Snob Syntax

XtremeEnglish does not pretend to be an expert on anything. But she has lots of experience not only as an editor and writer, but also (especially) as a reader. XE learned to read at the age of three, so that's almost 70 years spent often in libraries, bookstores, and elsewhere with her nose in a book. That's a long time to develop radar for pretentious language.

Here are a couple of recent arrivals that make her grit her teeth:


-Hydrate. As in "La-de-dah...I have a personal trainer who tells me I need to drink lots of water."

-My tax dollars. As in "If I deign to live in your silly town/state/country, I get to say exactly what you do with the money you collect to provide me with the services I need." When did this odious expression start, anyway? 1980 or so? It's not so much your or my tax dollars as it is OUR tax dollars. It's a fact of life in, like, a community.....

My Bad....

Shammy's comment on my post "A Few Rules for American English," made an excellent point. I said "its" was a possessive adjective. Not so. Possessive pronoun was the term I wanted. Other possessive pronouns like his and hers (and yours, mine, ours, theirs) don't have an apostrophe, either.

Tsk. The motto on my office door used to read "Often Wrong, Never in Doubt."

Thanks, Shammy. At least one of us is a lert. (joke!)

A few rules for American English

XtremeEnglish started out as an outlet for the blogger (with nearly 30 years of experience as an editor, most of them in management) to express her love for the English language. After several YEARS of diversions and distractions, she's going to return briefly to her original intent and list a few constructions she sees many bloggers mangle.

ITS....is the possessive pronoun.
Example: The dog licked its paw.

IT'S....is always a contraction of IT IS.
Example: It's true, whether you like it or not. If you see an apostrophe in its, it's a verb form.

COMPRISES means "includes."
Example: The zoo COMPRISES striped and spotted animals. "Comprised of" doesn't make you sound smart, no matter how many overeager graduate students or befuddled academics use it.

TOWARD....is correct.
Example: "She ran toward the door." "Towards" is very Harry Potter. Move to the UK if you can't get it right.

Here are two great books you can add to your library:
Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation
and
Words into Type, Third Edition

Interview with Poet Chris Heuer

Several years ago, the Fall 2003 issue of World Around You (the magazine my friend Cathy conceived and managed for deaf teens) published a short interview I conducted with Chris Heuer, a deaf poet who teaches at Gallaudet. The World Around You website has a longer version of the interview, and I'm posting it here. I found the interview yesterday while going through a bunch of old zip disks as part of my clearout and filing before I retire. Heuer is a neat guy, and I like his poetry.

Heuer is the author of the "Man On The Street" column that appeared in the e-zine Tactile Mind Press Weekly. His poetry and short stories have appeared in No Walls of Stone, The Deaf Way II Anthology, Kaliedoscope Magazine, and in The Tactile Mind quarterlies. The Tactile Mind Press published Heuer's book, All Your Parts Intact: Poetry, in 2004. Another book, Bug: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution, will be published in September, 2007, by Gallaudet University Press. Heuer and his wife, Amy, live in Alexandria, VA.

How and when did you become interested in writing poetry?

In the second grade, my teacher asked the class to write a story to complete the sentence “It was a dark and cloudy day….” Everyone else turned in one-page stories about rainstorms and such. I turned in eight pages (with handwriting on both sides) about mutant rat-men aliens invading the Earth; my friend Terry and I had to fight them off with bows and arrows. That was the first time I ever got a writing rush. Poetry just followed naturally from there.

Has any poet, living or dead, inspired you particularly? What poems do you know by heart? What poems do you like to read?

I really liked the confessional poets. Anne Sexton was a big influence on me. Sylvia Plath was another. I had a lot of influences—Charles Bukowski, Henry Rollins, Stan Rice. “Fire And Ice” (by Robert Frost) is a poem I hope someone reads at my funeral. “Their Share” by Stan Rice reminds me of trying to get through my teenage years. “Which Part Was Me And Which Part Was You” by Orson Scott Card is a poem my wife and I included in our wedding ceremony.

There are lots of ways to write and lots of advice on writing, but tell us….when do you do your writing? Do you write every day? Do you keep a journal? If so, do you use anything from your journal in your poems?

I’m a natural night guy, so I do most of my actual sitting-in-front-of-the-computer-and-pounding-away writing at night. There’s more to it than that, though. Thinking is a part of writing. I am in the constant process of noticing things and interpreting them in my own “voice.” I keep a journal for that reason, but I don’t try to be poetic there. Mostly my journal functions as a diary—it’s straight reporting, things that happened to me, things that are happening in the world. The poetry grows out of that later.

Do you think people have to be in love or miserable to write a poem?

I think a lot of poetry is naturally emotional whether it tries to be or not. I think being depressed or angry is really just a natural reaction to the influences of real life events. You can’t always see those influences, though, so you don’t always know why you’re depressed or angry. Poetry can help you figure that out. A poem doesn’t have to be clear in any sense of the word, but you can connect a lot of loose symbols and images in a poem and end up with a much clearer explanation of why you feel the way you feel than you ever would through straight reporting in a journal. Poetry picks up things hiding in your mind.

What do you think makes a good poem?

For the poet? Honesty. But here’s a twist: A poem can be about a lot more than it seems to be on the surface. Images stand for many things. I remember once reading Anne Rice’s description of a tree. If you look at a tree in one way, Rice said, it’s “a beautiful thing, turning the landscape green. Look at it another way and it’s a root-system monster gobbling up all the water, tyrannically blocking out the sunlight for smaller, frailer flowers.” When you read poetry, you have to decide consciously to suspend judgment and let the poet really speak to you. If you let the emotions as well as the images get through your defenses so you can feel the poet’s frustration or contentment, you’ll walk away from the poem having been opened to something you never saw before. It changes you, and I think that kind of change is a good thing and much needed.

How do you handle sign vs. the written word in your poems?

In my poetry class at Gallaudet, I have my students perform their written poetry in ASL. Sometimes what they don’t capture on the page comes out in the signs, and vice-versa. I also know of an editor, John Lee Clark of the Tactile Mind Press, who actively hunts for hidden ASL signs in English poetry. He thinks such poetry is a very important cultural expression of our art, and I agree with the man wholeheartedly. The deaf community needs poets, and not just ASL poets, either—English language poets. There are so many things waiting to be captured out there, things that deaf teenagers, children, young and old adults alike are all going through. It would be so wonderful to share those things, to have someone pick up your book of poems and realize “Hey, she felt the same way! Wow! I’m not alone in this!” That’s what I strive to do, with love, with anger, with grief, with calmness. I try to share who I am. That’s what I hope to see in poetry every time I pick up a book by a new deaf writer. And that’s starting to happen a lot these days—many voices struggling to really be heard, to really change things! It’s a wonderful, exciting thing! Wouldn’t it be great to be a part of that?

Obviously, people think it’s possible to teach someone how to write a poem, but do you think it’s possible to teach someone how to be a poet?

You can only teach yourself to be a poet—teaching yourself to recognize what is truly you as opposed to what everyone else wants you to be. When you can say, “This is me” when writing about everything from discrimination to a toothbrush to an oily pigeon outside of Union Station, you’re a poet. I can’t teach you how to do that—nobody can. You have to look deep into yourself and pierce all the beliefs that you protect yourself with. Now turn that gaze on the world and tell me what you see. That’s a poem waiting to be written.

Have you taken any classes in writing poetry?

I did—all through college. It was a great time. We had poetry readings in coffee shops, dance halls—you name it. People would come from thirty miles away to hear us read. The other students in the class were SO brutally critical! My God! But it was wonderful for me, because I was awakened from my own narrow-mindedness to those places where I was not being honest and where I was hiding behind other people’s perceptions. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.

Have you ever taken a workshop in writing poetry? What do you think of the workshop format itself?

Workshops help—definitely! I think the best teachers get out of the way and just become group participants. In my own class (which follows a workshop format), I have everyone sign up to present a poem. They make fifteen copies, hand those copies out to fifteen students, and then perform the poem. The class then critiques the poem and comments on the performance. This is how the poet learns what is not clear, what is a cliché, what is good, and so on. I give my own critiques right along with all of my students and beyond that try to let the class find its own way. I give brief explanations of what meter is, what different forms poetry can take, and I teach them games that help them to come up with metaphors and similes and images. The point is to have a great time and to learn to see in new ways. I really love those kinds of workshops.

You’ve mentioned several “ confessional" poets—people who write about disturbing things. It’s not as if these poets are not popular. They are. Why?

In modern life, everything is sanitized and sterilized. You aren't allowed to see deathly sick people wandering around, or even very, very old people. There is an institution for everything—including deafness, when you think about it. What everyone suspects and fears is true is hidden behind an institutional wall. In a way that's good. Order is kept. Society functions. But in a way it's bad, too, because a very large natural component of healing emotionally and moving on is facing something and accepting it. Since nobody can face it, nobody can accept it. The appeal of confessional poetry for me is that it rips down these society-made barriers. A lot of people keep saying, "This country/world is going to the dogs." They remember the “good old days.” The truth is, the world has always been like this.

Another appeal of confessional poetry is just knowing there's someone else out there who feels the same way you do, who sees the same way you do, who has enough spirit and bravery to say, "...what you think is going on is actually what is going on." I think reading this kind of poetry can be a recovery program, a giant pat on the shoulder—“There, there.” It's comforting. It's validating. It makes you feel less alone.

Is there another side of that argument?

Joseph Campbell argued that we have institutions and rituals and so forth—"coming of age" events like graduation, confirmation, marriage, etc.—to serve as a yardstick for people to measure their progress by. You need that yardstick to keep from being overwhelmed in a world of what would otherwise be senseless data, unconnected information. We coordinate and correlate that information. Marriage is associated with "being at least 18," and not being 13 (in the way it was back in the 1800s). A work day is considered 8 hours, and not 18 or 20 the way it was back in 1910 or even 1920 before labor unions. You didn't get a college degree before you graduated from high school, and you didn't buy your first house before you graduated from college. With institutions, with ritual, with coming-of-age events, we have order instead of chaos. Without that order, chaos is especially destructive.

It's strange how art and technology are often blamed for destructive behavior, when in fact I think that behavior is caused by something much deeper. People lose themselves. It's not "caused" by poetry or technology (the internet, for example) any more than it is caused by everything being swept into an institutional closet and hushed up. It is the tension between these two extremes and the lack of guides on the road between these two extremes that cause people to lose their way.

The line between order and chaos is very confusing. I have just as much trouble finding my way as anyone else, and I've made just as many mistakes. But overall the balance I've found forces me to look as deeply into myself and others as I possibly can, to really look and question which side of the line I'm on at any given moment. I think that's a good thing

Guest blog

My first guest blog is a first for the guest blogger, Cathy, too. Cathy is editor of ODYSSEY, New Directions in Deaf Education. Here is her advice for contributors:

WRITING….When U Gotta
Sometimes you gotta write. Sometimes it is publish or perish…write or resign...do it...or find you blew it. In any case, I work in a place where lots of people commit good work—and are asked to write about it. As the saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Here’s what I tell our soon-to-be authors.

GETTING STARTED
Most people hate writing. Nothing is more difficult than taking an exciting event, project, or idea and trying to convey it through the stiff linearity of 2-dimensional Roman letters. Further, as teachers have noted since the time of the ancient Greeks, “We don’t truly understand something until we explain it to others...,” and writing is the ultimate challenge in explaining to others. There are no head nods from the audience…no light that appears in any eyes we can see…It is just us and the unforgiving alphabet. So....
1. Begin by knowing that any discomfort you are feeling is 100% normal. Ignore it.
2. Clarify your idea. What do you want to write about? An event? A performance? A teaching technique? A program?
3. The writing tool. Don’t work on a computer you don’t trust. On a computer you DO trust, save your work often. It is even harder to write the first draft a second time.

FIRST STEPS
1. Start writing SOMETHING. Some people prefer:
- An outline
- Venn diagram.
- Sentences or words strung in whatever order can be mustered.
2. Any method you prefer is fine. Don’t stop…Don’t edit or revise…If you can’t think of the precise verb, no matter. Keep going. You will come back. Just try to make sure that each aspect of the project/program/event finds its way on to the page in front of you. Concentrate on thoroughness.
3. Select a structure. ODYSSEY publishes expositions and narratives. Both are constructed in a quasi-journalistic style. We want the material readable, but it must be accurate too.
Consider first person. ODYSSEY often has first person narratives. First person allows writers to incorporate their feelings and craft personal text that is often intrinsically readable. First persons are probably also the easiest form of narrative to write.

GENERAL SHAPE OF ARTICLE
1. Begin with a telling incident. Did anything happen that illustrates what you are trying to say? Start here...with a real live incident...Work outward.
2. Describe the event/project/or idea. There are several ways to structure this description.
- Through time. “First we did this...Then we did that...Finally we did the other.”
- Through aspects of the project/event/ or idea. “The literacy program has nine components...The first component is....”
3. Cite research. This may support why you undertook the project as well as its results.
4. Use quotations. Quotations help maintain reader interest. Try to avoid statements like, "My students enjoy when I...." Try instead statements like, “'This is fun,' said 6-year-old Tyrone."
5. Press, beat, and weave your words and sentences into the structure that you selected. This is the real work of writing. If Venn diagrams were enough, we'd all be Shakespeare. [What's a Venn diagram?? It's borrowed from mathematics and shows the logical relationships between items.]


LENGTH
Don’t worry about this. Most articles published in ODYSSEY are 1200 words--about 5 double-spaced pages in 12-point type. But lots happens after the articles are submitted to shape articles into this. If you find yourself going into great length describing a particular aspect of your project, keep going! If we end up feeling the result is uneven, we can snip out the description or incorporate it separately as a side article.

STYLE
1. List references according the APA. Double check to make sure that they are correct.
2. Use deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing as adjectives...not as nouns. Never write “the deaf,” Always write “deaf people,” “deaf individuals,” “deaf students,” or “deaf consumers....”
3. Capitalization of deaf. ODYSSEY--in keeping with Gallaudet style--does not capitalize deaf. If an author feels this capitalization is important, he or she should talk with the editor. Occasionally capitalization of deaf is agreed to in deference to authors’ preference.
4. Style. If you are interested, we will be happy to lend you a copy of the Gallaudet University stylebook. But technicalities such as whether or not a state’s name can be abbreviated are okay to leave with us. You are doing enough work!
5. Keep it simple. LIFE magazine told its writers to write at the fifth grade level. If people have to work to read, chances are they won’t read at all.

SENTENCES
Sentence length. In news organizations, the ideal sentence length is said to be 15 words. You will find this almost impossible. [Xtreme English agrees with some long-ago expert that the ideal sentence length is 7 words--what the human eye can take in and comprehend at one glance. The idea is to avoid long, wordy sentences.] Still use it as a guideline after you have a first draft. It will help you keep sentences from taking off into strings of clauses that you have to parse and prune a second time.

WORDS
1. Avoid Latin-based words. English is wonderful in that it manages to carry the inheritance of its ancestral languages so extremely into the present day that we often have two words for exactly the same concept (e.g. CAT (Anglo Saxon) and FELINE (Latinate). Our Anglo Saxon heritage gives us simple, strong verbs (like shine, creep, fight, sing, fall) and nouns (like cat, pig, stone, bread, ear). Our Latin heritage gives us words like curriculum, idiot, television--plus a whole slew of words ending in -ation and -ology. Try to write in Anglo Saxon.
2. Use nouns and verbs. Good writing is done with nouns and verbs. Forget those well-intentioned adjectives & adverbs. (Imagine the previous sentence without my own adjectival indulgence…and it becomes “Forget adjectives & adverbs.” Much better, right?)
3. Omit needless words. This is a mantra of every English class, but it is especially true today in the age of the Internet. The fewer words you can use and the shorter they are, the more readers will tend to read what you write.

REVISION
1. As everyone knows this is so necessary for most people that it is really part of writing. This is a good thing. It means that your teachers were successful and you, as an author, are writing not only to explain, but using the process of writing to help you think.
2. Spell check. Why not? Someone’s gotta do it! Everything you as the author can do to make your paper technically correct will ease the editing process. Further it is amazing how little things like missing letters or absent periods can spin a reader’s head around. Even a single missing letter may cause a reader to forget where he is in a piece! As gaps are identified and filled, writers often find additional changes are necessary. Thank goodness for the computer…In the old days people used erasers, white-out, scissors, and glue!
3. The Martian test. When you re-read your work, pretend you are a Martian. As a Martian, words that Americans use every day, like “Whole Language,” “Total Communication,” and even “educational interpreting” suddenly are ambiguous. Further, as a Martian you realize that people who use these words often do not share the same understanding of their meaning at all, but use them in subtle but significantly different ways. As an author, you have to make sure that you define your terms.
4. Other eyes. Knowing what you want to say camouflages any contradictions, gaps, and even duplicated words and misspellings that appear in the text. Other people will find the gaps in your work before you do…Show your work to someone else. See what questions they have. Revise your work accordingly...which brings us to...

FINITO!
1. There comes a point in the revision, when you start to like aspects of the less-revised text more than aspects of the more-revised text. When this happens, STOP. If you have time, go back to the piece later. If time has disappeared (as it invariably will have done), hand in the piece, and...
2. Don’t worry. The editors have handed in lots of stuff that we knew still needed work and even more stuff that we thought was finished but found, after some other editor pointed out a stupid, embarrassing mistake, was not. Don’t be surprised if this happens. It’s normal. And it’s worth getting it off your desk! GO FOR IT!

English changes

English, the name given to the official language of England, is growing and changing every day, every year. From day to day, the changes are so slight we hardly notice them. For example, how many people write e-mail now and not email? Most editors and proofreaders still go for e-mail, but the people online are using email or just plain e to name what they’re sending back and forth. At some point in the future, everyone, including the editors and proofreaders, will accept email as good standard English. Much of the change happens when people move to a different part of the country, bring their habitual way of speaking with them, and pick up new local expressions at the same time.

The same was true when English got its start: people moved into (actually, invaded) England, bringing their own languages with them, and gradually their words caught on. Like flower. From about 500-1100 A.D., people spoke what we now call Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, and the word for flower then was blosme. They borrowed this word from the Saxons, or Germans, who had invaded the attractive little island in the North Sea and brought their word for “flower” with them. (Who knows what they called flowers before the year 500?) And blosme is still with us. It’s still a perfectly good word in the English language, and it still means “flower.” Except now we spell it “blossom.”

After the Germans came the French, and they had their own word for what the Anglo-Saxons called a blosme. The French called it a flour. Actually, the French weren’t even called “the French” in those days. They were called “Normans” (because they came from Normandy). The Norman invasion took place in the year 1066 A.D., or toward the end of the 11th century. And sure enough, by 1225, the word flour had popped up in the English language.

How did they pronounce this word flour? The Norman word flour sounded much like the present French word fleur. The “ou” made an “oo” sound. Middle English, however, sounded more like German. So the “ou” in Middle English made an “ow” sound…like “flower.” Flour with the “ow” sound is still around, except it’s the white stuff you bake with, not a pretty blossom.

But wait….where did the French get flour or later fleur? From the Romans! The Roman were busy invading France (and England) from 51-58 B.C. And the Roman word for flower was flora. Flora is still with us in various forms, too…Where do you buy your flowers? At the FLORIST! What do brides order for the tables at the reception? FLORAL arrangements!

The world is ever changing and growing….people move from here to there….and the languages they speak are growing and changing, too.