Benjamin Dreyer ( ) has dedicated his life to grammar. As the vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief at Random House, he鈥檚 helped dozens of authors fine turn their work. His new book 鈥� 鈥� shares his decades of language experience. The book is packed with rules, observations, examples, advice, and enough anecdotes to make Dreyer鈥檚 English read like a novel. He joins Here & Now鈥榮 Robin Young to talk about the do鈥檚 and don鈥檛s of writing.
Book Excerpt: 鈥楧ryer鈥檚 English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style鈥�
By Benjamin Dreyer
I have nothing against rules. They鈥檙e indispensable when playing Monopoly or gin rummy, and their observance can go a long way toward improving a ride on the subway. The rule of law? Big fan.
The English language, though, is not so easily ruled and regulated. It developed without codification, sucking up new constructions and vocabulary every time some foreigner set foot on the British Isles鈥斅璽o say nothing of the mischief we Americans have wreaked on it these last few centuries鈥斅璦nd continues to evolve anarchically. It has, to my great dismay, no enforceable laws, much less someone to enforce the laws it doesn鈥檛 have.
Certain prose rules are essentially inarguable鈥斅璽hat a sentence鈥檚 subject and its verb should agree in number, for instance. Or that in a 鈥渘ot only x but y鈥� construction, the x and the y must be parallel elements. (More on this in Chapter 6: A Little Grammar Is a Dangerous Thing.) Why? I suppose because they鈥檙e firmly entrenched, because no one cares to argue with them, and because they aid us in using our words to their preeminent purpose: to communicate clearly with our readers. Let鈥檚 call these reasons the Four C鈥檚, shall we? Convention. Consensus. Clarity. Comprehension.
Also simply because, I swear to you, a well-颅constructed sentence sounds better. Literally sounds better. One of the best ways to determine whether your prose is well-颅constructed is to read it aloud. A sentence that can鈥檛 be readily voiced is a sentence that likely needs to be rewritten.
A good sentence, I find myself saying frequently, is one that the reader can follow from beginning to end, no matter how long it is, without having to double back in confusion because the writer misused or omitted a key piece of punctuation, chose a vague or misleading pronoun, or in some other way engaged in inadvertent misdirection. (If you want to puzzle your reader, that鈥檚 your own business.)
As much as I like a good rule, I鈥檓 an enthusiastic subscriber to the notion of 鈥渞ules are meant to be broken鈥濃�斅璷nce you鈥檝e learned them, I hasten to add.
But let鈥檚, right now, attend to a few of what I think of as the Great Nonrules of the English Language. You鈥檝e encountered all of these; likely you were taught them in school. I鈥檇 like you to free yourself of them. They鈥檙e not helping you; all they鈥檙e doing is clogging your brain and inciting you to look self-颅consciously over your own shoulder as you write, which is as psychically painful as it is physically impossible. And once you鈥檝e done that, once you鈥檝e gotten rid of them, hopefully you can put your attention on vastly more important things.
Why are they nonrules? So far as I鈥檓 concerned, because they鈥檙e largely unhelpful, pointlessly constricting, feckless, and useless. Also because they鈥檙e generally of dubious origin: devised out of thin air, then passed on till they鈥檝e gained respectable solidity and, ultimately, have ossified. Language experts far more expert than I have, over the years, done their best to debunk them, yet these made-颅up strictures refuse to go away and have proven more durable than Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Put together. Part of the problem, I must add, is that some of them were made up by ostensible and presumably well-颅meaning language experts in the first place, so getting rid of them can be a bit like trying to get a dog to stop chasing its own tail.
I鈥檒l dispatch these reasonably succinctly, with the hope that you鈥檒l trust that I鈥檝e done my homework and will be happy to see them go. I鈥檓 mindful of Gertrude Stein鈥檚 characterization of Ezra Pound as 鈥渁 village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not,鈥� and no one wants to be that guy. Also, if you persist in insisting that these nonrules are real and valid and to be hewed to, all the expert citations in the world won鈥檛, I know through experience, change your mind one tiny little bit.
An admission: Quite a lot of what I do as a copy editor is to help writers avoid being carped at, fairly or鈥斅璦nd this is the part that hurts鈥斅璾nfairly, by People Who Think They Know Better and Write Aggrieved Emails to Publishing Houses. Thus I tend to be a bit conservative about flouting rules that may be a bit dubious in their origin but, observed, ain鈥檛 hurting nobody. And though the nonrules below are particularly arrant nonsense, I warn you that, in breaking them, you鈥檒l have a certain percentage of the reading and online-颅commenting populace up your fundament to tell you you鈥檙e subliterate. Go ahead and break them anyway. It鈥檚 fun, and I鈥檒l back you up.
The Big Three
1. Never Begin a Sentence with 鈥淎nd鈥� or 鈥淏ut.鈥�
No, do begin a sentence with 鈥淎nd鈥� or 鈥淏ut,鈥� if it strikes your fancy to do so. Great writers do it all the time. As do even not necessarily great writers, like the person who has, so far in this book, done it a few times and intends to do it a lot more. But soft, as they used to say, here comes a caveat: An 鈥淎nd鈥� or a 鈥淏ut鈥� (or a 鈥淔or鈥� or an 鈥淥r鈥� or a 鈥淗owever鈥� or a 鈥淏ecause,鈥� to cite four other sentence starters one is often warned against) is not always the strongest beginning for a sentence, and making a relentless habit of using any of them palls quickly. You may find that you don鈥檛 need that 鈥淎nd鈥� at all. You may find that your 鈥淎nd鈥� or 鈥淏ut鈥� sentence might easily attach to its predecessor sentence with either a comma or a semicolon. Take a good look, and give it a good think.
Let鈥檚 test an example or two.
Francie, of course, became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench. But she had become accustomed to being lonely.
Francie, of course, became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench, but she had become accustomed to being lonely.
Which do you think Betty Smith, the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, chose? The former, as it happens. Had I been Smith鈥檚 copy editor, I might well have suggested the second, to make one coherent, connected thought out of two unnecessarily separated ones. Perhaps she鈥檇 have agreed, or perhaps she鈥檇 have preferred the text as she鈥檇 written it, hearing it in her head as a solemn knell. Authors do often prefer their text the way they鈥檝e written it.
Here鈥檚 another, in two flavors:
In the hospital he should be safe, for Major Callendar would protect him, but the Major had not come, and now things were worse than ever.
In the hospital he should be safe, for Major Callendar would protect him. But the Major had not come, and now things were worse than ever.
This is E. M. Forster, in A Passage to India, and I suspect you鈥檒l not be surprised to learn that version 2 is his. For one thing, version 1鈥檚 a bit long. More important, version 2, with that definitive period, more effectively conveys, I鈥檇 say, the sense of dashed expectations, the reversal of fortune.
These are the choices that writers make, and that copy editors observe, and this is how you build a book. One thing to add: Writers who are not so adept at linking their sentences habitually toss in a 鈥淏ut鈥� or a 鈥淗owever鈥� to create the illusion that a second thought contradicts a first thought when it doesn鈥檛 do any such thing. It doesn鈥檛 work, and I鈥檓 on to you.
2. Never Split an Infinitive.
To cite the most famous split infinitive of our era鈥斅璦nd everyone cites this bit from the original Star Trek TV series, so zero points to me for originality鈥斅�淭o boldly go where no man has gone before.鈥�
There鈥檚 much more鈥斅璵uch more鈥斅璷ne could say on the subject, but I don鈥檛 want to write about the nineteenth-颅century textual critic Henry Alford any more than you want to read about the nineteenth-颅century textual critic Henry Alford, so let鈥檚 leave it at this: A split infinitive, as we generally understand the term, is a 鈥渢o [verb]鈥� construction with an adverb stuck in the middle of it. In the Star Trek example, then, an unsplit infinitive version would be 鈥淏oldly to go where no man has gone before鈥� or 鈥淭o go boldly where no man has gone before.鈥� If either of those sounds better to you, be my guest. To me they sound as if they were translated from the Vulcan.
Otherwise, let鈥檚 skip right to Raymond Chandler. Again, as with the Star Trek phrase, everyone loves to cite Chandler on this subject, but it鈥檚 for a God damn [sic] good reason. Chandler sent this note to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly in response to the copyediting of an article he鈥檇 written:
By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-颅down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.
Over and out.
3. Never End a Sentence with a Preposition.
This is the rule that invariably (and wearily) leads to a rehash of the celebrated remark by Winston Churchill that Winston Churchill, in reality, neither said nor wrote:
鈥淭his is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.鈥�
Let me say this about this: Ending a sentence with a preposition (as, at, by, for, from, of, etc.) isn鈥檛 always such a hot idea, mostly because a sentence should, when it can, aim for a powerful finale and not simply dribble off like an old man鈥檚 unhappy micturition. A sentence that meanders its way to a prepositional finish is often, I find, weaker than it ought to or could be.
What did you do that for?
is passable, but
Why did you do that?
has some snap to it.
But to tie a sentence into a strangling knot to avoid a prepositional conclusion is unhelpful and unnatural, and it鈥檚 something no good writer should attempt and no eager reader should have to contend with.
If you follow me.
Excerpted with permission from the new book Dreyer鈥檚 English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer. Published by Random House, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Copyright 漏 2019 by Benjamin Dreyer. All rights reserved.
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