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.