P.S. This teacher said my writing was like an
orange that looked whole and beautiful, but there was a little brown
spot that denoted it was rotten to the core. Why he said this was a mystery to
me as he did not criticize or have a good or bad word for my fellow
class-mates (am I jusitifed in using a hyphen here).
In my humble opinion, "Elements of Style" is vastly overrated. It's
good as far as it goes, but anyone who aspires to be an editor, or even a
writer, had better know a lot more that is found there.
Nor do I think write as you speak is necessarily a good
recommendation. It partly depends on how you speak. But it is also a fact that
speech and writing have different tools at their command (inflection and
spoken stress in the first case, punctuation and typography in the second).
Some things can be said but not written ( I have an example somewhere, but
cannot recall it now); others can be written but not spoken (e.g., this from
Kipling: "But holy state we have lived to learn, endeth in wholly
slave."):
1. Not splitting infinitives: a split infinitive is one where
another word comes between the "to" that is (usually) the sign of the
infinitive in English and the infinitive proper: "to mostly speak good
English." Another word coming between an auxiliary verb and the participle ("I
have never seen") is NOT a split infinitive. Nor is an infinitive split if it
is one of the past or perfect infinitives and the other word comse between the
auxiliary and the infinitive: "to have never seen." But a split infinitive is
often acceptable and sometimes necessary. The "rule" (even Fowler called it a
superstition) against splitting infinitives was derived from Latin, where it
is impossible to split an infinitive, since it is one word ("to carry" is
portare). But English is a Germanic language, and in German (and Dutch?), as
in English, an infinitive is preceeded by a function word indicating that it
is an infinitive (`to' in English, `zu' [which is also a preposition meaning
toward or in the direction of] in German). The adverb `thoroughly' (which in
German would be the inseparable prefix `ver-') often calls for splitting the
infinitive. (I have a whole tractate on this, but it's on--I hope--backup CDs
and so temporarily inacessable.)
2. Shall and will, should and would:
Americans mostly use `will' and `would' all the time, except in legal language
or other instances where the verb depends on another verb of permission or
command:
Garbage shall not be placed at the curb before 7 p.m.
The
English, however, make a nice distinction. To express simple futurity, they
say I or we shall or should; thou, you, he, she, it, they will or would. To
express determination, they reverse them: I shall probably go tomorrow if it
doesn't rain. He will probably go too. I shall do it tomorrow, come hell or
high water, and no one shall stop me. And then, if you're Winston Churchill,
you use simple futurity to express the utmost determination: We shall
fight...
Should I forget (I trained myself in the English pattern in my
teens), remind be when I get back on the list to send you the full version of
these essays, if you want them.
Patricia