The reading summary is done by: Ryan O'Connell (ENGL300-1) and David Hellberg (ENGL300-2)
Due by class time on: Friday, Feb. 11th, 2011
The responses by the whole class are due by class time on: Mon., Feb. 14th, 2011
The text you need to read is here.
By Ryan O'Connell
Macrorie wrote their article about the words order of. Do you see how confusing that sentence is? Macrorie tells how a mix up of agreement signals and word order can disrupt the meaning of a sentence. He believes that young children have no problem with this but that older writers find these concepts difficult. The first sentence of this summary should read, “Macrorie wrote his article about the order of words.”
Signal disagreement is demonstrated in his example, “Johnny and Bill has his own bike.” The word “his” is signaling oneness when their needs to be a plural. “Johnny and Bill have their own bikes” sounds much better. Macrorie states, “...in the American grammatical system words like he, she, or they preceded by prepositions signal their relationship by changing to the object form (him, her, or them).”
The article tells how most editors “...find little that is grammatically weak about the writing they edit, and when they do, the weaknesses are usually confined to a few troubles...” These troubles are as follows:
Confusing word order
Lack of clear signal by pronouns
Verbs that don't signal which nouns they belong to
One example of word order signals meaning Macrorie uses is, “When green I love the woods most of all.” Macrorie takes much offense to this sentence and wonders “Is that when I am green (sick at the stomach) (young, like a green plant), or when the woods are green?” He offers the revision, “I love the woods when green most of all.”
Macrorie talks about dangling modifiers with his example, “While walking back from my English class, a squirrel came up and stepped on my foot.” I've decided to fix this by changing the sentence to, “A squirrel came up and stepped on my foot while I was walking back from my English class.” Now there are no squirrels enrolled in English classes.
The article goes on to talk about how subjects (nouns) and verbs should not be separated. Macrorie gives the example, “Professor Rending, in approaching his subject, stumbled in circles, like a drunk.” The subject of the sentence, Professor Rending, is too far from the verb, stumbled. The sentence is fixed in the article like so, “In approaching his subject, Professor Rending stumbled in circles, like a drunk.”
Rearranging a sentence can also help a writer eliminate useless expressions. Macrorie believes that the sentence, “Queen Gertrude is a weak person, who is, in spite of her faults, held in high regard by the three men in her life” should be changed to, “In spite of her faults, Queen Gertrude is held in high regard by the three men in her life.”
Macrorie states, “...most slips in pronoun reference and noun-verb agreement occur in long sentences which interrupt themselves with qualifications and side-trips.” He suggests going over the sentences you have written to see if their meaning has not “slid into a ditch.”
The article also talks about the words “which” and “that” to refer to a whole action. Macrorie says to be careful when using these two words because sentences can become confusing unless you are “including a clear referent word immediately preceding which or that.” He provides the example, “Renny approves of making changes now, which is all right with me.” Macrorie believes that this is a fine sentence, but if a writer puts to many words in the sentence the meaning may suffer. He gives this sentence to make his point, “Renny approves of making changes now in the plan, which is all right with me.” The reader will be confused and wonder if the “all right with me” is in relation to the changes in the plan or the plan itself?
Macrorie believes that writers should try “telescoping” related sentences, or getting rid of periods and putting in other punctuation to strengthen and give them more meaning. The example Macrorie puts is, “Immediately Juliet sees the only solution to her problem. That solution is suicide. This is a highly illogical choice.” He then rewrites the sentences as, “Immediately Juliet sees the only solution to her problem–suicide, a highly illogical choice.” He states that this “taking-on must be done with care.” If the reader thinks that Juliet is the one who believes suicide is illogical, and not the writer, then there is a problem with the sentence. Macrorie says how “tacking-on” is useful for writers and can help to build stronger sentences.
Macrorie ends by talking about how shifting the place of an adjective can be used to surprise the reader like in the sentence, “He was a man lost.” The normal order would make this sentence, “He was a lost man.” The first sentence can make the reader do a double take, which may be good. Macrorie warns that if this is done to much, though, the reader will no longer be surprised and may be turned off from the reading.
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by: David Hellberg
Ken Macrorie’s article, The Order of Words, is about just that, the order of words. On occasion all writers -including professional writers –confuse word order, lack a clear signal by pronouns, and have verbs which don’t signal the nouns they belong to. These are common mistakes which we all run into in our writing at some point. Between the ages of six and eight, most children have already identified the singles to attribute the proper agreement between subject and verb. They would not say a sentence like such as: Billy and Henry rode his bike. They would say, Billy and Henry rode their bikes.
One thing to keep in mind when editing your writing is that word order signals meaning. Keep words that belong together, together. An example used in the essay marks these words by italics and small caps: This task, which George found highly agonizing, grew under the heat of the afternoon sun soon to be unbearable, and he QUIT working at it steadily EVENTUALLY. This sentence makes much more sense after the revision but reveals its sloppiness: Under the heat of the afternoon sun, this agonizing task soon grew unbearable and George eventually quit working at it steadily. We can see that either the “soon” or “eventually” should be removed. Be careful, sentence revision does not always change the meaning of the sentence.
Another problem writers come across is a dangling construction, like pronoun/antecedent agreement. We wouldn’t say, “While walking back from my English class, a squirrel came up and stepped on my foot,” because this structure suggests that the squirrel was walking from his English class. Also words like “it”, “which”, and “that” are commonly used in place of preceding words. This can become problematic when the sentence has more than one thing going on. A sentence like, “Renny approves of making changes now in the plan, which is all right with me,” the reader is left to guess at whether the changes or the plan is what is “all right with me.” Check your writing for these words and consider replacing them with stronger words, or reword the sentence.
Telescoping, the combining of closely related sentences, is another method which can help to tighten up ones writing. “Immediately Juliet sees the only solution to her problem. That solution is suicide. This is a highly illogical choice.” When these sentences are tacked together they should read something like this: “Immediately Juliet sees the only solution to her problem-suicide, a highly illogical choice. Strong tack-on sentences can bring your writing to life. If you look at a good writers writing, you’ll see that they have a subject, verb, and then add nouns, prepositional phrases, or phrases beginning with verb forms ending in –ing or –ed. Look at this sentence from Mark Twain as an example: “Each of us lives and words on a small part of the earth’s surface, moves in a small circle, and of these acquaintance knows only a few intimately.”
Look over your writing and see if you can find any of these mistakes. Make your corrections directly to the draft to help you see where your errors are. Try saying your sentences out loud, reword sentences, and look for vague reference words such as “it”, “which”, and “that” which may not be appropriate for the action preceding it.
