Language and Basic LogicA great deal of what we say or write consists of straightforward statements or questions: "I got a letter from the bank this morning." "Did you remember to put gas in the car?" Simple as they are, such statements and questions have an underlying structure, based on grammar and usage, and in order to communicate successfully we have to get that structure right. Words do not always communicate meaning on their own. Meaning relies on the way the words are ordered, as we can easily see if we jumble up the words in the sentences above: "This morning a letter got I from the bank," which sounds like a foreigner attempting, unsuccessfully, to render his or her own language word for word into English, or "This I letter bank got from a morning the," a sentence that is intelligible only to speakers of double Dutch.If sets of very simple words need to be logically ordered before they can form straightforward statements, it stands to reason that the elements of more complex structures require logical organization as well. To talk about "putting" or "stringing" words, phrases, and clauses together may give the impression that the elements of language are like building blocks or beads on a string, which can be juxtaposed in any way the writer likes. But just as writers cannot abandon the normal word order of English and still expect to be understood, so they cannot afford to overlook the demands of logic and grammar in arranging their material in sentences. Only a logically structured sentence will convey precisely the meaning that the writer intends. Consequently, a good deal of thought needs to go into sentence organization.Now, this does not mean that you, as a writer, necessarily have to sit down and construct every sentence from its constituent parts in a conscious and deliberate way. As has been said before, when you are writing, especially when the work is flowing along, you will often achieve a good result spontaneously. You will automatically make the sort of decisions that are going to be analyzed at length in the rest of this chapter. Too much thinking, as everyone knows, can often stifle creativity.It does mean, however, that you should have the basic knowledge to be able to construct a sentence consciously, on sound grammatical principles, if the words and ideas do not fall naturally into place. It also means that you must be prepared, especially during the revision stage, to look at your sentences critically, analyze them, take them apart, and reorganize them, if for any reason you feel that they do not work. Too little thinking, as everyone also knows, produces poor results.Organizing and Combining Ideas in SentencesCoordinating and Subordinating IdeasSo, how do we go about making ideas into good sentences? We have already established that coordination and subordination are the two basic methods of combining ideas. Coordination, let us remind ourselves, is a method of linking two or more ideas or clauses of equal value; subordination is a method of linking a less important idea to a more important one.If you are consciously constructing a sentence, therefore, your first task to sort out your ideas and assess their relative importance.Johnny threw his ball—the ball broke a window—the window was in the kitchen. Here are three very simple ideas. The first two would be of equal importance in most sentences. There would be nothing to report if the ball that Johnny threw had not broken a window, and the breaking of the window would be something of a mystery if we did not know that Johnny had thrown the ball. The fact that the broken window was in the kitchen would, in most cases, be a detail. On the principles set out in the preceding paragraph, then, the first two ideas should be coordinated and the third subordinated, probably to a mere phrase or even to a noun modifier. The result of what may sound like a complicated grammatical operation would therefore beJohnny threw his ball and broke a window in the kitchen. orJohnny threw his ball and broke a kitchen window. Let us look at a set of slightly less simple ideas:Chop the meat into cubes—the cubes should measure about two inches—heat the oil in a frying pan—wait until the oil is ready—the oil is ready when it starts to smoke—brown the meat lightly on all sides. The most important component of the recipe, and therefore of the sentence, is the meat. Consequently the two actions that involve the meat—chopping it and browning it—would seem to be of equal importance. The size of the cubes is a detail. Heating the oil—precisely how hot the oil has to be is an important detail, but nevertheless a detail—could be considered an action of equal importance to the handling of the meat or it might be considered slightly less important. In other words, the information about the oil could either be coordinated with or subordinated to the information about the meat.The results would beChop the meat into two-inch cubes, heat the oil until it starts to smoke, then brown the meat lightly on all sides. orChop the meat into two-inch cubes, meanwhile heating the oil until it starts to smoke, then brown the meat lightly on all sides. Notice how the commas perform slightly different functions in the two sentences. In the first sentence the two commas work individually, so to speak, each marking the end of the clause. In the second sentence, they work together, enclosing the central section and emphasizing the fact that it is to some extent incidental to the main thrust of the sentence.Here is a final example:People had more money to spend in the 1950s—they wanted to show it—they no longer wanted to drive the same car until it wore out—automobile manufacturers realized this—they also realized sales would increase if people could be persuaded to change their cars more often—they wanted them to change cars every two or three years—they began to change the design of cars regularly to make older cars seem out of date. There is much more information here than in either of the two previous examples. The ideas are obviously related and belong together, but it is by no means certain that they can all be accommodated within a single sentence. Let us consider them and try to work out the best solution.There are two active agents in this situation: "people" on the one hand and "the automobile manufacturers" on the other. The things that connect the people to the manufacturers, obviously, are cars. The crucial pieces of information seem to be, first, that the people no longer wanted to keep the same car until it fell apart and, second, that the manufacturers realized that sales would increase if people could be persuaded to change their cars more often. Given that basic connection, the rest of the material is of relatively secondary importance and probably needs to be subordinated in some way.Whatever decision we take as regards organizing all these ideas will depend on whether we intend to focus mainly on the people or the manufacturers, or on both equally. If we decide that both merit equal attention, we might think about coordinating the two main ideas:People no longer wanted to drive the same car until it wore out, and automobile manufacturers realized that sales would increase if people could be persuaded to change their cars more often. These two main clauses would then form the heart of the sentence, and the rest of the information would need to be arranged around them:People, having more money to spend in the 1950s and wanting to show it, were no longer content to drive the same car until it wore out, and automobile manufacturers realized that sales would increase if people could be persuaded to change their cars more often, say every two or three years, and began to modify the design of cars regularly to make older models seem out of date. The result we have arrived at, however, is far from satisfactory. The sentence is overly long and shapeless. Anyone who drafted a sentence in this form and went back to look at it again later, would want to divide it up into two or three separate units:People had more money to spend in the 1950s and wanted to show it, so they were no longer content to drive the same car until it wore out. Automobile manufacturers, realizing this, also realized that sales would increase if their customers could be persuaded to trade in their cars more often, preferably every two or three years. As a result, they began to modify the design of their cars regularly to make older models seem out of date. This is a far more satisfactory solution. When you have complicated ideas to organize, even if they are interrelated, always keep an open mind about how many sentences you should make with them, until you have conducted a few experiments.This particular solution, you may recall, is based on a decision to give the people and the automobile manufacturers equal status. But suppose you had chosen instead to focus on one of them rather than the other, how would that affect the way you organized the material? The answer is that you would subordinate the material relating to the agent whom you were less interested in.Because people had more money to spend in the 1950s, wanted to show it, and were no longer content to drive the same car until it wore out, automobile manufacturers realized that they could increase their sales by persuading their customers to change their cars more often, preferably every two or three years, and so began to modify the design of cars regularly to make older models seem out of date. This version puts the people firmly into a subordinate clause, but once again the keen-eyed reviser would be likely to regard this sentence as an obvious candidate for remodeling.Hitherto, we have tended to discuss subordination as if it meant only the incorporation of material into subordinate clauses. But there are many other ways of subordinating ideas: by reducing them to phrases instead of clauses, for instance, or by expressing them in the form of a single word, an adjective, say, or an adverb or a noun modifier, as with the idea "the window was in the kitchen" in the first example of the present series.Suppose you were working on the ideasI met a bear in the forest—the bear was hungry—I ran for my life, You might very well boil it down toI met a hungry bear in the woods and ran for my life. Likewise, if the ideas wereThe tree is very tall—it is a sequoia—it is taller even than most sequoias, you would probably render them asThe tree is unusually tall even for a sequoia. In the first instance, one idea has been accommodated in an adjective; in the second, an adverb performs the same role.What can be done when the ideas are simple can also be done when the ideas are more complex. Returning to the automobile example, if we are to give prominence to the manufacturers, we will probably need to subject the material relating to the people to more drastic subordination:In the 1950s, automobile manufacturers realized that they could increase their sales by persuading their increasingly wealthy and status-conscious customers, who were no longer content to drive the same car until it wore out, to trade in their cars every two or three years. Accordingly, they began to modify the design of cars regularly to make the older models seem out of date. The purpose of this lengthy analysis of material relating to automobile manufacturers in the 1950s has been twofold. It was partly intended to show that if you worry away at your material and, if necessary, experiment with different ways of organizing it, you can usually come up with a sentence that fulfills your requirements. It was also intended to show that it is possible to structure material in different ways to suit different purposes.Distinguishing the Relative Importance of IdeasYou need to know what your purpose is so that you can assess the relative value of ideas and assign them to their proper places in the sentence. Likewise, when you are revising your work, you need to have your essential purpose in mind so that you can check that you have not coordinated an idea that deserves to be subordinated or subordinated an idea that really belongs in a main clause.Let us think a little more about distinguishing between more and less important ideas:Professor Paul Dyson is a scientist of international renown and a Nobel Prize laureate, and he lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This sentence is fine as it stands if your purpose is to praise Tulsa, Oklahoma, at least as much as the distinguished Professor Dyson. That is the effect of coordinating the piece of information about his place of residence with the rest of the sentence. But normally, where a person happens to live would be considered of less interest than his or her personal achievements, especially when these are considerable. A more logical course, therefore, would be to subordinate the reference to Tulsa:Professor Paul Dyson, who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a scientist of international renown and a Nobel Prize laureate. orProfessor Paul Dyson of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a scientist of international renown and a Noble Prize laureate. Consider this further example:There were flames leaping from the windows of the second story and people were gathering on the roof of the building, but the sun still shone brightly through the pall of smoke. What are we to make of this sentence in which the weather conditions are given equal importance—as the use of the coordinator but implies—as the plight of the people escaping from a blazing building? Does the writer intend to suggest the indifference of the universe to human suffering, or was he or she rather careless in attaching a note about a phenomenon observed at the scene to a sentence mainly concerned with conveying the drama of the situation? The second is the more likely alternative. In this instance, there is no easy way of simply subordinating that piece of information, so the best solution would be to reorganize it and reposition it so that it accords with the logic of the sentence as a whole:A pall of smoke partially obscured the sun, flames were leaping from the windows of the second story, and people were gathering on the roof of the building. There are also occasions in which material of primary importance is inappropriately subordinated:Although he built his own house, he had no skills as a builder when he started. It seems excessively grudging to concentrate on the man's initial lack of skill and subordinate his achievement. This is an obvious case of "putting the cart before the horse" and should be changed to:Although he had no skills as a builder when he started, he nevertheless succeeded in building his own house. Consider another example:The city of Salzburg, which was the birthplace of Mozart and home to several other composers who were in many cases notable precursors of the city's most eminent son, lies between a low rocky ridge and a river dominated by a great castle and has many fine palaces and churches, in which concerts are given during the annual festival of music hosted by the city. The fault with this sentence is not so much incorrect subordination as excessive subordination and, indeed, an excess of ideas. It is often tempting to try to pack a lot of information into a single sentence by using subordinate clauses, but that temptation ought to be resisted. If you wish to talk about the city's topography and its musical history, by all means do so, but it would better to do so in two or more separate sentences:The city of Salzburg lies between a low rocky ridge and a river, is dominated by a great castle, and has many fine palaces and churches. Its chief claim to fame, however, is its musical heritage. It was the birthplace of Mozart, as well as being home to several composers who were precursors of its most eminent son. It also hosts an annual music festival, and many of the concerts take place in the city's great buildings. This is a more logical arrangement of the material, which gives the important ideas due prominence, in particular, not confining Mozart in a subordinate clause. It also, incidentally sorts out one ambiguity in the original, with regard to the exact positioning of the castle in relation to the rest of the topography. For more on the subject of positioning within a sentence, see the section positioning, which immediately follows.To round off this discussion, here is an interesting example from literature of a sentence in which the usual expectations as to how information might be evaluated are perhaps upset. The sentence in question is the second of the three quoted below.At the sight of this, the man with the blue and white plumes fainted away. But Kohlhaas, while the man's dismayed attendants bent over him and lifted him up off the ground, turned to the scaffold, where his head fell to the executioner's ax. Here ends the story of Kohlhaas. This passage is taken from the final paragraph of a novella entitled Michael Kohlhaas by the early-19th-century German writer Heinrich von Kleist. It is an intricately written, philosophical story, but one of its chief claims to fame is that its hero dies in a subordinate clause. Kleist tells us in the main clause that "Kohlhaas … turned to the scaffold," and in the following clause informs us of the striking of the fatal blow, almost as an afterthought. Was this carelessness on his part, or is Kohlhaas's turning toward the scaffold the more significant of the two actions and, if so, why? To decide, you will have to read the whole story. But if you do not wish to cause scholarly controversy, it is undoubtedly safer to put what most people would consider the main event into the main clause.PositioningThe Importance of PositioningLogical ordering is required not only for clauses and the larger elements of a sentence but for the smaller elements, too. Words and phrases should be positioned in a sentence in such a way as to make their relationship to one another perfectly plain. This usually means that if word or phrase A modifies or otherwise relates to word or phrase B, then A and B should be placed quite close together in the sentence. Confusion or unintentional humor usually results when items that belong together drift apart:The professor told me that he had lost his way while waiting for the bus. The machine had several vital parts missing that you lent me. Put the wandering elements back in their proper places, and, magically, sense is restored:The professor, while waiting for the bus, told me that he had lost his way. The machine that you lent me had several vital parts missing. In unguarded moments, we can all be guilty of such howlers. But similar and less amusing mistakes can occur in everyday prose and cause a lot of unnecessary confusion:In many ways the book is great for researchers who are tackling images for the first time, because it is sure footed regarding the way it deals with methods arising from different theoretical concerns, working around a clear framework. This is not an inordinately long sentence, but neither is it a very clear one. It reads like a piece of academic waffle, yet there is nothing in the writer's choice of words that makes the meaning unclear. It is actually the organization of the material that is mainly at fault, as we can see if we simply cut off the final phrase:In many ways the book is great for researchers who are tackling images for the first time, because it is sure footed regarding the way it deals with methods arising from different theoretical concerns. In that form, though still hardly elegant, the sentence seems much clearer. It has a basic logical structure: "The book is great … because it is sure footed." The writer did not help matters by spelling surefooted as two words, but that is a minor quibble. The real problem arose when the writer felt it necessary to add the additional phrase "working around a clear framework." Ironically, the intention was to clarify matters, but the writer failed to make it clear how that phrase relates to the ideas in the rest of the sentence.It is probable in this instance that the writer wanted to explain how the book comes to be surefooted. The book deals "surefootedly," that is, competently and confidently, with different methods because it is based on a clear framework. That makes sense. In the sentence as originally framed, however, the reader's first instinct is to associate the phrase with the material immediately adjacent to it "methods arising from different theoretical concerns," but the phrase methods arising from different theoretical concerns, working around a clear framework is gobbledygook.If we reposition the offending phrase, we have a sentence that is on its way to being satisfactory:In many ways the book is great for researchers who are tackling images for the first time, because, working around a clear framework, it is sure footed regarding the way it deals with methods arising from different theoretical concerns. There is a more work to be done on this sentence before it is really fit to appear in a handbook on style, but that work is not relevant to our immediate concerns.Ambiguous PositioningWords and phrases sometimes appear in a position where their meaning is ambiguous:Rereading a favorite novel occasionally may be a disappointing experience. Is the disappointment caused by occasional reading, or is rereading an occasional disappointment?His confession that his inspiration had dried up completely stunned me. Has the inspiration dried up completely, or is the speaker completely stunned?If you accidentally produce such a sentence, think about what precisely you want to say and then reposition the ambiguous word or rewrite the sentence so that the meaning becomes crystal clear:Rereading a favorite novel may occasionally be a disappointing experience. When he confessed that his inspiration had dried up, I was completely stunned. orHis inspiration, he confessed, had dried up completely. I was stunned. Dangling ModifiersThere is a particular form of the displacement problem that grammarians call the "dangling modifier," or sometimes the "dangling participle" or "hanging participle." Here a phrase or clause, usually without a finite verb, positioned at the beginning of the sentence, has nothing to connect to in the main part of the sentence. Again, confusion or hilarity generally result:Prizing open the lid, the box was completely empty. Lazing on a lounger in the hot sun, the swimming pool looked more and more inviting. Positioning is vital, remember, so the reader naturally connects the opening phrase to the noun that comes next, but boxes do not prize open their own lids and swimming pools do not laze on loungers. Repositioning the phrase does not suffice in such cases. The best solution is one of two. You can upgrade the phrase to a full clause with a finite verb and the correct subject:When I prized open the lid, the box was completely empty. As she lazed on a lounger in the hot sun, the swimming pool looked more and more inviting. You can also recast the main clause so that it has a subject to which the opening phrase can appropriately connect:Prizing open the lid, I found the box to be completely empty. Lazing on a lounger in the hot sun, she thought the swimming pool looked more and more inviting. Only Get the Position RightIf there is one single word that illustrates the necessity of precise positioning, then that word is only.Only I met him at the airport. [Nobody else did] I only met him at the airport. [I had nothing else to do with him] I met only him at the airport. [And no one else] I met him only at the airport. [And nowhere else] I met him at the only airport. [It was a small city] These are five arrangements of the same words, with five slightly differing senses depending on the positioning of only. Remember only and you will never be in any doubt as to the importance of the placement of words for the meaning of sentences.
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