Someone sent me a link to a blog post about hyphenated compound adjectives in which the rules were completely mangled because the author didn't distinguish between adjectives and adverbs. (I'm not going to link to that original post because my purpose is not to embarrass or harass that author, but to state the correct rule.) This is one of those things that causes a crapton of confusion, so I thought it would make sense to review the rule. (Related posts: how to identify compound adjectives, squinting modifiers)
First, you have to know the difference between an adjective and an adverb.
Adjectives modify nouns in a way that describes an attribute of the noun.
Adverbs modify adjectives, verbs, or other adverbs in a way that describes a relation or degree of time, degree, manner, and similar qualities.
So:
inflated balloon
(inflated is an attribute of the noun balloon, so inflated is an adjective -- technically, a past participle functioning as an adjective)
partially inflated balloon
(partially is a degree of inflated, so partially is an adverb modifying an adjective)
If you were to hyphenate that,
partially-inflated balloon,
you would be wrong.
This is considered an "exception" to the rule regarding hyphenation of compound adjectives, but that's something of a misnomer. This could never be a compound adjective because it's half-adjective, half-adverb. A similar "exception" involves whether to hyphenate a preposition used as an adverb, such as:
Please check out at the check-out counter.
The first "out" is an adverb modifying the verb "check." The second "out" is part of a compound adjective modifying "counter."
One place where the rule is in flux regards the use of comparative or superlative compounds. The old rule is that you never hyphenate a comparative or superlative adverb modifying an adjective. This is probably easiest to see if we stick to good/well, better, best as our example because that will ignore the -ly comparatives and superlatives.
better built car
best dressed woman
well read man
a good, simple dinner (good is an adjective modifying a noun)
a well prepared dinner (well is an adverb modifying an adjective)
the best cooked dinner (best is a superlative modifying an adjectival past participle)
That's the old rule. Lately, we've seen people hyphenating these usages, but to my eye, it looks strange. Maybe this is because my eye knows the difference between adjectives and adverbs, and my eye knows that you don't hyphenate an adverb to an adjective, but whatever. Rules change.
What are compound adjectives? When two adjectives operate together as a unit to modify a noun. For example,
long-term solution
Solution is the noun. Long and term operate together to create a single unit of meaning. This isn't an arbitrary rule because it can have an impact on meaning. Compare:
The large appliance factory is closing.
The large-appliance factory is closing.
In the first, an appliance factory which is large is closing.
In the second, a factory which makes large appliances is closing.
Okay, so, that probably doesn't un-confuse anybody. As I said, this is not an easy concept to grasp, and even seasoned copy editors sometimes quibble over particulars, especially in the case of squinting modifiers (see link at the top of this post). But I thought it was worth at least trying to un-confuse things. :)
Theresa
Showing posts with label adjectives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adjectives. Show all posts
Friday, May 27, 2011
Friday, March 5, 2010
Quick Tip for Hyphens and Adjectives
This just came up in correspondence with an author, and I thought I would share it here.
There's a quick and dirty test for knowing whether you need to hyphenate adjectives. Let's say, for example, you're pondering the phrase,
mind blowing images
and debating the hyphen between mind and blowing. In order to decide, just split apart the pieces and see if it still makes sense:
mind images
blowing images
Er, not so much. You really need to link mind and blowing because these two words form one conceptual unit, so you need a hyphen. Contrast this with,
tall cold beer
which can be split into
tall beer
cold beer
and still make sense. In that case, no hyphen is needed.
This isn't an all-purpose rule. There are exceptions, such as
beautifully made gown
because the -ly adverb used in this compound way never requires a hyphen. And then there are borderline cases, such as
ruby red gown
in which ruby modifies red, but can also be said to modify gown. These are sometimes called squinting modifiers -- modifiers which can be read to modify two different pieces -- and are held by purists to be evidence of imprecise writing. If you want to eliminate the squint, hyphenate ruby and red. Alternately, choose either ruby or red to modify gown. But, honestly, this is one of those areas of style and grammar in which reasonable minds can differ. You might choose one method and find that your copy editor changes it on you.
Theresa
There's a quick and dirty test for knowing whether you need to hyphenate adjectives. Let's say, for example, you're pondering the phrase,
mind blowing images
and debating the hyphen between mind and blowing. In order to decide, just split apart the pieces and see if it still makes sense:
mind images
blowing images
Er, not so much. You really need to link mind and blowing because these two words form one conceptual unit, so you need a hyphen. Contrast this with,
tall cold beer
which can be split into
tall beer
cold beer
and still make sense. In that case, no hyphen is needed.
This isn't an all-purpose rule. There are exceptions, such as
beautifully made gown
because the -ly adverb used in this compound way never requires a hyphen. And then there are borderline cases, such as
ruby red gown
in which ruby modifies red, but can also be said to modify gown. These are sometimes called squinting modifiers -- modifiers which can be read to modify two different pieces -- and are held by purists to be evidence of imprecise writing. If you want to eliminate the squint, hyphenate ruby and red. Alternately, choose either ruby or red to modify gown. But, honestly, this is one of those areas of style and grammar in which reasonable minds can differ. You might choose one method and find that your copy editor changes it on you.
Theresa
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Your Embellished Sentences
In our last substantive post, I asked you all to embellish a sentence. We presented a few key concepts in that post.
I also want to frontpage one of the ideas in the comments. We discussed what might be called the Mystery Clue Exception. Think of it this way. The general rule is to allocate space in the narrative which is roughly equivalent to the importance of the detail being presented. Important details get more words or lines. But if we did that with clues in mysteries, we would give it all away. In those cases, we want to minimize the space (and downplay the presentation) of the important detail and throw the reader's focus onto other matters.
With that said, let's take a look at some of the embellished sentences. The original sentence was,
The man walked through the snow to get his mail.
The Man
Some of you chose to embellish the man with an adjective:
The young man, The old man (Murphy)
The blond man (Livia)
The young man (Jami G.)
The gnarled man (Iapetus999)
The old man (Dominique)
The leather-faced man (Rachel)
And some of you chose to substitute a different noun, something more evocative than plain old man.
The minister (Dave Shaw)
The pensioner (John Harper)
In general, which is better? That depends. The substitute nouns are genderless, so if the sex of the character is relevant (or if it hasn't been previously established otherwise), using a plain noun like man or woman will be a good choice. If you do this and add an adjective, remember that descriptiveness is the goal. Which of those adjectives gives you a fast, unique visual impression of the man? I lean toward gnarled and leather-faced, both of which are strongly evocative and concrete.
But if the gender has already been established, tagging the character with a social role such as minister or pensioner will give the reader a way to understand the nature of the character in a slightly less visual way. There may still be visual elements -- pensioners are generally elderly, and ministers tend to wear those collars. But in this case, the descriptive element is about the nature of the character rather than the strict visual presentation.
Special tip of the hat #1:
The elderly trapper (Dave Shaw)
Here, Dave combined both approaches, using a role-based noun and padding it with an adjective. It's a trapper -- a job title that carries connotations of outdoorsiness, maybe burliness or other indications of physical strength, maybe jeans and flannels and boots. The adjective is the right kind of adjective, too, providing a layer of detail not implied by the original noun. It's a strong combination.
Special tip of the hat #2:
Lisa's brother (Suelder)
Here, Suelder used a noun that states a relationship, brother, and then created the relationship with the use of the possessive. It's not just any brother, it's Lisa's brother, and now we all know who we're talking about. So this is something like the social role nouns of trapper and minister, but it's enhanced by the stated relationship to another character. It might not be a highly visual subject, but remember that we're not talking about pure description but about "descriptiveness." By presenting this relationship between the characters, we know something we might not have known before. So this is a very effective subject, but it should be used sparingly. Once the relationship is made clear for the reader, we wouldn't want to keep seeing it detailed in the narrative.
Before we move on to other aspects of the exercise sentences, I want to toss out a question for discussion. Let's say that generally we have the following choices for our subject:
adjective + generic noun
"social role" noun
adjective + social role noun
Let's also assume that a proper name is not an option. How does the context influence which of these three options to choose?
Theresa
- Action, dialogue, interior monologue, and other narrative elements can be rendered descriptive by word choice.
- These elements can also be made descriptive by slowing down the speed at which the events are related.
- These elements can also be made descriptive by demonstrating the way the characters respond to or interact with the details
- This form of "descriptive writing" is not the same thing as "description."
I also want to frontpage one of the ideas in the comments. We discussed what might be called the Mystery Clue Exception. Think of it this way. The general rule is to allocate space in the narrative which is roughly equivalent to the importance of the detail being presented. Important details get more words or lines. But if we did that with clues in mysteries, we would give it all away. In those cases, we want to minimize the space (and downplay the presentation) of the important detail and throw the reader's focus onto other matters.
With that said, let's take a look at some of the embellished sentences. The original sentence was,
The man walked through the snow to get his mail.
The Man
Some of you chose to embellish the man with an adjective:
The young man, The old man (Murphy)
The blond man (Livia)
The young man (Jami G.)
The gnarled man (Iapetus999)
The old man (Dominique)
The leather-faced man (Rachel)
And some of you chose to substitute a different noun, something more evocative than plain old man.
The minister (Dave Shaw)
The pensioner (John Harper)
In general, which is better? That depends. The substitute nouns are genderless, so if the sex of the character is relevant (or if it hasn't been previously established otherwise), using a plain noun like man or woman will be a good choice. If you do this and add an adjective, remember that descriptiveness is the goal. Which of those adjectives gives you a fast, unique visual impression of the man? I lean toward gnarled and leather-faced, both of which are strongly evocative and concrete.
But if the gender has already been established, tagging the character with a social role such as minister or pensioner will give the reader a way to understand the nature of the character in a slightly less visual way. There may still be visual elements -- pensioners are generally elderly, and ministers tend to wear those collars. But in this case, the descriptive element is about the nature of the character rather than the strict visual presentation.
Special tip of the hat #1:
The elderly trapper (Dave Shaw)
Here, Dave combined both approaches, using a role-based noun and padding it with an adjective. It's a trapper -- a job title that carries connotations of outdoorsiness, maybe burliness or other indications of physical strength, maybe jeans and flannels and boots. The adjective is the right kind of adjective, too, providing a layer of detail not implied by the original noun. It's a strong combination.
Special tip of the hat #2:
Lisa's brother (Suelder)
Here, Suelder used a noun that states a relationship, brother, and then created the relationship with the use of the possessive. It's not just any brother, it's Lisa's brother, and now we all know who we're talking about. So this is something like the social role nouns of trapper and minister, but it's enhanced by the stated relationship to another character. It might not be a highly visual subject, but remember that we're not talking about pure description but about "descriptiveness." By presenting this relationship between the characters, we know something we might not have known before. So this is a very effective subject, but it should be used sparingly. Once the relationship is made clear for the reader, we wouldn't want to keep seeing it detailed in the narrative.
Before we move on to other aspects of the exercise sentences, I want to toss out a question for discussion. Let's say that generally we have the following choices for our subject:
adjective + generic noun
"social role" noun
adjective + social role noun
Let's also assume that a proper name is not an option. How does the context influence which of these three options to choose?
Theresa
Friday, September 18, 2009
Don't undercut the drama
I actually like underwriting, where you strip your prose of the more heavy-handed indicators of emotion and drama. You say, "Her anger," not "Her blazing anger," or you let the character's body express the emotion. Or you might use irony-- He got it. She was slightly pissed.
But remember the big moments should probably FEEL big. Not exaggerated, but as big as they are. You might achieve this by underwriting (I -love- it when a moment POWs with subtle language). However, there's a danger here. This underwriting at dramatic moments should be intentional (or effective, at least). You don't want to undercut by accident.
There are two ways you might accidentally undercut the drama of a big scene. One is placement. For example, usually the most intense emotional scene is positioned right before a big turning point scene, like the crisis. You want to work up to this, with a series of scenes building up the tension, then the Big Emotion, and then the Big Reaction. No burying it in the middle of the book between two low-key scenes. And reaction is essential. You don't want the reader thinking, well, the hero seems utterly unchanged, so it must not have been dramatic after all.
The other way to undercut drama is to use dismissive and undramatic language. Sometimes, of course, this can be effective-- if you do it well. But generally, if the hero is spurned by the woman he's loved desperately, or the heroine is defeated by a hated rival, or he finally comes clean on something he's been hiding, or she learns the truth about her parents... your prose should reflect the power of the event. This isn't the time to resort to cliche:
The jar was empty.
All those crumpled dollar bills, collected in twoyears of waiting tables on the midnight diner shift, meager tips from the drunks and the derelicts and the disappointed, were gone. Stolen.
Oh, well, win some, lose some.
Just as bad would be:
She was pretty unhappy.
Dramatic writing doesn't have to mean lots of pounding adjectives and high-strung verbs. Let the body show the emotion. What would be a good action or sequence of action to show her despair at finding two years of savings gone? She replaces the jar on the shelf. Then what does her body do?
Alicia
But remember the big moments should probably FEEL big. Not exaggerated, but as big as they are. You might achieve this by underwriting (I -love- it when a moment POWs with subtle language). However, there's a danger here. This underwriting at dramatic moments should be intentional (or effective, at least). You don't want to undercut by accident.
There are two ways you might accidentally undercut the drama of a big scene. One is placement. For example, usually the most intense emotional scene is positioned right before a big turning point scene, like the crisis. You want to work up to this, with a series of scenes building up the tension, then the Big Emotion, and then the Big Reaction. No burying it in the middle of the book between two low-key scenes. And reaction is essential. You don't want the reader thinking, well, the hero seems utterly unchanged, so it must not have been dramatic after all.
The other way to undercut drama is to use dismissive and undramatic language. Sometimes, of course, this can be effective-- if you do it well. But generally, if the hero is spurned by the woman he's loved desperately, or the heroine is defeated by a hated rival, or he finally comes clean on something he's been hiding, or she learns the truth about her parents... your prose should reflect the power of the event. This isn't the time to resort to cliche:
The jar was empty.
All those crumpled dollar bills, collected in twoyears of waiting tables on the midnight diner shift, meager tips from the drunks and the derelicts and the disappointed, were gone. Stolen.
Oh, well, win some, lose some.
Just as bad would be:
She was pretty unhappy.
Dramatic writing doesn't have to mean lots of pounding adjectives and high-strung verbs. Let the body show the emotion. What would be a good action or sequence of action to show her despair at finding two years of savings gone? She replaces the jar on the shelf. Then what does her body do?
Alicia
Sunday, September 6, 2009
adjective punctuating
Okay, let's present this as an issue. :)
Let's say you have two adjectives before a noun. When do you put a comma between the adjectives and when not?
Examples:
bright
pink
dress
Assemble that-- with or without comma?
How about
big
old
truck
fine
white
wine
lavish
expensive
fashion
show
rambling
overlong
speech
new
improved
product
Rationales?
Also, would the rhythm of the sentence or the pace of the passage (action scene maybe) affect your decision?
Alicia
Let's say you have two adjectives before a noun. When do you put a comma between the adjectives and when not?
Examples:
bright
pink
dress
Assemble that-- with or without comma?
How about
big
old
truck
fine
white
wine
lavish
expensive
fashion
show
rambling
overlong
speech
new
improved
product
Rationales?
Also, would the rhythm of the sentence or the pace of the passage (action scene maybe) affect your decision?
Alicia
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Another mark of the amateur
Someone asked for us to list what we see in submissions that we think of (cruelly) as "marks of an amateur."
A lot of introductory participial phrases, that's something that seems to correlate to "new writer" for me.
Here's another. Gushing. I'm thinking not of where, in the query letter, you tell me how wonderful I am (gush away then :), but rather in the story, where the writer amplifies in an overly positive way--
Like:
She was astoundingly beautiful.
The keychain was the most wonderfully perfect gift he'd ever received.
The chair was incredibly richly detailed.
The road was wonderfully pretty.
A lot of introductory participial phrases, that's something that seems to correlate to "new writer" for me.
Here's another. Gushing. I'm thinking not of where, in the query letter, you tell me how wonderful I am (gush away then :), but rather in the story, where the writer amplifies in an overly positive way--
Like:
She was astoundingly beautiful.
The keychain was the most wonderfully perfect gift he'd ever received.
The chair was incredibly richly detailed.
The road was wonderfully pretty.
She was incredibly beautiful.
He was amazingly smart.
The problem is usually in the modifier/modified combination. This doesn't mean you shouldn't use modifiers-- I love 'em-- but be careful of redundant combos:
voraciously hungry
excruciatingly painful
enormously large
But you know, I could probably live with those, because I see that the writer has a vocabulary. But whenever I see "incredibly" in a sentence? Well, it means NOTHING. It's just an intensifier, and more annoying than, well, "more" or "very" (which are, after all, common words that mean exactly what they're meant to mean in the sentence-- intensification). "Incredibly" means 1) nothing, 2) not what you want it to mean in front of that other word. (It means "unbelievably," another empty intensifier.)
You don't want to sound like a pre-teen girl talking about how much she loves one of the Jonas Brothers, do you?
"Incredibly delicious..." This makes me think about how "delicious" used to be enough. You know, when I was growing up, a dish of vanilla ice cream was about as far as our little imaginations could reach. But that wasn't delicious enough, and now this is what you can order (for $7) for dessert: A brownie sundae, with brownie, hot fudge sauce, chocolate chips, marshmallow creme, whipped cream, oh, and vanilla ice cream. Definitely "incredibly delicious".
(Speaking of definitely... a couple semesters ago I had a raft of papers come in that kept using the word "defiantly" -- "I was defiantly glad that Mom and Dad adopted my little brother." "History is defiantly the major for future videogame writers." Whoa. I mean, that led to some interesting ideas... defiantly glad, huh? Mom and Dad punished you for being glad? Or? Then I realized that they'd all misspelled "definitely" the same way-- definately-- and spellcheck had corrected that to "defiantly". :)
Consider a "show" here so you don't have to "tell" so much.
Even raising his hand for the bill set off waves of pain through his shoulder.
He was so grateful he sat down and wrote his mother a thank-you note.
If we "see" the amazingly incredible whatever, we'll believe it more. After all, Helen wasn't termed "amazingly beautiful." Rather she had a face that launched a thousand ships.
Try to show the amazingness in some action or some comparison. Don't gush-- show us.
Alicia
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Over-modification
When you're revising, watch for the "excessive" modifiers that
1) might make you sound gushy, and
2) weigh down the clarity of your prose.
That last is a bit counter-intuitive, because you modify in order to increase clarity by making everything more precise, right?
But you might be drawing attention to something that doesn't need more attention, or amplifying a perfectly good word, or making other unmodified words pale in contrast.
He shouted loudly into the wind.
She bit back an obscene swear word.
The vista was filled with toweringly high mountains.
The top of her knee was a little bit more than an inch below the bottom of her skirt.
The hole in the fusillade was immoderately large.
Beware of inadvertent humor. I mean, really, any hole in the fusillade is way too large, wouldn't you say?
Of course, sometimes it works to over-modify (especially for comic effect). But this is something to watch for. "An inch below the bottom of her skirt" is a good description. "A little bit more than an inch" makes me envision some nun with a ruler measuring the space. Precision is actually distracting sometimes.
And especially watch out for redundancy. Mountains are high, but some are higher than others, so maybe we will allow "high mountains" (I did grow up in a valley below some not very high mountains, I guess-- 3000-4000 feet, so I'd allow "high mountains" if you're talking about the Rockies, say). But "toweringly high?" Come on.
If you need to trim 1000 words or so from your manuscript, here's where to start. Delete the over-modifiers, and I bet you won't miss them. (I just deleted "even" there before "miss"-- "even miss them". See, it's easy once you set your mind to it.)
Alicia
1) might make you sound gushy, and
2) weigh down the clarity of your prose.
That last is a bit counter-intuitive, because you modify in order to increase clarity by making everything more precise, right?
But you might be drawing attention to something that doesn't need more attention, or amplifying a perfectly good word, or making other unmodified words pale in contrast.
He shouted loudly into the wind.
She bit back an obscene swear word.
The vista was filled with toweringly high mountains.
The top of her knee was a little bit more than an inch below the bottom of her skirt.
The hole in the fusillade was immoderately large.
Beware of inadvertent humor. I mean, really, any hole in the fusillade is way too large, wouldn't you say?
Of course, sometimes it works to over-modify (especially for comic effect). But this is something to watch for. "An inch below the bottom of her skirt" is a good description. "A little bit more than an inch" makes me envision some nun with a ruler measuring the space. Precision is actually distracting sometimes.
And especially watch out for redundancy. Mountains are high, but some are higher than others, so maybe we will allow "high mountains" (I did grow up in a valley below some not very high mountains, I guess-- 3000-4000 feet, so I'd allow "high mountains" if you're talking about the Rockies, say). But "toweringly high?" Come on.
If you need to trim 1000 words or so from your manuscript, here's where to start. Delete the over-modifiers, and I bet you won't miss them. (I just deleted "even" there before "miss"-- "even miss them". See, it's easy once you set your mind to it.)
Alicia
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Last Piece of Theory on Present Participial Phrases
You're probably sick to death of listening to all the talk about the routine abuse of present participial phrases. Trust me, it could be worse. If we posted about this every time we rejected a sub for having too many of these errors, we'd have to rename the blog -ingtorrent.
But in all our talk about these pesky phrases, it occurs to me that we've never given you the final piece of theory. We explained that these phrases are adjective phrases. We talked about the nature of modifiers and how present participial phrases sometimes indicated weakness in the sentence's main clause. And, most recently, Alicia talked about using present participial phrases to signal concurrent actions.
Maybe you've already read these posts and drawn the conclusion I'm about to present. But just in case, and just so we're all clear on how these different bits of advice and theory work together, let's take a look at why these phrases must be concurrent and relevant to the main clause.
In the simple sentence,
The orange cat leaped onto the windowsill
we can all see that orange modifies cat. The cat's orange quality exists at the moment of leaping. In fact, we can assume the cat is orange at all times, barring unfortunate accidents with dye pots. Easy enough so far. But what happens when we replace that simple adjective with a present participle used as an adjective?
The hissing cat leaped onto the windowsill.
The act of hissing still describes the cat, and the act of hissing is still concurrent with the main action verb. Hissing is a state of being that exists during the totality of the leap. Hissing is not a discrete action all on its own. Or, I should say, it's not presented as such. If it were, it would be presented differently, perhaps,
The cat hissed and leaped onto the windowsill.
Then we would be describing a compound action (hissed and leaped) instead of describing a state of being (hissing) of a noun (cat) at the moment an action (leaped) occurs.
You with me so far? Verbs are actions. Adjectives describe qualities or states of being of a noun. And -- this is the main point -- the description of the noun must be simultaneous with the action. If the hissing and leaping occurred in sequence, one first and then the next, you would have to separate them in the sentence, perhaps with an adverb,
The cat hissed and then leaped onto the windowsill.
(Then is an adverb modifying leaped.)
Or you might shift the hissing into an adverb phrase,
After hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
While hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
These phrases are adverbial in nature because they describe the time elements involved with the actions. They don't qualify the essential nature of the cat. They qualify the timeline. Because adverbs modify verbs, right? Verbs usually lay out the timeline for prose actions, so any time you need to clarify sequencing, you might need adverbs or adverb phrases. And these adverb phrases are not the same as,
Hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
Because this doesn't tell us diddly-squat about the sequencing. All we've done in this sentence is elaborate on an adjective (which modifies a noun, not a verb). (Forgive me if this sounds like harping. I'm trying to make this as clear as I can, and this seems to require some repetition of concepts.)
Remember that in the sentence,
The hissing cat leaped onto the windowsill.
the adjective hissing modified the noun cat. All we have done here is add a prepositional phrase to provide more information about the hissing. It's not just any hissing. It's hissing at a dog. But it still describes the essential nature of the cat.
The hissing at the dog cat leaped onto the windowsill.
This sentence is structurally awkward for a whole lot of reasons we won't get into here. But leaving aside all that awkwardness (and the punctuation issue, also a separate matter), the point is that hissing still modifies cat, and at the dog still modifies hissing, and modifiers still go next to the words they modify. You could use punctuation to get around the awkwardness,
The hissing-at-the-dog cat leaped onto the windowsill.
Or you could shift the phrase into an introductory position,
Hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
The cat's hissing-at-the-dog nature exists at the moment of the leap. And this is why present participial phrases, which are adjectival in nature, are simultaneous with the main actions of the sentence.
When Alicia was talking about causal and other connections between the present participial phrase and the main verb, I think she was mainly trying to make a point about relevance. We could describe the cat in lots of different ways.
Staring with its blue eyes and hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
Now there's a craptastic phrase for you. I had to use one that talked about what the cat is doing with its eyes, because these are generally weak phrases, far less meaningful than dynamic actions like hissing and leaping. Using less meaningful (or even irrelevant) phrases will dilute the impact of the sentence. The cat may very well have staring blue eyes for the duration of the leap. But so what? The fact that it's eyes are blue doesn't give us important information about the actions underway. And the staring -- well, anyone who has been around a cat knows they are champion starers. They stare because they're bored, content, hungry, etc., etc. But hissing only happens in response to a threat, so hissing gives us a more clear description of the cat's state of being at the moment of the jump.
Do we all understand this? Any questions? Got any sample sentences with participial phrases you want us to tackle? Post them in the comments if you do.
Theresa,
tempted to bore us further with another similar post on past participial phrases
But in all our talk about these pesky phrases, it occurs to me that we've never given you the final piece of theory. We explained that these phrases are adjective phrases. We talked about the nature of modifiers and how present participial phrases sometimes indicated weakness in the sentence's main clause. And, most recently, Alicia talked about using present participial phrases to signal concurrent actions.
Maybe you've already read these posts and drawn the conclusion I'm about to present. But just in case, and just so we're all clear on how these different bits of advice and theory work together, let's take a look at why these phrases must be concurrent and relevant to the main clause.
In the simple sentence,
The orange cat leaped onto the windowsill
we can all see that orange modifies cat. The cat's orange quality exists at the moment of leaping. In fact, we can assume the cat is orange at all times, barring unfortunate accidents with dye pots. Easy enough so far. But what happens when we replace that simple adjective with a present participle used as an adjective?
The hissing cat leaped onto the windowsill.
The act of hissing still describes the cat, and the act of hissing is still concurrent with the main action verb. Hissing is a state of being that exists during the totality of the leap. Hissing is not a discrete action all on its own. Or, I should say, it's not presented as such. If it were, it would be presented differently, perhaps,
The cat hissed and leaped onto the windowsill.
Then we would be describing a compound action (hissed and leaped) instead of describing a state of being (hissing) of a noun (cat) at the moment an action (leaped) occurs.
You with me so far? Verbs are actions. Adjectives describe qualities or states of being of a noun. And -- this is the main point -- the description of the noun must be simultaneous with the action. If the hissing and leaping occurred in sequence, one first and then the next, you would have to separate them in the sentence, perhaps with an adverb,
The cat hissed and then leaped onto the windowsill.
(Then is an adverb modifying leaped.)
Or you might shift the hissing into an adverb phrase,
After hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
While hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
These phrases are adverbial in nature because they describe the time elements involved with the actions. They don't qualify the essential nature of the cat. They qualify the timeline. Because adverbs modify verbs, right? Verbs usually lay out the timeline for prose actions, so any time you need to clarify sequencing, you might need adverbs or adverb phrases. And these adverb phrases are not the same as,
Hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
Because this doesn't tell us diddly-squat about the sequencing. All we've done in this sentence is elaborate on an adjective (which modifies a noun, not a verb). (Forgive me if this sounds like harping. I'm trying to make this as clear as I can, and this seems to require some repetition of concepts.)
Remember that in the sentence,
The hissing cat leaped onto the windowsill.
the adjective hissing modified the noun cat. All we have done here is add a prepositional phrase to provide more information about the hissing. It's not just any hissing. It's hissing at a dog. But it still describes the essential nature of the cat.
The hissing at the dog cat leaped onto the windowsill.
This sentence is structurally awkward for a whole lot of reasons we won't get into here. But leaving aside all that awkwardness (and the punctuation issue, also a separate matter), the point is that hissing still modifies cat, and at the dog still modifies hissing, and modifiers still go next to the words they modify. You could use punctuation to get around the awkwardness,
The hissing-at-the-dog cat leaped onto the windowsill.
Or you could shift the phrase into an introductory position,
Hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
The cat's hissing-at-the-dog nature exists at the moment of the leap. And this is why present participial phrases, which are adjectival in nature, are simultaneous with the main actions of the sentence.
When Alicia was talking about causal and other connections between the present participial phrase and the main verb, I think she was mainly trying to make a point about relevance. We could describe the cat in lots of different ways.
Staring with its blue eyes and hissing at the dog, the cat leaped onto the windowsill.
Now there's a craptastic phrase for you. I had to use one that talked about what the cat is doing with its eyes, because these are generally weak phrases, far less meaningful than dynamic actions like hissing and leaping. Using less meaningful (or even irrelevant) phrases will dilute the impact of the sentence. The cat may very well have staring blue eyes for the duration of the leap. But so what? The fact that it's eyes are blue doesn't give us important information about the actions underway. And the staring -- well, anyone who has been around a cat knows they are champion starers. They stare because they're bored, content, hungry, etc., etc. But hissing only happens in response to a threat, so hissing gives us a more clear description of the cat's state of being at the moment of the jump.
Do we all understand this? Any questions? Got any sample sentences with participial phrases you want us to tackle? Post them in the comments if you do.
Theresa,
tempted to bore us further with another similar post on past participial phrases
Friday, September 19, 2008
Adjective query
I am puzzling over a phrase, just contemplating which alternative would sound best or be best, I guess.
Anyway, here it is. Just an example to see what you value when you assemble a sentence (no right answer, that is, or no wrong answer anyway!):
He lounged around, elegant and drunk.
He lounged around, drunk and elegant.
Not a great line, but what I am squinting at is those two adjectives-- which order would you put them?
You can swap them for other words, if you think it will help. For example, I think "drunk" might be too short a sound -- one syllable -- for the end of a sentence, so I might say, elegant and inebriated (if I were going to be obnoxious), or elegant and hungover, or....??
So justify. For example, I tend to want "elegant" first because that's setting up the expectation of something aesthetic, which "drunk" or equivalent will then undercut, thus becoming a bit of punchline.
But I can see the powerful punchy Anglo-saxon "drunk" first, and the, well, elegant French word providing more of a visual.
It's okay if you say that I spend way too much time on triviality. :) But I find that often this sort of opposition/pairing is an aspect of voice.
Anyway, here it is. Just an example to see what you value when you assemble a sentence (no right answer, that is, or no wrong answer anyway!):
He lounged around, elegant and drunk.
He lounged around, drunk and elegant.
Not a great line, but what I am squinting at is those two adjectives-- which order would you put them?
You can swap them for other words, if you think it will help. For example, I think "drunk" might be too short a sound -- one syllable -- for the end of a sentence, so I might say, elegant and inebriated (if I were going to be obnoxious), or elegant and hungover, or....??
So justify. For example, I tend to want "elegant" first because that's setting up the expectation of something aesthetic, which "drunk" or equivalent will then undercut, thus becoming a bit of punchline.
But I can see the powerful punchy Anglo-saxon "drunk" first, and the, well, elegant French word providing more of a visual.
It's okay if you say that I spend way too much time on triviality. :) But I find that often this sort of opposition/pairing is an aspect of voice.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
On Bananas and Banana Peels
You may have gathered by now that I’m a bit obsessed with verbs, and I thought it might help you all tolerate this obsession if I talked a little about the theoretical basis for this obsession. To really understand this, let’s talk a little about nouns.
Remember the Schoolhouse Rock song about nouns?
Well every person you can know,
And every place that you can go,
And any thing that you can show,
You know they're nouns.
A noun's a special kind of word,
It's any name you ever heard.
I find it quite interesting,
A noun is a person, place or thing.
Our Madlibbish Exercise
Step One.
List five common nouns. Any common nouns will do. Look around your environment if you need ideas. I’ll choose banana, glass, corkboard, calendar and finger.
Step Two.
Insert each noun into the verb slot in the following sentence.“If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to ___________ you.”
So I get,
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to banana you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to glass you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to corkboard you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to calendar you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to finger you.
Only one of my five makes sense, and it’s the one where the noun (finger) has such a strong connotation of action (to point) that the action associated with the noun works in the verb slot. “Finger” becomes a synonym for “point.”
What were yours? Did any of them make sense, or were they mostly nonsense? For the ones that made sense, is there a strong link between the object and its usage that makes the verb form easy to comprehend?
English is Noun-Dependent
Some languages are noun-dependent and some are verb-dependent. English is noun-dependent. The sentence structures are built around solid nouns. A noun is a noun is a noun, and though they *can* shift into other parts of speech, it’s not all that common.
Verbs, by comparison, are slipperly little eels. Verbs mutate. One minute they’re active and healthy main verbs in an independent clause. The next, they’ve shifted form and turned into adjectives (past and present participles) or nouns (gerunds and nominalizations).
Another exercise might clarify this. Take your list of five nouns from above and add an -ing to them and insert them into the following sentence:
_________-ing her friend was a good idea.
I get:
Bananaing her friend was a good idea.
Glassing her friend was a good idea.
Corkboarding her friend was a good idea.
Calendering her friend was a good idea.
Fingering her friend was a good idea.
That’s what happens when you try to turn a common noun into a verb, and the resulting verb into a gerund. It doesn’t work unless the noun already has a strong enough association with a particular action to be synonymous with a verb for that action.
Or take the same -ing form and try it as a present participle:
_____________-ing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Bananaing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Glassing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Corkboarding very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Calendering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Fingering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Look at what happens to “fingering” when we use it in a way that breaks the association to the act of pointing. It stops making sense.
Can we use nouns as simple adjectives, without the participial form but in their native form? Let’s try.
On Saturday, we attended a very __________ party.
On Saturday, we attended a very banana party.
On Saturday, we attended a very glass party.
On Saturday, we attended a very corkboard party.
On Saturday, we attended a very calendar party.
On Saturday, we attended a very finger party.
Nope. Doesn’t work.
But wait, you say. What about this: “We attended a banana party.” It could be a party to celebrate bananas,right? Well, okay, it could be, but that doesn’t convert banana to an adjective in this usage. What it does is convert “banana party” to a compound noun, two nouns which, when used together, mean something different than either noun standing alone.
My point is this. We quibble about things like participle usage and verb choice because verbs are the slippery banana peels in English sentences. One false step, and your sentence skids out of control. Nouns are solid and sturdy -- ever have an argument about nouns that was rooted in grammar rather than in semantics? -- and comparing them like this might help you all understand why I’m such a nut about verbs. Your nouns will almost always function as nouns. Your verbs? Total free-for-all.
Theresa
Remember the Schoolhouse Rock song about nouns?
Well every person you can know,
And every place that you can go,
And any thing that you can show,
You know they're nouns.
A noun's a special kind of word,
It's any name you ever heard.
I find it quite interesting,
A noun is a person, place or thing.
Our Madlibbish Exercise
Step One.
List five common nouns. Any common nouns will do. Look around your environment if you need ideas. I’ll choose banana, glass, corkboard, calendar and finger.
Step Two.
Insert each noun into the verb slot in the following sentence.“If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to ___________ you.”
So I get,
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to banana you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to glass you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to corkboard you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to calendar you.
If you don’t watch out, someone’s going to finger you.
Only one of my five makes sense, and it’s the one where the noun (finger) has such a strong connotation of action (to point) that the action associated with the noun works in the verb slot. “Finger” becomes a synonym for “point.”
What were yours? Did any of them make sense, or were they mostly nonsense? For the ones that made sense, is there a strong link between the object and its usage that makes the verb form easy to comprehend?
English is Noun-Dependent
Some languages are noun-dependent and some are verb-dependent. English is noun-dependent. The sentence structures are built around solid nouns. A noun is a noun is a noun, and though they *can* shift into other parts of speech, it’s not all that common.
Verbs, by comparison, are slipperly little eels. Verbs mutate. One minute they’re active and healthy main verbs in an independent clause. The next, they’ve shifted form and turned into adjectives (past and present participles) or nouns (gerunds and nominalizations).
Another exercise might clarify this. Take your list of five nouns from above and add an -ing to them and insert them into the following sentence:
_________-ing her friend was a good idea.
I get:
Bananaing her friend was a good idea.
Glassing her friend was a good idea.
Corkboarding her friend was a good idea.
Calendering her friend was a good idea.
Fingering her friend was a good idea.
That’s what happens when you try to turn a common noun into a verb, and the resulting verb into a gerund. It doesn’t work unless the noun already has a strong enough association with a particular action to be synonymous with a verb for that action.
Or take the same -ing form and try it as a present participle:
_____________-ing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Bananaing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Glassing very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Corkboarding very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Calendering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Fingering very quickly, she prayed she would make it in time.
Look at what happens to “fingering” when we use it in a way that breaks the association to the act of pointing. It stops making sense.
Can we use nouns as simple adjectives, without the participial form but in their native form? Let’s try.
On Saturday, we attended a very __________ party.
On Saturday, we attended a very banana party.
On Saturday, we attended a very glass party.
On Saturday, we attended a very corkboard party.
On Saturday, we attended a very calendar party.
On Saturday, we attended a very finger party.
Nope. Doesn’t work.
But wait, you say. What about this: “We attended a banana party.” It could be a party to celebrate bananas,right? Well, okay, it could be, but that doesn’t convert banana to an adjective in this usage. What it does is convert “banana party” to a compound noun, two nouns which, when used together, mean something different than either noun standing alone.
My point is this. We quibble about things like participle usage and verb choice because verbs are the slippery banana peels in English sentences. One false step, and your sentence skids out of control. Nouns are solid and sturdy -- ever have an argument about nouns that was rooted in grammar rather than in semantics? -- and comparing them like this might help you all understand why I’m such a nut about verbs. Your nouns will almost always function as nouns. Your verbs? Total free-for-all.
Theresa
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
