Les filles de grammaire des Temps de Saint-Pétersbourg: Bennett, Bancroft, Moore, Ryan
My husband says that I pick on newspaper guys’ grammar and let the women off because the sisterhood covers for each other.
I pointed out that I sometimes correct Maureen Dowd’s superfluous commas and tell her she won’t learn possessive-before-gerund to annoy me. I also correct Gail Collins. In fact I correct her mess-up on “whom,” among other errors in my current Grammargrinch.blogspot post.
But my old man has a point. So I shall scrutinize writing samples of Les Girls at the St. Petersburg Times. Appropriate is that I pick the special comment that four Times women made on Hillary. Mr. Maxwell also wrote an irate column on women’s cussing him out on the Hillary-sticking-to-Bill puzzle. That subject gets women to screaming even under the dryer at the beauty parlor.
Le Maxwell said with old-fart sexism that women used some cuss words in harassing him about the puzzling Hillary-Bill equation. You can tell by his tone that Maxwell doesn’t approve of women’s using strong language. Maxwell’s father was a preacher; thus, Maxwell listened to his father’s sermons until the ton of Bible misogyny sank into his reptilian brain from whence he transports it to his columns.
Everybody outside the lower quartile of the Stanford Binet knows that all religions are patriarchal misogynist. Their male honchos hunkered down in cathedral sweat lodges to continue long-running exegesis on areas into which women mustn’t trespass lest men get confused about their prenatal affirmative-action-plan that keeps women second bananas until the roll is called up yonder.
Cosseted in the comfy belief of the superiority of y-chromosome to x-chromosome phylum since the delivery nurse tossed a blue blanket over them at parturition, guys have an endocrine melt down that requires Viagra booster shots to keep their nerves steady when women demand equality.
All those from-birth privileges have over the other half the human race have made fellows fragile. Women have to be careful, or men’s vaunted egos—women still do not merit egos, of course-- will undergo melt-downs at the notion that women should get half of the world’s goodies.
Nobody mentioned my answer for why Hillary sticks with Bill despite his serial infidelities. She loves him. Why? God knows. I can’t see his allure. I infer that Hillary’s sticking to Bill is a crazy-salad situation. “It’s certain that fine women eat a crazy salad with their meat,” a spurned Yeats wrote when Maud Gonne married Major Mc Bride.
Besides, my guess is that Hillary’s sticking to Bill represents the behavior of most of the married women in the
Women are mad at Hillary because she didn’t do what they didn’t do: kick out the tomcatting skunk. They wanted Hillary to perform vicarious expiation for them. That’s why they scream under the dryer at the beauty parlor and cuss Mr. Maxwell in his male fastness.
_Times women__________________________________________________________.
Lennie Bennett, Times art critic, was born and grew up in St. Petersburg, attended a small women's college, Agnes Scott, registered
“Agnes Scott” is restrictive appositive: no comma before it. There are more than one small women's colleges.
very Republican to placate her family (though often voting Democrat -- don't tell anyone), joined the Junior League to placate her family (though actually enjoying the volunteer experience and becoming its president), has been divorced for a number of years and has two very independent young adult children.
Redundant adverbs: "Actually" makes you sound like a
Overuse of adverbs ranks style problem. A writer must fight the impulse to stick in one. Doing so makes her sound as if she were not sure about what she says and needs an adverbial prop to punch up impact. Graham Greene hated adverbs and foreswore them. Read a page or two of Greene and see the result. Part of his style's lean quality comes from his banishing all but occasional adverb.
I am ambivalent on Greene even though he should have won the Nobel and would have had there not been a guy who hated him on the committee. My ambivalence against him comes from his treating women like dog pookie. He resented his mother’s favoring his father over him and lived his life trying to repair this oedipal injury by seducing as many men’s wives he could. The End of the Affair is paradigm.
But using male writers’ misogyny as impediment to reading them would cut out just about all writing guys. I just had a spell of reading Faulkner.
I now read some Dickens that I missed when I was young. He ran off and left his wife to live with a young woman, of course. I diagnose that he was taking his hatred of his mother out on his wife. His mother had made him keep working instead of going to school as he wanted after his family got out of debtors’ prison (portraits of debtors’ prison life appear in both David Copperfield and also Little Dorrit).
I have been rereading as well a new version of the Divine Comedy with young poets—none of whom I know—translating a canto each. Quite a few women poets participate in the project I’m pleased to note.
If Beatrice had not died young but had married Dante, one is sure that he would not have put her in hell as his guide but would have asked her to be sure to have oxtail stew for dinner.
And if she forgot, he would have flown into a rage and uttered a whole string of male-only profanity, a malignant tradition which we feminists today can end if we gird up our loins and start emitting curse words heretofore the purview of sailors.
Resume with La Bennett __________________________________________________________
About Hillary Clinton: I am neutral. Which is not to say, in political parlance, I'm undecided. I'm definitely decided. I have decided that she
The “in political parlance” is a wordy restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase better omitted. The writer speaks not of aesthetic parlance but of political parlance.
is outstandingly ordinary and predictable in her choices. They're the same ones I and most women I know in our 50s and 60s have been making for more than 30 years.
The progressive tenses sound handwringing. Unless you mean to emphasize that something happens over time, simple tenses sound crisper.
It's the same journey, only in her case writ larger and known to the world.
Omit the comma before “only”: it begins the first half of compound participial phases modifying “journey”: “writ larger in her case”; “known to the world.” Better would be to omit wordy "only in her case."
For the last four hundred years, commas have waned. Unless you can cite a rule or syntactical reason, you omit commas. One would think that newspapers would have jumped on this circumstance; but they haven’t. They omit the last comma in items-in a series but cram in redundant ones with a hey nonny nonny elsewhere.
Style suffers from superfluous commas. They impede the thrust of a sentence.
My opinion is based on what she has looked like over the decades: hair, clothes, makeup (or lack thereof). Scroll through photos. Her appearance places her exactly at a particular point of discovery or self-realization, and it always conforms to cultural and social shifts we of that generation have experienced.
Avoid passive verbs: “My opinion comes from…” Dump “thereof” unless you lust to sound like pedantic geezer. Jettison the redundant adverb. Wordiness: choose either “discovery” or self-realization. “Always” is a ratty redundant adverb.
And they have been many and dramatic. Some would call this a superficial zeitgeist. But using her sartorial arc to parallel her personal and professional self-discovery is, I believe, valid.
“This” requires an antecedent that the reader does not need infer. I don’t know what you refer to, and I am a reader of average intelligence
“Sartorial” is not exact diction. That word comes from the Latin word meaning “tailor.” That origin accounts for its reference to men’s attire. Hillary has just begun to wear pricey bespoke tailored pant suits that disguise her too generous bottom. Before she could afford these, she wore women’s off-the-rack fashion or couture if she had some extra egg money.
Some examples, beginning with her college years.
Using artful fragments needs control of verbal pattern. A writer must work the pattern out so that it coheres. This writer misses the mark. Parallel fragments would help coherence I suggest workmanlike sentences are better choice. The comma after "examples" is redundant: it cuts off a restrictive present participial phrase.
The earnest student look: A-line skirts, ironed cotton blouses with Peter Pan collars. Hair set with rollers and a hooded hairdryer. Serious and respectful, in spite of world events that invited deep cynicism. That she didn't use highlights indicates a latent iconoclasm. Reference the
The comma after "respectful" ranks redundant. The prepositional phrase following it is restrictive.
The postgrad radical look: We were there, too, our clothes and hair affecting a studied nonchalance approaching hippiness. (The hair only looked dirty.) But for God's sake, we were inventing a new world order. Or thought we could.
“Hair” should be “hair’s” in the first line: joint possessive of "clothes and hair" before the gerund.
I got into a fracas with the editor if the North American Oxford English Dictionary on this issue. See my Grammargrinch.blogspot on NYT-Washington Post errors . He is a sexist twit far gone in preciosity, always a lure for me to put up my grammar dukes.
Safire had consulted the Oxford-dictionary guy as supposed grammar heavyweight to answer Safire’s question on something the twit didn’t understand—and who didn’t have the grace to admit his ignorance-- that came from my email rebuking Safire.
I believe I quelled the twit after doing some research in the grammar god Curme. Read my account on Grammargrinch.blogspot.com and judge.
I wrote to Slate and asked why in the hell it let this grammar poseur write prescriptive columns when he didn’t know his ass from his elbow. I also ratted this junior sexist out to the
The I'm-in-the-system-but-not-its-toady look: Payback time for the years of sacrificial idealism.
“Payback” gets lower case because it does not begin a sentence after the colon.
We were the vanguard of women aspiring to executive suites.
“Women” should be “women’s”: another possessive before the gerund. The NYT Style Manual cites this rule, but nobody there seems to follow it. I don’t think flouting possessive-before-gerund is newspaper iconoclasm as omitted last comma is in items in a series; I judge it to signal ignorance. I have not been able to teach it to Maureen Dowd, who’s respectful of any grammar-and-punctuation advice. She went to Catholic school, and the nuns beat respect into her. I saw her once at Eckerd. She’s beautiful as well as witty and charming. She's also shy.
Translated into suits of polyestered armor we all endured before Donna Karan showed us that professional women could be individuals. I recall big shoulder pads and big hair. (We were learning to use blow-dryers.) And separate checking accounts if we were married. Reference Hillary's role as the family breadwinner during the
Here's a sample of the difficulty of sustaining artful fragments. You get a crick in your neck reading the paragraph. It’s a delicate balance to get complete sentences and fragments into pleasing balance.
The TASTEFUL FASHIONISTA LOOK: We no longer needed to prove we could have careers outside the home and did not feel the need to look different from our nonprofessional friends. Some of us chose to "retire" and feather our nests. We had Martha Stewart. Hillary was first lady, the biggest stay-at-home-mom gig anywhere.
"Gig" makes me cringe as I recall students' laughing at us adults who try to sound au courant by swiping kids' slang. The young invent a language to separate themselves from us. We shouldn't infringe on it in our eagerness to sound young.
“Health-care thing”: “health care is a hyphenated adjective before a noun.
Currently, the female CEO look: We're about as good as we'll ever be at this point, professionally, and if we don't have a personal style by now, well. ... Like the rest of us, Hillary has come to terms with the limitations and characteristics of her hair and body type. (I personally think she wears pants a lot to conceal thick ankles.) She's polished, tasteful and self-assured. Doesn't need designer logos plastered all over her person. An accumulation of experience and aspiration, her anonymously expensive clothes and flawless hair and makeup reflect her choice to fit in, to be conspicuous only by virtue of her accomplishments. Most of the high-level corporate women I know have made that same choice.
Comma after “point” cuts off a restrictive adverb, which is redundant and merits dumping.
“Personally” is also redundant adverb. “I think” and “personally” say the same thing. Cut adverb “anonymously”; consider “custom-made” or “bespoke.” Most of the corporate women I know don’t look as good as Hillary does. They don’t have her money for pricey bespoke tailoring.
I sometimes wish for more fashion swagger and swag; she's earned the right to cool shoes.
But I get her. We are of the same tribe. She has chosen to be neutral so, about Hillary, I am neutral.
The comma goes before the coordinating conjunction “so,” not after it.
I enjoyed these comments on clothes. I believe clothes make a personal, political, and social statement. So much does the subject interest me that I will get on a plane to see a new show in the Metropolitan Fashion Institute. The author is right. Hillary’s ankles are fire hydrants. She should wear pants all the time to disguise them. Lena Horne, a great black beauty of a previous era, wore pants because she had tooth-pick legs. Hillary’s current look suits her to a T. The bright, expensive jewelry is great for those stark tailored suits. I agree that she needs spiffier shoes with a little more heel.
Lennie Bennett can be reached at lennie@sptimes.com.
Colette Bancroft, Times book editor, was born in
A comma follows "banking" for a compound sentence joined by a coordinating conjunction.
“Civil rights” is a hyphenated adjective before a noun.
Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency keeps reminding me of Ginger Rogers.
As in, Hillary had to do everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in high heels.
The sentence would improve by omitting “as in.” The comma after “did” is redundant. It cuts off a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase (in fact, an elliptical clause: “except [that she had to do it] backwards.”)
Much as I wish that 1970s feminist wisecrack was outdated, it chimes in my head every time I hear some bloviator blathering about Hillary's toughness or tears, hair or hormones. What century do those geezers and I'm talking about their wheezy old attitudes, not their chronological ages live in?
“Bloviator” should be “bloviator’s”: possessive before the gerund.
I regret to report that Ms. Bancroft has fallen into a grammar felony: subject-verb disagreement. “Do” should be “does”: “What century does.” The grammar checker is good on spotting such subject-verb agreement errors.
Regard “was” in the first line: Do we live in the twilight of the subjunctive mood? Will we all have soon retreated to Space Odyssey 2001, sitting around picking fleas off each other at the mouth of the cave, gnawing bones, and picking natural buffalo-jerky shreds out of our broken teeth stubs? Today, one sees the subjunctive in Henry James and The New York Review of Books, and that’s about it.
I'm still not sure how I'll cast my imaginary vote on Tuesday. I certainly don't agree with Hillary on everything, now or in the past.
The redundant adverb should go. The comma after “everything” is redundant. It cuts off a restrictive adverb and adverbial prepositional phrase.
But I'm a baby boomer, a feminist, a working woman, and I can't help identifying with her when she has to put up with being judged too mean if she's not sensitive, too sensitive if she's not mean. Or when she has to listen to a lunkhead like Chris Matthews braying that she only got to be a senator because her husband played around and folks felt sorry for her. Hey, if that's how it works, time to pay up, boys -- I expect to see the Senate filled with 100 politicians' wives next term, with a special subcommittee of Rudy Giuliani's exes.
The “or” construction is a fragment. We allow artful fragments to Proust and Faulkner and others who inhabit the writing empyrean; but we earth-bound toilers use sentences. "Matthews" gets apostrophe "s" for possessive before the gerund.
Count on “only” to be misplaced about 90 percent of the time. This “only” goes before “because.” The comma after “term” is redundant. It cuts off a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase in its normal syntactical position at the end of the clause.
In the first presidential primary I ever voted in, back in 1972, I punched a chad for Democrat Shirley Chisholm, an accomplished and admirable member of Congress from
The comma after “in” is redundant: “back in 1972” is a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase.
I myself wore Chisholm’s president button until it rusted out and did my husband’s professional career much injury at corporate functions inhabited by Republican sexists and their Aunt Tom spouses.
Back then, I voted for Chisholm because she was black and female (and not Richard Nixon). Thirty-six years later, all of us ought to be past judging any candidate by race or gender. But Hillary's still dancing backward.
Colette Bancroft can be reached at bancroft@sptimes.com.
Waveney Ann Moore, a Times staff writer based in St. Petersburg, was born in Guyana,
I get neither rabid nor excessively fervent about the woman who doesn't need a surname. In fact, I'd like to believe that when the former first lady, current
Wordiness: “Rabid” or “excessively fervent”: mean the same thing. Pick one. “Excessively” is the hated redundant adverb. The comma after “try” should go. “Anyway” is a restrictive adverb. I counsel dumping it.
Because I'm of an age to remember feeling proud of the pioneering ascendancy of Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi in India and Golda Meir in Israel, the idea of Hillary or any woman becoming president of these United States -- where people in every corner of the world believe the streets are paved with possibility -- fails to catapult me into raw panic.
“Woman” should be “woman’s”: possessive before the gerund. I suggest “raw” before “panic” is redundant adjective. “Raw panic” is also a cliché.
I bring to my view of Hillary a few things we share in common: oldest child, of a certain age, mother of a beloved only child, wife and professional.
There's plenty that separates us, as well. I'm black, with an accent that betrays my immigrant roots, and a naturalized American with no chance of becoming president, even if I wanted to.
This sentence requires no commas. The commas after “black” and roots” cut off a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase. The comma after roots” is redundant: it lops off a restrictive adverbial trailing clause.
I grew up in a poor former British colony, know what it's like to live in a house without running water, how to use an outdoor latrine and never saw a television until I was 20. My parents instilled in their six children a love for reading and education and are old- fashioned. Daddy makes the decisions and my mother quietly lets him think that he does.
There should be a comma after “decisions”: compound sentence joined by a coordinating conjunction.
My background, in part, informs the way I feel about Hillary.
“In part” is a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase: no commas. Your background doesn’t inform as a whole but in part.
Words like ambitious, articulate, strong, courageous and intelligent come to mind.
Words used as words get quotation marks around each word: “ambitious,” “ articulate,” “ strong,” "courageous” and “intelligent.”
Add to that compromising and perhaps, exceedingly forgiving.
“compromising”; “exceedingly forgiving”
Yes, I'm familiar with where she stands on issues from schools to health care to the war in
Elizabeth Bennet was not “gentle and coy.” Neither was Emily, who gave Mr. Knightly such grief.
But, I digress. Knowing how Hillary will respond to key issues does affect how I think of her, but I suspect that like many others, my opinion about this complex woman was formed long before she decided to run for the nation's top office.
Who didn't have an opinion when word of Bill's dalliances made news even before he became leader of the world's superpower? I was particularly sympathetic when the Bill-Monica affair brought further public humiliation. Publicly, she responded to the revelations with dignity. In private, who knows, she might have attacked him with the talons of a virago. To voluntarily throw herself back into the spotlight is either foolish or courageous. I think of it as the latter and can't help but wonder how many of her detractors, feminists and perennial Hillary haters alike, who make sport of deriding her marriage, themselves remain in quietly desperate unions of convenience.
"Publicly" is a superflous adverb. The “who knows” is a sudden interrupter and question that means you owe your reader a question mark. Dashes would work better to set it off: “In private—who knows?—she…” I hope she did scratch Bill as long as her energy held out.
Hillary supported her husband through triumph and scandal, so it might now be his turn to plan state dinners and decorate the White House Christmas tree.
There's another thing. I commiserate with the not-so-veiled references to Hillary's age and comparisons to the more youthful Barack Obama.
A colon goes after “with.” You must use either a colon or a comma because “references’’ is a nonrestrictive appositive.
How the years speed by. I remember how amused my husband and I were when our first-year Harvard daughter came home at Christmas scolding us for not recycling our newspapers and soda cans and proudly wearing a "Vote for Hillary's husband" button.
A comma follows “Christmas”: the present participial phrase is nonrestrictive.
Years later, now that Hillary is actually running for president, my American-born daughter is more thoughtful. She says she identifies with this Wellesley- and Yale-educated former first lady as a woman of strength, but at the same time can't help but appreciate the historic potential of an Obama victory.
Dump redundant adverb “actually.” It's shibbolith of the
If ever there was a conundrum for those who admire Hillary but are drawn to Obama, this is it.
The "was" should be "were" for subjunctive mood. But I'm about to give up this fight.
Waveney Ann Moore can be reached at wmoore@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2283.
Patty Ryan cast her first presidential vote for Jimmy Carter. Her two yellow dogs offer a hint of her leanings. She grew up in
I have decided that laziness accounts for newspapers’ not italicizing a newspaper’s title.
It is tempting to seek hope outside of ourselves. It is tempting to want a hero, to believe that the future rests not in the hands of ordinary people but in hidden destiny. Barack Obama stirs that in us. He touches an imago, and so we sense there is more to him than meets the eye.
Hillary Clinton is no less inspiring, simply less fresh. She endured the worst of
Jettison the redundant adverb "apparently."
The comma after “her” is redundant: the infinitive phrase “to redirect…” is restrictive. If the writer means “and” where the comma is, then she should put it there for clarity.
We forget that before she married, she had political ambitions. She earned a law degree at Yale. She also advised the House committee that forced Richard Nixon's resignation. I don't believe that her run for the presidency is a copycat crime.
Perhaps women view her as ordinary because we view ourselves as such. We are unaccustomed to surrendering power to one who may be vulnerable to our own self-doubts. I am not sure why
Parallelism: Use either “whether” whether” or “if” “if.” “Very” is a redundant adverb.
It would be foolish to vote solely on race or gender but equally foolish to disregard the opportunity to widen the view from the top.
My vote goes for this rare indispensable adverb.
Women form a majority in the
As a white woman, the gulf of gender feels somehow deeper to me than the gulf of race. I identify more with other women than with men of any skin color. And I wonder how unbroken paternalism can possibly cultivate change.
The “as a white woman” should go after “me” to avoid your readers’ doing a double take to see if you have committed the dreaded dangling modifier. The modifier “as a white woman” is misplaced. Adverbs can travel; but the only adjectives that travel are participles. Ordinary adjectives come right before or right after the word they modify.
The office makes the leader, given a supply of intelligence and energy and passion. Clearly, it has already begun to shape
Dump “clearly.”
Patty Ryan can be reached at pryan@sptimes.com.
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All four have punctuation errors. All write with competence. I choose Ryan’s as best style in these samples. Her sentences possess a thrust that throttles them forward with power. She is clear, writing's number one goal.
I do not speak of the great imaginative writers. They set rules; they don't follow them. Sometimes I have read a Faulkner sentence a dozen times to get it. Cormac McCarthy, overpraised in my opinion because of the dearth of good writers around now, feeds off Faulkner but can’t touch the bottom rung of his ladder to greatness. Faulkner is our best writer. His preeminence has everything to do with complexity and little to do with easy clarity. Faulkner can be work. “The Jail” is two sentences total.
The beginning of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is replica of the start of “Barn Burner.” Nobody will ever make a movie that is better than the words of "Barn Burner." The movie “Country for Old Men” is better than the book.
McCarthy’s shtick in Blood Meridian is abstruse vocabulary. He overdoes the device.
Mc Carthy now lives in
I did like the wolf in the McCarthy’s border trilogy.
To propitiate my old man, I also reviewed Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd in Grammargrinch.com. The NYT has 150 copy editors. I don't know what they do.
I have critiqued the writing of six women in all. Now I can get back to guys--especially the ones who would not have their jobs were they not male. That category includes Le Tash. See my critique of this undeserving pooh-bah's writing on the TampaBayGrammarGrinch.blogspot.com.
No one will be surprised that I pick Dowd from the six women writers as best. She makes clumsy grammar errors and overuses commas. But her writing features imagination, verve, wit, and grace notes such as easy references to classical literature. Somewhere along the line she got a solid liberal-arts education.
There’s a new guy writing op eds there: Cohen. He nips at Dowd's heels in excellence of a different kind. He’s more sophisticated, more European, more worldly than she. He is also more erudite. Dowd reads a lot of pulp trash you can tell from her easy allusion to pop culture. You get no popular allusions in Cohen. But Cohen can work in a “shudder in the loins” from “Leda and the Swan” while talking about the French sexual situation with as much deft indirection as a faculty-lounge habitué who teaches Yeats for a living. Cohen does not have Dowd’s prescience, however, about character, her ability pull off a leaping arc from the petty politician she dissects to put the character in his or her place in the wider firmament of the political meaning of the country.
But Dowd is not for sustained read. She would wear on one because she is a vignette person. Cohen you would stick with to the end of a book-long piece of writing because he writes with more self-aware craft and more secure grasp of the height and breadth of his larger meaning in a more capacious world than does Dowd. That’s my read of the two anyway.
I met Sulzberger when he came to Poynter: he's not one of the great intellects of the Western world. I got his attention as a shareholder and begged him to hire another woman to join Dowd in op ed. He smirked that he had already hired a man.
I sold my stock.
lee
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