Today we will talk about nouns.

A noun is simply a thing. When the Grammopticon was in school, the common definition was "a person, place, or thing." We added "idea" to the definition after several of us argued that a dream is a noun, history is a noun,  Kant's categorical imperative is a noun. (Perhaps in sixth grade we did not count Kant's categorical imperative among our examples.) We wanted to be explicit about including the kind of things you can't necessarily touch or hold in your hand.

Let us revisit our old friend Axy, the axe-wielding murderer. Axy is a person and therefore a noun. He is a murderer--also a person, therefore also a noun. His axe is a thing--another noun. Murder is more an idea than a thing--but ideas are nouns too.

Remember that a sentence is really a very short story. A story is always about someone or something. For something to happen in our sentence-story, someone has to make it happen. That will most often be a noun.

But do not confuse the noun with the subject of the sentence (if your education was sufficient for you to have the notion of subject and predicate). The subject of the sentence is usually a noun, but there are many other uses for nouns in a sentence:

Axy the axe-wielding murderer stabs the green-eyed man in the chest, then drops the axe to pick up the gun and finish the job.

The scene is littered with nouns. Not to mention blood. Excuse me while I grab a noun, er, mop to clean up.

Conjugate Bliss

The Grammopticon introduces a special series for victims of a failed system of public education: Back to Basics. Look for that tag here, and on the Grammopticon's Twitter feed.

Think of a sentence as a tiny story: something happens by the time it's done. The verb is the part of the sentence that tells us what happens.

What does this verb tell us, standing alone?

stabbed

1. There is probably a sharp object involved, and possibly some pain and bloodshed.
2. It happened in the past, probably as a specific event rather than a regular occurrence.

The first is presumably obvious to anyone who knows the meaning of the word. (One might use the word in other contexts--"I'll take a stab at answering that question," for example--that wouldn't involve knives, but note that one "takes a stab" in that example. One wouldn't say "stabbed." Though there are certainly cases in which one would use "stabbed" without any sharp objects involved, weapons and bloodshed make for a better story.)

The second we know because the verb is in the past tense ("stabbed," rather than "stab" or "will stab"); we presume it to be a specific event rather than, say, a regular Tuesday morning date, partly because people so seldom make standing weekly appointments to be stabbed, and partly because the past perfect ("has stabbed," "have stabbed") would be more common in the latter situation: "I go to my doctor's office for blood work every week. He has stabbed me with a needle every Tuesday morning for a month." (One might also consider this: "She has stabbed seventeen people to death." One needn't make a date to use the past perfect.)

See? One word--stabbed--and we already know quite a lot of the story. The whole one-sentence story might be either of these:

• The axe-wielding murderer stabbed the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest.
• I stabbed at the cork with my pen because I'd forgotten to bring a corkscrew.

The first is certainly a more dramatic story. Alas, not everything that happens is dramatic, and not every verb is, either. Take a look at these sentences, and find the verb.

1. Have you done your homework?
2. The Grammopticon is always right. 
3. Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?
4. I'm like, Fuck you.
5. Yimbajeeba were everywhere.
6. If I were you, I wouldn't jump too fast to take that job.

Answers:

Are you doing your homework? (Yes, you're doing it right now by reading this post. "Did you do your homework?" tells us something different: whether or not you did it, you were supposed to have done it before now.)
 
The Grammopticon is always right. (Sometimes all that happens in our one-sentence story is the simple act of being.)
 
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? (Sometimes that simple act of being is more obscure, and less constant.)
 
I'm like, Fuck you. (Yes, "fuck"--or "forget," if you prefer the radio version of the song--is also a verb, but "am" is the one that counts here.)
 
Yimbajeeba were everywhere. (I have no more idea what yimbajeeba are than you do, but I know they are more than one, else the sentence would use "was.")
 
If I were you, I wouldn't jump too fast to take that job. (Here we have the subjunctive mood and the conditional tense. Frightened yet? Don't be. You had no trouble reading the sentence and understanding its meaning without knowing either of those terms. No one will ever assess your ability to write or speak well based on whether you can name grammatical terms any more than  they will measure your ability to walk based on whether you can name every muscle and bone involved in walking.)

As you can see in each of these examples, even when verbs lack drama they are full of information. The form of the verb--conjugation, if you do want to fling around technical terms--is how much of that information is revealed. In the interest of keeping you interested, let us return to the story of the axe-wielding murderer.

The primary information we get from the verb is when something happens. This is what we call tense. (But don't let that make you tense.) Notice the subtle shades of meaning we can find in different tenses, even ones that convey the same general period of time.

NOW 

• The axe-wielding murderer stabs the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (This is happening now; but they might meet up for a nice stabbing this time every week--we don't know for sure. Especially since an axe is a lousy weapon for stabbing. Perhaps our murderer is stabbing the green-eyed man with a finger during a heated disagreement about the relative merits of the axe as a murder weapon.)

• The axe-wielding murderer is stabbing the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (Right this second! Call the police!)

HAPPENED IN THE PAST 

• The axe-wielding murderer stabbed the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (So the witness said.)

• The axe-wielding murderer has stabbed the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (And now what is he doing? He's putting down the axe and picking up a gun!)

HASN'T HAPPENED YET 

• The axe-wielding murderer will stab the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (Why won't anyone stop him?)

• The axe-wielding murderer would stab the green-eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (But he might not if he notices the gun first.)

• The axe-wielding murderer will be stabbing the green eyed man repeatedly in the chest. (Tuesday between 2 and 3--don't be late or you'll miss it.)

Verbs like "stab" change to indicate when, but they don't tell us as much else. The verb for the simple act of being, by contrast, is full of hidden depths of meaning. (Remember, for example, the yimbajeeba.) Let us assume the who is our faithful friend the axe-wielding murderer. What do these forms of the verb for being, all in the here and now, tell us about him?

am
is
are

Let us add the axe-wielding murderer for clarity. 

• the axe-wielding murderer am
• the axe-wielding murderer is
• the axe-wielding murderer are

If you are a native speaker of English, you don't need the Grammopticon to tell you that only one of these sounds right. (See? You needn't know a lot of technical terms. A lifetime of speaking, listening, and reading has taught you just fine.) The axe-wielding murderer is . . . wielding his axe? Remarkably tall? Dressed as a nun?

What your instinct has pointed out is that "is" goes with one person (or thing), rather than many, which would be "are."

But we could use Axy with "are":

Are you Axy? You are the axe-wielding murderer!

What that tells us is the relationship between the action and the speaker. Axy is still the subject of the sentence, but he's not doing the talking. Someone is talking to him. (It's called second person, but just remember that it's "you," and you will be just fine.) 

That someone might have friends, and they all might say this:

Axy, we are your biggest fans!

Now if Axy has something to say about himself, it might be this:

I am Axy. The axe-wielding murderer of great grammatical fame am I.

To his adoring fans, he might say:

You are axe-wielding murderers too?

Alas, they are not. They are simply eager to see the demise of the green-eyed man at Axy's hands. It is, after all, Tuesday at 2.