March 14, 2008

• Lesson

  When I was young I didn’t like English class.  I learned to really enjoy grammer when I homeschooled my children.  Here is a grammar lesson:

  Verbs.
  Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around a passive verb. The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style–in clarity and vigor–is the difference between life and death for a writer.
  
  “Joe saw him” is strong. “He was seen by Joe” is weak. The first is short and precise; it leaves no doubt about who did what. The second is necessarily longer and it has an insipid quality: something was done by somebody to someone else. It’s also ambiguous. How often was he seen by Joe? Once? Every day? Once a week? A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy. Nobody ever quite knows what is being perpetrated by whom and on whom.
  
  I use “perpetrated” because it’s the kind of word that passive-voice writers are fond of. They prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words–which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous. Short is generally better than long. Of the 701 words in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, a marvel of economy in itself, 505 are words of one syllable and 122 are words of two syllables.
  
  Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Active verbs also enable us to visualize an activity because they require a pronoun (“he”), or a noun (“the boy”), or a person (“Mrs. Scott”) to put them in motion. Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean: glitter, dazzle, twirl, beguile, scatter, swagger, poke, pamper, vex. Probably no other language has such a vast supply of verbs so bright with color. Don’t choose one that is dull or merely serviceable. Make active verbs activate your sentences, and try to avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work. Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired? Be precise. Use precise words.
  
  If you want to see how active verbs give vitality to the written word, don’t just go back to Hemingway or Thurber or Thoreau. I commend the King James Bible or William Shakespeare.

  
  

  

  JOKE
  Cross Examination

  A defense attorney was cross-examining a police officer during a felony trial – it went like this:
  
  Q. Officer, did you see my client fleeing the scene?
  A. No sir, but I subsequently observed a person matching the description of the offender running several blocks away.
  
  Q. Officer, who provided this description?
  A. The officer who responded to the scene.
  
  Q. A fellow officer provided the description of this so- called offender. Do you trust your fellow officers?
  A. Yes sir, with my life.
  
  Q. With your life? Let me ask you this then officer – do you have a locker room in the police station – a room where you change your clothes in preparation for you daily duties?
  A. Yes sir, we do.
  
  Q. And do you have a locker in that room?
  A. Yes sir, I do.
  
  Q. And do you have a lock on your locker?
  A. Yes sir.
  
  Q. Now why is it, officer, if you trust your fellow officers with your life, that you find it necessary to lock your locker in a room you share with those same officers?
  A. You see sir, we share the building with a court complex, and sometimes lawyers have been known to walk through that room.
  
  With that, the courtroom erupted in laughter, and a prompt recess was called.

   

  • 7:43 am
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