Category Archives: grammar

How to Procrastinate

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There are three steps to successful procrastination:

1.

***

Let me put it another way. I am currently in the throes of NaNoWriMo, so it seems a bit odd to pause for a meditation on procrastination. But I spend a good deal of online time chatting with fellow writers, and in one loop a discussion broke out on, of all things, the proper use of the singular possessive apostrophe (talk about having too much time on your hands!)

This is what I mean. Should you write Dickens’ books or Dickens’s books? The former sounds better, but the latter is the accepted form. I pulled out my Strunk & White and found the rule to be that for ancient proper names, like Jesus and Moses, the form is: Jesus’and Moses’. Which seems to me a little unfair to Dickens, as it’s merely his accident of birth date that gets him the extra s at the end.

One of the other writers cited the “Bible” – The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. She said CMOS “goes for  ‘s for singular nouns ending in s––even Jesus’s name.”

Unwilling to leave it at that, and feeling a bit anti-authoritarian that day, I took five minutes and wrote a drinking song, to be sung around a table with other writers, steins of beer in hand, and sung directly to CMOS:

Your singular possessive
Is singularly regressive
And your S’s just make messes!
Halaloo halalay!

[Pause for drinking, and pounding steins on table]

When it comes to guys like Dickens
Your injunction is for chickens.
Here is what I say:
I will do it Jesus’ way!
Halaloo halalay!

[Finish with more drinking]

And that’s how you procrastinate.

What about you? What are your favorite ways to keep from working on your books? What do you find yourself doing when you know you should be writing? 

The Great Semi-Colon Debate

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by James Scott Bell

And you didn’t think there was one, did you?
Well, there is. At least I’m declaring it so, here and now.
When it comes to fiction, I think of semi-colons the way I think of eggplant: avoid at all costs. As Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons … All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It’s a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.
Not that I have an opinion, you understand.
Okay, I’ll modify things a bit. For non-fiction, like essays and scholarly writing, the semi-colon does serve a purpose; I’ve used them myself. In such writings you’re often stringing two thoughts together for a larger point, and the semi-colon allows you to clue the reader in on this move.
But in fiction, you want each sentence to stand on its own, boldly. The semi-colon is an invitation to pause, to think twice, to look around in different directions, to wonder where the heck you’re standing. Do you want that? Or do you want your story to move?
The semi-colon is a stone that causes the reader to stumble.
Not that they’ll notice this on a conscious level. Most won’t think, “Why’d he use a semi-colon here? I’m being taken out of the story!” No, but it will have that very effect, on a subconscious level. It will weaken the reading experience in a small way. Not fatally, but why would you want even a small speed bump in your story?
The semi-colon is especially grating in dialogue:
“We must run to the fire,” Mary said. “It is going to burn the town; that is a disaster!”
What’s that semi-colon doing there? Is it making Mary’s dialogue stronger or weaker? Is it adding to the intensity of the moment or diluting it?
Semi-colons. For academics, yes. For novelists, no.
I’ll leave you with this clip from a poem entitled “On Punctuation” by Elizabeth Austen. You may then offer your own opinion on the great semi-colon debate!
 . . .as for the semi-
colon call it what it is

a period slumming
with the commas

a poser at the bar

feigning liberation with one hand

tightening the leash with the other
 . . .
“On Punctuation” by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010

Open Tuesday Rant: I Beg You to Stop

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James Scott Bell


All right, I want you all to stop it.


I’m not the Language Sheriff. Grammar was not my strongest subject in school. I doubt I can tell a gerund from a gerbil. But there are some obvious sins that are creeping into our mother tongue. And some of them are worth beating back with a stick.


This is one of them.


“Begs the question” does not mean “Invites the question.”


It doesn’t. No matter how many times you use it that way, no matter how many talking-heads-trying-to-sound-smart blabber it on TV. Whoever started this trend should be taken out back and slapped around with a copy of Strunk and White.


Begs the question is a fallacy of logic. “Begging” here does not mean “pleading.” It is an alternative use of the word, and it means to “assume the answer.” It’s a form of circular reasoning.


Professor: Make an argument that war is always wrong.


Student: War is always wrong because too many lives are lost.


Professor: That begs the question. You assume that loss of life is, ipso facto, wrong. But you have yet to prove that. Loss of life might very well be justified for a greater purpose. Try again.


Student: Will this be on the test?


That’s what begging the question means. So when I hear some White House correspondent tell the home studio, “The President has decided to visit the Gulf Coast again, which begs the question, Will that do anything to stop the leak?” I want to make him eat his microphone so he can’t do any more damage with it.


So that’s my rant. Do not, under any circumstances, use begs the question as invites the question.


Now it’s your turn. What language sins drive you batty?