By now, you know all about main clauses (MCs) — also commonly known as independent clauses — and you understand them not just as grammatical factoids, but as a team that, together, constitutes the sentence’s very essense. Something (that you named) either does, has, or is something (according to you). It’s that simple, ha ha.
Past the essence, to the effect
Yes, I jest to call MCs “simple,” when it took me six essays to explain them, as my system’s Stage 1. They may not qualify as all that simple, but they do, indeed, boil down to a simple, two-part (subject and predicate) building block of not just grammar but of meaning — or I might say, of “human meaning making.” I hope you are noticing the central connection, within my system, of grammar and “the meaning of life.”
Now that we understand the essense of a sentence, it’s time to start using our newly sharpened focus on sentences, themselves, to learn about the many ways we can enhance, embellish, and enlarge our sentences, when we desire added substance — past the essence, to the effect.
“And just what ‘effect‘ are you ballyhooing, Mike?” Good question. I’m so glad you asked. It shows that you are paying attention. And my answer is just overflowing with great news! Even better than great, it’s the best news possible, as regards this whole project of your improved, maybe even transformed, writing. (Personally, I would shoot for the latter.) I refer to the very effect . . . that your heart desires!
But first, another quiz. I promise to craft this one somewhere in the vicinity of reasonable. That last one would stump most (of today’s) English teachers! Seriously. I worked with a bunch of them whose training focused on lots of social issues but came in “ultra light” on grammar, punctuation, and/or writing form.
When you, Reader-student, have made it thoughtfully through Stage 2, you’ll know some things about sentences — both functionally and grammatically — that a number of present-day college faculty in English/Writing couldn’t exactly recite. (K-12 teachers usually get better training.) Is that cool — or what?
Pre-Quiz: Stage 2-b, “Stepping Stones”
Results
Way to go! You passed. That’s the good news.
The not-as-good news is that, in order to pass, you needed just “66% or better” on this quiz (at least two of three correct).
If you aced the quiz, then great for you. By the time you’re through reading (and studying) this essay, you’ll certainly be able to ace this quiz.
Even better, acing this quiz indicates a workable understanding of my unfolding “program.” Since every new develpment rests upon the ones that came before, that’s essential.
Good luck, as you move forward. Read closely and stop and think, when that helps.
As I’ve encouraged countless students before you,”You’re not doing this for me. You’re doing this for you. I’m just the helper.”
Oopsie. I told you that you should have copied off the smart girl sitting next to you!
Some people never learn. Just kidding. You are about to learn all you need (and a lot more) to pass this little quiz. Just two of three correct will ring the bell.
I say, refresh/reload your screen, and try again! Then read on, for much-fuller understanding.
#1. A fun friend comments to you, “Is that cool — or what?” Socially and grammatically, appropriate responses include (select all that apply) . . .
Select all that apply:
#2. Name the two coordinating conjunctions that indicate causation. Use just a space between words (no commas), like this: word word
#3. In writing, the concept of “intentionality” . . . (choose *all* correct sentence endings)
Select all that apply:
And if that news (that you get to choose your “desired” effect) isn’t “best” enough, just wait — it gets even better! Maybe you’re wondering how that’s even possible. How can “best” get even better? Says here, it can, and, as you know, I never lie, so that settles it. Kidding aside, this particular best does get even better, when I help you to narrow down your scope, in choosing your intent, from”what your heart desires” (pretty broad) to what your heart desires this sentence to become and — in effect — to achieve.
Now, that may seem a bit dramatic, but guess what? That’s the very effect I wanted to achieve — a dramatic flair. It’s not for every sentence. In fact, if overdone, drama can easily degrade into melodrama! And I’m certainly not trying for that effect. But a little “good drama” (it’s like “good cholesterol,” trust me!) can add to your message’s effect, aka, its effect–iveness.
Advice to all writers: Intend to intend
As you are seeing, I expect your messages to satisfy — or even exceed — some desired effect. In class, I would sometimes swap in the term outcome. Either way, I clarify that, properly, you are “trying for something.” That’s why it matters how you “word” things.
I encourage this “intentionality” for your message as a whole, but right now I want to focus that same standard right down to the “sentence level.” Each sentence can (and, at best, does) achieve a desired effect. Whether you manage this consciously or just get in a flow naturally, each sentence has a job to do — at least it should.
Adopt this mindset, and your writing will, indeed, transform! I have promised that, at least as a viable possibility, and now you can see another reason, or basis, for my meaty (sorry, vegans) promise. I deliver on my promises. I highly recommend it. It will do wonders for your credibility.
Oh, I’m advising the obvious? All “writers” (by direct and concrete definition, this means anyone who writes — and these days, that’s pretty much all of us, including YOU!) naturally tend to write each sentence with intent? They need no reminder (as I’m presently issuing) to do so?
In my dreams, maybe — but not even there do “stringers of words” consistently do so with intentionality (conscious or natural) for each sentence. And why not, you ask? Again, good question! You’re on a roll! Here’s why they don’t.
Alas, I’m not the only “influencer” around the online, how-to-write “water cooler.” Now, I’ll always make some room, right where we get our refills, for any “writing advisor” who intends to not just extol, but to practice authenticity. The few who “say it their own way” deserve a spot up front. But those “writing advisors” (the authentic kind, not the parrots) rarely show up at the cooler. They’re too busy writing — as I’m doing right now, on your behalf!
Instead, we — who are saying it our own way, practicing what we preach, and even backing up what we espouse — feel frequent elbows of the plethora of unhelpful “experts” who bumble around, spouting the same ol’, same ol’ BS: “Keep your sentences short, and limit your ‘verbiage’ (writing “critics” love that word, used to minimize the importance of language-in-use) to only ‘the‘ facts.”
As you, dear Reader-student, now know well, no such “chunk of meaning” can represent “the” facts. Some facts? Yes. The facts? Ha ha. For every subject you name and predicate you assign, a dozen (a hundred?) go unnamed and unassigned. I’ll say it again: that’s why it matters “how you word things,” so do so with intent!
Stepping stones along the muddy path
Surely, you’re wondering, “What ‘muddy path’?” Another great question! It surely does pay . . . to pay attention! I refer, via that visual metaphor, to the muddy path of meaning — not just “meaning,” as expressed, from Person A to Person(s) B, but even, before the “expressing,” the meaning as “known,” in the first place, to Person A — and that means all of us! Person A wants to express X to Person(s)B, but how clear is the meaning in Person A’s mind, to begin with? Often, it’s not all that clear.
With infinite prospective subjects and predicates available for the choosing, which ones represent any given fact? This question, itself, calls attention to the ambiguity (aka “muddiness”) of meaning — and we haven’t even said anything yet! Just wait until we do! Then our “receivers” (listeners or readers) get to “interpret” our words — not through our “personal dictionary,” but through their own.
That little swig of “communication theory” might whet your appetite for more, but we must get ourselves back onto the “muddy path” of my presently intended meaning, namely to extend my metaphor, as I continue to define, for you, the function — let’s call it the job — of every sentence you write.
Metaphorically, anyway, each sentence you write should advance your reader(s) “one meaningful step” along the path from “what you intend” to “what they understand” and, at best, how they show this understanding — that is, how they respond, whether via “verbiage” or action or both. Their responses depend (like subject depends upon predicate!) on your own verbiage — as driven by your intent — that is, by the outcomes you seek.
Propers to Jacques Barzun — my first “professor of language”
When I cite my sources (of course, a must, for academic writing, and a helpful bonus, everywhere else), I don’t do it out of duty. Yes, academic/scholarly writing does embrace this duty; in fact, the citing of sources (abundant, relevant, and credible) largely defines writing as “scholarly.” It shows that “I’ve done my homework and understand the key viewpoints, so as to even qualify for entering this academic conversation” (thusly intending to help build knowledge, within the “academy” of fellow disciplined seekers).
I dutifully embrace this requirement, but I cite sources for another important reason. I love “giving propers” to those who have impacted my thinking and, especially, my teaching. Plus, I love to show off the calibre of my sources. So propers hereby go out to one of my life-long teachers (from his books) and inspirers in both writing and teaching: Jacques Barzun.
I have not just read, but have studied, Barzun, esteemed professor emeritus of Columbia University and author of 30+ influential books), since barely out of high school, when my legendary grandma (famed teacher and advocate of English, speech, and the humanities — you can read about her in “About Mike”), gifted me Barzun’s (1976) then-recent book, Simple & Direct — A Rhetoric for Writers. Later, somewhere during my seven years (!) as a college drop-out, I chanced upon another book of his, Teacher in America, which similarly impacted my world view and my (largely unexpected, then) future career as an educator.
Thereby, I will duly credit Barzun for his metaphorical description of the job of a sentence: to advance the reader the next step in “the march of thought and feeling” (italics, mine). The quote is better known than I’d expected, as I just saw, in a quick moment of research. I’m glad.
But the whole point of scholarship is to build upon knowledge, and a lot of building has been done since Barzun wrote Simple & Direct, not to mention Teacher in America (1945!). My own scholarly specialization, under the broad umbrella of “communication,” called discourse analysis, did not even exist in the 1970s, though its roots trace back to Aristotle. We’ve learned some new (some might say old) things.
By 2011, the time of my defense of my doctoral dissertation (An Anatomy of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning) scholars had built much upon the mid-century work of authors, like Barzun, interested in both language and in the teaching of language. Movements in scholarly thought — with names like post-modernism and structuralism/post-structuralism — have come and (some say) gone, as we continue to develop our understanding of meaning and communication.
Mostly, these newer understandings cast doubt on the possibility of any easy path to follow, for the”march” of our ideas. So my hereby revised metaphor invokes the image of not so much a march, but a muddling. And what do we need, as we muddle through the ever-muddying forest of meaning? We need stepping stones, to help us slog our way from Point A to B. Please! Just give me something dry to step on, as I make my way through what you intend for me. ANd these stapping stones come in the form of our sentences.
Sometimes we need small stones, set just right. Sometimes, we need a great big stone, to bridge us across a larger expanse of muck. Much of the time, our stepping stones can fall into the category of medium sized. When we are truly making a way for our readers, from where we’re at to the next place on the path, our stepping stones need to fit the terrain, not some moronic edict (readily available around the water cooler) to “keep them small” (that is, to “keep all sentences short”).
Do you see the dullness of that advice? Don’t listen to dullards, Reader-student. That’s what you have me for. Wait! That came out wrong.
And always avoid “begging the question”!
And, as another little “freebie” for you, please don’t ignorantly abuse the phrase “this begs the question.” I hear it all the time, especially by nitwits on TV with dull minds but, usually, at least, nice, bright teeth. Their producers, as my mom was fond of saying, “worry about the wrong things”: bright teeth, required; bright minds, optional.
To us who study language, especially rhetoric, “begging the question” does not equate to “raising a question,” though it might sound like that’s what it means. No, as you can “Google” for yourself, “begging the question” means committing a known and common fallacy of reasoning, wherein a question is answered not by new information but by its own basic terms, as in, “Why is that bad? It’s bad because it’s just no good.”
That’s “begging the question.” So don’t use that phrase when you mean, “this brings up the question . . .” of this or that. That’s listed as a “common error” — avoid those the most! Presently, I do see a this-or-that question arising from the updating of Barzun’s metaphor — from the march of ideas to the “slogging through the muck and mire” — namely, What is the proper length of a sentence?”
With that question now “arisen” (not “begged,” dammit), and our need now clarified, for stepping stones through the soggy forest of meaning, I conclude this essay and refer you to the next, titled, “Stage 2-c: The proper length of a sentence.”
If we are going to create stepping stones, we need to plan for size. But what is the “proper” size for a sentence? I have hinted that “one size does not fit all.” My next essay, to continue in Stage 2, will elaborate.
When all of the above makes sense (review as needed), go there to take the next step in your writing transformation.