Writing "Since" for "Because"

Many writers are confused about the use of "since" and "because" and think the former always means the latter. According to one of several GrammarCheck newsletters: When used as a conjunction, especially at the beginning of a sentence, since" can be used in place of "because." According to one of our academic sources, "since" has been used in this manner since the 14th century.

Although that website refers to "academic sources", I can find no credentials for the site's administrators or content providers. So, I'd go with the library's usage views. If you look up "since" in "The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved...." at Answers, for example, you'll find the word listed mostly (seven of eight meanings) as an indicator of time passed.

"Since" can be used as an adjective, a preposition, or a conjunction, and two of the three conjunction uses are time-related. In the example the dictionary provides for the use of "since" to mean "inasmuch as" or "because", the example places the conjunction at the beginning of a sentence: Since you're not interested, I won't tell you about it. No, seriously, that is the example sentence given!

In light of the facts that so much of the meaning of "since" has to do with time, try to avoid using it to indicate causality. When you're tempted to use it, take a pause and type "because".

Writing "Try"

LAST DAY TO ENTER THE CONTEST

It's quite difficult for me to turn off the editor in my head (known informally as the condition "ed head"). When I read or hear the phrase "try and" instead of the correct "try to", a shudder shakes my spine. Bad grammar grates my nerves like nails scraped on a chalk board. Why should we not "try and"? Well, we can, but only if we really mean two different actions and punctuate the sentence correctly.

Consider what the writer or speaker really means when asking someone to "Try and get there on time". I think the phrase requests someone to be on time. If the conjunction "and" is connecting two verbs, "try" and "get", what else is to be "tried"?

In the case of "try to walk without crutches" connected to "be careful of the curb", the correct shortened construction would be "Try, and be careful". In this case, the conjunction connects two independent clauses and usually needs a comma. Incidentally, in all these examples, the subject of each clause is understood to be "you", even though it is not written or spoken.

When you're tempted to use "try to" or "try and", expand the sentence to its whole meaning to determine which word to use after the verb "try". Try it; you'll like it!

Reference from The American Heritage Dictionary:

USAGE NOTE The phrase try and is commonly used as a substitute for try to, as in Could you try and make less noise? A number of grammarians have labeled the construction incorrect. To be sure, the usage is associated with informal style and strikes an inappropriately conversational note in formal writing. Sixty-five percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use in writing of the sentence Why don't you try and see if you can work the problem out between yourselves?

via Answers.com

Beach Reads for Writing

One hot read this summer for English language lovers is
Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, by Sol Steinmetz. In it you'll learn how many of our terms evolved from completely different original meanings. The section on how the word "nude" came to mean "naked" is especially provocative. ("Nude" was formerly a legal term indicating something was unenforceable or void.)

Angry at the rising prices at the pump? I joked that I emptied my bank account into my gas tank. Some blame the Chinese, some blame the government, and some point at OPEC, the oil cartel, a syndicate controlling oil prices. The word "cartel", however, started out meaning a card or paper on which an agreement was written. That's not difficult to hear in the pronunciation. Steinmetz credits the Germans for transforming it into symbolizing a nefarious organization with the signing of a "Kartell" in 1887 supporting the political leader, von Bismarck.

My fave is "silly", the tag I use on the Saturday posts herein. Amazon notes that:

Before the year 1200, the word silly meant "blessed," and was derived from Old English saelig, meaning "happy." This word went through several incarnations before adopting today's meaning: "stupid or foolish."

Writing may can you With Might

For some people, confusion reigns supreme over the use of 'may' and 'might' and about the uses of 'can' and 'could'. Perhaps I should include 'will' and 'would', 'shall' and 'should', but you'll get the picture from the first two pairs.

The problem with 'may' and 'might' comes about because both can (oops!) be used in the present tense, but the word 'might' is also the past tense of 'may'. Using 'might' in the present, as in "I might go to town today" indicates a conditional situation less formal or probable than "I may go to town."

But you can also say, "I hoped I might go to town", all in the past tense, where 'may' is not the right word. This is similar to 'can' and its past tense 'could'. You would not write, "I hoped I can go, but I knew I can't." Just doesn't sound right, yes? You would (oops! again) use 'could' and 'couldn't' in that sentence.

Try out variations of a very basic sentence, substituting the other pairs of verbs, when you find yourself confused over whether you should (oops! thrice) use 'may' or 'might'. I might end this now before I confuse us further. And then again, I might not. But I shall. And I should.

Writing With Semicolons

More often than not, when I edit manuscripts, I notice that people no longer use semicolons. Those who do seem to be confused about their use. According to the Chicago Manual of Style, a semicolon most often joins two independent clauses. For example:

The dog chased cars; he never caught one.

The two clauses are independent, meaning each could stand alone and make sense. The semicolon creates a pause, much as a comma does. Because the two clauses are joined in one sentence; however, the semicolon's function is more like that of a full stop, a.k.a. in the U.S. as a period. This use holds true even if a transitional adverb is used to introduce the second clause:

The dog chased cars; indeed, he caught one, but didn't know what to do with it.

Another semicolon use that I seldom see is to take the place of a serial comma when punctuation appears within items in the series:

The dog, in an effort to appear mighty, chased cars; ran after cats, sometimes several at the same time; and caught no cars, a few cats, birds, and insects. This use is often found in long, complex sentences. Breaking down the example: the dog chased, ran, and caught. This is a series of actions. Within those three active verb elements are modifying phrases containing commas; hence, the need for a serial semicolon.

All right (notice it's not 'alright') all you other nitpicking editors, find the mistakes in this post and tell the world in a comment.

Build English Vocabulary

MSN's Encarta is bundled with my MS Word 2003 as the de facto dictionary. The Encarta website contains many useful articles and some funny quizzes. Don't try the President Bush's English Quiz, though. The links I tried went to an empty page. Oh, wait! Maybe that's the joke.

All kidding aside, I think "Ten Tips to Build English Vocabulary" is quite useful. Strategies to help memorize new words include:

• choose words you're interested in
• associate a color with each word
• use the words in your imagination
• write pieces using new words
• relate a picture to a word

It sounds a lot like advice for learning people's names--the relationships and use. Repetition is a powerful learning device. When I was learning a larger vocabulary, I bored people silly using the new polysyllabic terminology (big words) in conversations until they were cemented in my mind. The words, not people.

Speaking of MS Word, a client sent me documents in the newer .docx format. I dutifully downloaded and installed the Microsoft converters for my software version. Then I opened the client files. It worked--not so good. The process is like gestating elephants, long and difficult, at least for the computer. The results warn of format and permissions changes. I could not extract photos, at least not easily, and separate them from the documents. It's either time for me to upgrade or remember to start asking for files to be converted to my preferred format. Let's see, who's the parent here? No, scratch that. Who is in charge? What would you do or expect?

Superprize for Writing Novels

This year the bookish people who run the Man Booker prize will celebrate the award's 40th anniversary with a The Best of the Booker award to "honour the best overall novel to have won the prize since it was first awarded on 22 April 1969." The same type of award was given on the organization's 25th anniversary, but this time the public will be able to help choose from a shortlist of six chosen by a panel from the 41 contenders. The regular Booker prize is 50,000 pounds. The winner of the Best Booker only gets a trophy, I guess because the author already got the loot the first time around.

According to The Times online, bookies give authors these odds of winning:

• 4-1 Yann Martel – The Life of Pi (2002)

• 5-1 Salman Rushdie – Midnight's Children (1981)
  

• 7-1 Michael Ondaatje – The English Patient (1992)

• 8-1 Ben Okri – The Famished Road (1991); Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things (1997); Ian McEwan – Amsterdam (1998)

• 10-1 J. M. Coetzee – Disgrace (1999); Anne Enright – The Gathering (2007)

If nothing else, this probably makes a good reading list for aspiring novelists.

Editing Common Writing Errors

Finding mistakes in your own writing can be an exercise in frustration. Even editors and publishers admit a piece of writing can pass through edits by several different people, "And," as UT Books editor Arthur Salm said, "still errors appear in print." You've probably seen most of the editing methods suggested for finding errors in your copy or manuscript. You may use a word processing program with a built-in spelling and grammar checker, even having numerous options you can adjust. Any combination of methods physical and electronic will catch typographical errors and limited punctuation problems as well as some grammar and syntactical issues.

Other sources of mistakes, however, often defy the eyes and brains of both writers and editors. The website Common Errors in English is an exhaustive/exhausting list of transpositions, sound alike, tense, and more difficulties compiled by Paul Brians' brain. Get it--brian/brain? Altogether (or is it all together? I'm so confused!) in one compilation with links to explanatory pages, Brians offers help for the mystified purveyors of English language. His service could probably help ESLs, too. That's people who are learning English as a second language.

Master English Words - VOA

When I was growing up in southwestern Ohio, way out in the country near a tiny town called Mason, a field of very tall radio towers reached toward the clouds. From far enough away, on a clear day, a viewer could see the towers were topped by large antennas. A little sign, I think, indicated they were broadcasting Voice of America programs. We were going to talk the mean Russians into submission. (It was the Cold War era.)


Eventually I learned what the Voice of America did and then thought little about the activity until I discovered the digital version, VOA News.com. Better yet, the service provides a Wordmaster section subtitled "A Weekly Analysis of American English". It features grammar, idioms, slang, regional English, topical issues and an archive of articles/programs. What a wonderful resource for American writers, as well as its intended audience overseas. And it is a virtual wellspring of more resources. Peruse the list of programs, and you'll see what I mean.

Correct Pronouns Make Wise Writing

Walking home from school, children pass within ten feet of my open windows. How many times do I hear "Charlie and me got extra homework," or "Her and I hit the food court"? The problem is that American children are obviously not being taught when to use which form of pronouns. Even the adults admit to confusion about "who" and "whom", some advocating that we just do away with the objective version (whom). Here's a little list to clarify what I'm talking about: SUBJECTIVE PRONOUNS are I, he, she, they and who; OBJECTIVE PRONOUNS are me, him, her, them, and whom.

If you know how to diagram a sentence (or is that a lost art?), you can determine if the word form required is subjective or objective. A quick way to tell is to put the word in question after a preposition such as "to", "from", "by" or "with". Turn the sentence around, e.g., "The teacher burdened Charlie and me with extra homework!" or "The food court was invaded by her and me." Passive sentence, not so good, but I think you see what I mean. The prepositions call for an object (me, her, him, them, whom). The first versions needed subjective pronouns.

The dreaded "who" and "whom" follow the same rules. But this is where people develop a problem that Jack Lynch of Rutgers University calls "hypercorrection" and wind up sounding pretentious:

Hypercorrection is not simply being fussy or a nitpicker or a pedant. The 'hyper' part, from Greek, means 'too much.' It means working so hard to avoid one potential problem that you end up falling into another one.

The cure he suggests is to substitute one of the other pronouns and find which form sounds right. Imagine Jeeves announcing a visitor, whom he first asks, "Whom shall I say is calling?" If Jeeves had tried out "her is calling", he'd immediately know (if he memorized the chart) that the right way is to inquire, "Who shall I say is calling?" "Who" is the subject of the sentence.

100 Words Writers Should Know

From abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious to vortex, winnow, wrought, xenophobe, yeoman, and ziggurat. How many of those words do you know? My Google toolbar doesn't recognize "ziggurat", but then it doesn't recognize the word "toolbar" either, so what does it know? You may have heard these words and think that you know what they mean in a context, but would you know how to use them correctly in your writing? For all my personal wordiness, a friend kindly elucidated the actual meaning of noblesse oblige for me recently. Did I ever have it backwards in my mind! The editors of American Heritage dictionaries selected 100 words that they think all high school students (and their parents) should know. See all the words in this release where the ed said:

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language."

Contest for Creative Writing

The lovely people who provide answers at Answers.com are having a "creative writing" contest in which you have to use all the words below in a piece of 750 words or less:

• a lick and a promise
• ataraxia
  
• contraband
  
• halva
• mantic
  
• praxis
  
• sapid
  
• semilunar
  
• serendipity
  
• zeitgeist

I thought I'd give it a lick and a promise, seeing as how my ataraxia has abated due to contraband semilunal sapid halva received from a mantic admirer whose serendipity fits the zeitgeist.

Hurry! The deadline is December 21, 2007.

Hope for future writers

A bright ray of hope for future generations of writers comes from the old classroom standby, Weekly Reader. Oh, Lord, how I lived for the day our little newspaper arrived, so much more interesting than text books! The smart folks who sustained me through grade school now publish Writing magazine for middle and high school students. This year, it was named as one of the top four magazines in educational publishing by the Association of Educational Publishers. The magazine contains how-to articles, author profiles and student writing. Its goal is to help students build skills in writing that apply across their curricula. Each issue is supplemented with a Teacher's Guide and a literary blog that links content to state and national standards. Students are invited to contribute to the reely kewl blog. The current issue features:

* a teen's experience with blogging for a political campaign

* encouragement from author Mary Pipher, who challenges young writers to use their words for social change

* step-by-step instructions on writing an op-ed piece

* a heart-warming essay by Gary Paulsen

Writers Make Up Words

Verbotomy! "Every day we create a new definition and matching cartoon. Your challenge is to create a word -- a verboticism -- that matches the definition. After you create your verboticism, you can vote for other authors's [sic] words to help select the winning verboticism for the definition."

When I visited, the word was:

EARJACULATE

DEFINITION: adj., Pertaining to the sound quality emanating from someone else's earbuds. n., Second-hand sound (i.e. previously heard), which has escaped from a headphone or other personal listening device.

Hmm. Yes, well this is a game, but I find it amusing to just drop in every once in a while to read the funny definitions for made up words that sound like authentic English ones.

English Words Missing Hyphens

Reuters reported on a linguistic catastrophe -- Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on. Seems that a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary eliminated hyphens in about 16,000 words. Reuter's Simon Rabinovich blames it on the Internet. Here's what the Shorter OED editor offered: "Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography," he said. "The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned." The shorter dictionary (only two volumes!) unified compound nouns or split them into two words. Decisions weren't whimsical and arbitrary, but based on research into contemporary use, the ed said.

Writers' Words: Bring and Take

Confusion is growing about the use of "bring" and "take". And no wonder. I was watching Hide and Seek last night. The actors consistently misused "bring" when they meant "take". They were in the country, talking about returning to New York with the character played by Dakota Fanning. So, the woman wanted to "take" the child back--except she said "bring". The father suggested waiting two weeks to see if there was improvement and if not, he would "bring" her back (from where they were). No, no, no! If I am HERE, I take something THERE. If I am in San Diego and you are visiting Paris, however, I might ask you to bring me back some perfume (Chanel No. 5, preferably). Bring it here. Take it there. That's the shorthand to remember.

Poetry According to Kowit

What a humbling experience it was to dialog with nationally-known poet Steve Kowit! He talked with our writers' group last night on a wide range of aspects of poetry. First he read one of his own poems and casually mentioned that Ginsberg (the late, great Allen, the Beat poet) told him he'd riffed on it, just as Kowit had written it based on one of Pablo Neruda's poems, "Enigma". What a web of connections poets weave! I knew we prose writers rip off one another (there are only so many topics and a set number of facts to use), but it had never occurred to me that each poem was not individual.

Kowit mentioned he's a reactionary. I asked him to elaborate. He said he's rebelling against modernism and post-modernistic poetry with all its vague incomprehensibility. "That has lost poetry readers," he declared, explaining that he wants his poems to be accessible (understandable) to everyone. While discussing the "meaning" of a poem he'd read aloud, I floated the notion that a poem means what it means to the reader. He gently rejected this idea, declaring that poetry is communication, so there must be a message and it is the poets job to make the message clear. I still wonder about ye who have ears.

Commonly Confused English Words

I'm about to flip out over the quality of beginners--and even of those who call themselves Writers. And all because I keep seeing the same word choice and spelling errors repeated in messages to other writers. Now, I could be way off base here, but I think its partly because those errant spellers see those same misspellings and misuses in others' posts, in mailing lists, on "author websites", and they either think the word are O.K. (words like 'definately') or expect the list or forum Mom to clean up after them. Sometimes Their Crankinesses complain about a lack of a spell checker in the systems, to which I point out a multitude of online services and the one built into their word processor. Is it so hard to handle a physical dictionary, anyway?

Take every opportunity to write well, and it will become automatic for you, cutting down on the amount of time you must spend editing your work. Do you really have such low self-esteem that you don't care what your peers think of your usual style? Are you content to spread the rampant degradation of the English language? I looked back through the last three years of posts here and noticed several on this issue. In the very beginning, I was ranting about these:

affect and effect (both as nouns and verbs)
rap and wrap
lie and lay (as verbs)
accept and except
allusion and illusion and delusion
censure and censor
compose and comprise
imply and infer
founder and flounder
loose and lose
expand and expend

To which I'm adding:

insight and incite

Please, spend some time with sweet Lady Dictionary, or hang out at the bar with Funk & Wagnall, and learn when to use each word and how to spell all of them correctly.

MFA Programs for Writers

Interested in pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in writing? You can find a free listing of low residency graduate degree programs in creative writing at The Practicing Writer's Primer on Low-Residency MFA Programs. The ebook by Erika Dreifus will only be available until the first of September. After that, the author is retiring this title, but until that time, she's generously giving it away from her shop on Lulu.com. After that time, Dreifus suggests interested individuals contact Anna Mendoza's online resource.

Dr. Dreifus' website The Practicing Writer and her Practicing Writing Blog are great resources, too, for creative writers.

Banned British Words

To be more accurate, the following terms are banned in one place or another of the United Kingdom, according to the Phrase and Word Origins page of the English Usage website:

* nitty-gritty (offends Negros, blacks, colored people)
* good egg (same)
* homosexual (gay men)
* history (women)
* hard-working (disabled)
* gobbledygook (?)

This is a small example of political correctness run amok (oops! does that word tick off someone? An Alaskan Indian tribe perhaps?) (Double oops!! Make that "native American") Oh, it's enough to make a writer give up the art and craft. Not only can you not please everyone, it seems that you can't write or speak publicly without treading on tender toes. Will the overly sensitive wussies please sit down!

Buzzwords

The 13 Most Fun Buzzwords of 2006 will have you in stitches. It asks, Ever done any blamestorming? How about prairie-dogging? Do you work with any BMWs? Or has your career been plutoed? The BuzzWhack website is dedicated to de-mystifying buzzwords, but it's not without some humor along the way. Get a daily buzzword by email. "Not all buzzwords make you cringe. Some are delightfully colorful, funny and sum up life in today's workplace," says John Walston, author of The Buzzword Dictionary. "And given the way the world's been going lately, we definitely need something to laugh about."

Questions of Style

If you write nonfiction and use the AP Stylebook as a guide to punctuation and grammar, did you know it's available online by subscription? It's free to search the site if you don't know what section to look in for an answer. The same page contains a long list of previously submitted questions and answers--note their brevity. Not one word more than needed to respond. Now, that's good editing! Better yet, if there's a sticky wicket not covered in the text or website, a feature allows you to query the APStylebook.com editors (about style).

English Usage

If you're really really a ginormous fan of the English language, you're probably already a member of the alt.usage.english newsgroup. Come again? Say what? Don't even know what a "newsgroup" is? Well, way back in a galaxy far, far away--oh, wait, I'm mixing metaphors here. Over a quarter of a century ago, long before the WWW existed, the Internet hummed along without pictures. We connected with one another directly through our telephone wires and some nodes aggregated messages and distributed them to folks with special software called "news readers". You may have this facility built right in to your email program, or you can now access newsgroups online through Google Groups. You won't be disappointed if it's all words, will you? Many of the newsgroups have websites these days, and alt.usage.english there tell all about the history of the group, explain how to find information contained in it, is one of them. Pages direct you to its archives and allow you to search.

A feature I find fascinating is the Audio Archives, which let you "Listen to the sounds of English from across the USA and around the world". Shall I share my story about Australian English? I went down under and carefully listened to a news broadcast on my first day. I recognized all the words spoken, but had absolutely no idea what they'd said. Same with reading newspaper articles. It took about three days for my brain to translate what I consider "British English"!

English Words World

If you're an Anglophile or a lover of the English language, you might enjoy Michael Quinion's World Wide Words. He calls it a British view of international English. He has a newsletter, sells his books, offers articles, answers questions, provides links and general weirdness. I especially like a section on the front page entitled SIC! No, this isn't the same as "sick" (but it might be). For example, there I found this gem of humor:

I was at a meeting the other day that included a sandwich lunch. Mine was Italian Chicken, whose other ingredients wer