Verbs with auxiliaries

Consider this sentence: She was leaning to the left, favoring her right leg, which was hurting now. Here we have a verb, leaning, preceded by an auxiliary verb, was. Verbs with auxiliaries are never as sharply focused as verbs without them, because the former indicate indefinite time, whereas the latter suggest a given instant. The novelist’s goal is to let the story unfold as it happens, to keep the reader in the moment—the “ongoing present.” One thing that will help you do that is to use verbs that tell readers what’s happening right now. The example sentence, therefore, would be more focused if you dropped the was and said “She leaned. . . .” 

Paul Thayer
My book editing website

Expletives

No, expletive does not refer to the words deleted from the Nixon tapes. It has another meaning in the context of writing. Expletives are words used as structural fillers that have no reference and add no meaning to the sentence. That’s why I think of them as junk words. The most common expletives are there + verb and it + verb (there are, it was, for example). Other expletives are it took and it seemed.

Examples:

There is an old expression that says, “Know your enemy.”

There are more than a few males in this culture who believe that “she’s out there somewhere.”

Yeah, right.

Expletives overload text with too many state-of-being verbs, which makes the writing weak. Using expletives also leads to problems with subject-verb agreement and pronoun-antecedent agreement. More bad news: Using it with an indefinite reference is not acceptable in formal English (It says right here in The New York Times that . . .). Furthermore, using the expletive it and the pronoun it in the same sentence can be confusing. Readers have to pause for a moment to figure out what each it is referring to. Especially those whose native language is Swahili.

Constructions with expletives often take the form of There is . . . that, There are . . . who, and It was . . . who/that. They make a sentence wordy. Example:

It was the oldest boy who strangled the Geico gecko.

I’d sure like to do that. With malice aforethought and a perverted sense of glee.

Expletives are usually easy to eliminate. Look again at the example sentences written above. The expletive at the beginning of a sentence (or an independent clause) typically buries the noun/subject, which should be more prominently displayed up front. So you could change these sentences to read:

An old expression says, “Know your enemy.”

Many males in this culture believe that “she’s out there somewhere.”

See what I mean? Eliminating expletives makes sentences shorter, more direct, and more easily understood. Using an occasional expletive won’t trigger a midnight visit from the Grammar Gestapo, but you shouldn’t overuse them. If you have to turn a sentence into a pretzel in order to euthanize an expletive, fuggedaboutit.

Paul Thayer

Your book editor

Wordiness

Economy is one hallmark of good writing, so writers must learn how to cut the clutter. In order to eliminate wordy phrases and expressions from your writing, first you should add the terms redundancy, circumlocution, and tautology to your vocabulary.

A redundant expression says the same thing twice, as in raise up (rise up), swallow down, and follow behind. Other common redundancies:

(actual) facts

(advance) warning

(all-time) record

(armed) gunman

attach (together)

(basic) fundamentals

blend (together)

(brief) moment

cancel (out)

circle (around)

combine (together)

(completely) destroyed

drop (down)

enter (in)

few (in number)

green (in color)

grow (in size)

join (together)

kneel (down)

lift (up)

meet (together)

mix (together)

outside (of)

(past) experience

(past) history

penetrate (into)

(personal) friend

reason is (because)

retreat (back)

round (in shape)

(serious) danger

share (together)

shiny (in appearance)

surrounded (on all sides)

(total) destruction

(true) facts

(ultimate) goal

(unexpected) surprise

(very) pregnant

(very) unique

warn (in advance)

write (down)

A circumlocution includes a string of words that go all around the block to express one simple idea. Examples: in the event that instead of if; at the present time instead of now; and on a regular basis instead of regularly. I have seen this last circumlocution so often in all kinds of writing that I have become allergic to it. Such expressions are not ungrammatical or repetitious, but they should be avoided because they’re wordy. More examples: a large proportion of (many); am in possession of (have); caused injuries to (injured); destroyed by fire (burned); draw the attention of/to  (show, point out); during the time that (while); give rise to (cause); had occasion to be (was); in this day and age (today).

A tautology is “repetition of the same words or use of synonymous words in close succession.” Examples:

A major nuclear disaster could have been sparked by . . .

. . . who died of a fatal dose of heroin

pair of twins

weather conditions

Another example is Yogi Berra’s famous “It was déjà vu all over again.”

Other tautologies are of this type: each and every, one and the same, any and all, when and if, and separate and distinct.

It’s easy to use superfluous words inadvertently and tough to detect them in your own prose. That’s why a good copy editor can be of great help to writers.

Paul Thayer
Your book editor

Passive-aggressive

In most cases, use the active voice of verbs instead of the passive voice. The passive voice moves the object of the verb to a superior position as the subject of the sentence, relegating the proper subject to an inferior role.

Example:

Jewelry is often stolen by burglars. [passive]

Burglars often steal jewelry. [active]

Passive forms often use the verb was:

          Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by Joseph Priestly. [passive]

          Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen in 1774. [active]

In the examples above, the proper subject—the doer of the action—often gets lost in the shuffle. Or, you might say, the actor has been removed from the action.

The active voice is almost invariably more vigorous, direct, and vivid and therefore keeps the action in sharper focus for the reader.

You don’t have to change every passive construction to an active one. For instance, various stock locutions such as The project was abandoned and The Romans were defeated are perfectly acceptable.

Also, the passive voice is useful when the doer of the action is unknown or unimportant:

The lock was broken sometime after four o’clock. [Who broke the lock is unknown]

In 1899, a peace conference was held at The Hague. [This sentence comes from an essay by E.B. White. In this case, the doers of the action—the holders of the conference—are unimportant to White’s point.]

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Cats are smarter than people

Using the em dash (not to be confused with the M&M dash and the Eminem dash)

Writers need to know how to use the em dash, which is written as one long line (—). This punctuation mark is used to set off a sudden break in thought, an interruption in dialogue, an introductory series, and a parenthetical element (such as an appositive*) in a sentence. Em dashes are often used to set off parenthetical elements within a sentence, like this:
Four states—Illinois, Ohio, Alabama, and New Jersey—are putting up highway signs             in metric language.

As you can see, the words between the dashes can be deleted from the sentence without affecting its sense. Dashes used like this are a lot like parentheses, but they are not as strong. A parenthetical phrase is much more of an aside to the reader.

An em dash can also be used to set off a word or words that come at the end of a sentence, like this:

They had twenty-three murders to solve, no leads, and only one suspect—Hannibal Lecter.

As an interruption in dialogue:

“Will he—can he—obtain the necessary signatures?” asked Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith said,  “But I thought—”

The em dash should not be used as a generic form of punctuation.

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* The term appositive comes from the Latin, "to put near." An appositive is a noun, noun phrase, or series of nouns placed next to another word or phrase to identify or rename it. Example:

Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, was never married.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Don’t dangle your participle at me, buddy!

Writers must make sure that descriptive phrases modify what they’re supposed to modify. Scribes must pay particular attention to sentences that begin with verbs that end with -ing and -ed (participial phrases), which often lead many writers to construct sentences with a misplaced modifier called—oh, horrors!— the dreaded dangling participle. Other types of misplaced modifiers, including dangling elliptical adverb clauses, may be camouflaged so well that they’re hard to spot in your own writing.

Here’s a sentence that contains a misplaced modifier (a dangling participle):

Walking through the cheering crowd toward the dressing room, people slapped Tony’s back.

The modifying phrase Walking through the cheering crowd toward the dressing room is misplaced because it modifies the noun that follows it—people—instead of the person who walked through the crowd—Tony. That is, Tony walked through the crowd, not the people. Rewrite this way:

As Tony walked through the crowd on his way to the dressing room, people slapped his back.

Some sentences with misplaced modifiers, especially dangling participles, are hilarious. I found this howler in the dining column of a local newspaper:

Stuffed with ham and served with black beans and rice, Mom would never recognize her Saturday night special.

Poor Mom!

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

The Usual Suspects

Since starting Thayer Literary Services in 1997 (www.your-book-editor.com), and after reading what seems like a gazillion first novels, I have seen the same mistakes over and over again. After a while I started calling them “the usual suspects.” I have considered collecting them into a book, but I thought that seeing so many of them all in one place would drive me to drink. So I decided to create this blog as a way to discuss them one at a time, along with many other writing issues, all of which I think will be helpful to budding writers. Follow this blog, and I’m sure you will find some information that will help you become a better writer.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com