Subject: Re: Elements of Style?
Author:
Posted on: 2012-02-01 23:22:00 UTC
our teacher sees the book as a religious text rather than a set of guidelines. I have had a stylistically solid sentence graded down because it violated a rule laid out in the book. There are exceptions to EVERYTHING in the Elements. To make it worse, some rules are contradictory, so you just have to guess which rule she likes rather than apply the rules situationally.
I had to write a 200+ word sentence for English class, and I thought perhaps since I mention the Ironic Overpowers you guys might be interested in reading it (and admittedly I do have the ulterior motive of learning more about the I O because I'm not quite sure if I understand them). Here it is:
*In the trope-riddled multiverse of the PPC, the Ironic Overpowers are a real force; for example, quite often, some poor, bewildered agent lost in the labyrinthine halls of the Flowers’ bureaucracy will say, loudly and obviously: “I really hope I don’t stumble into my partner who has conveniently went out on a walk with an Ariadne-like string marking the way home to our Response Center, yes, I truly, desperately hope that doesn’t happen” and then will watch with satisfaction as their partner, a bit weary or perhaps irritated with them (as partners are nearly always irritated at something), rounds the nearest conveniently placed corner with a ball of string in their hand, wondering dourly why they decided to set out in the first place; however, we must not for a moment assume that because they can be manipulated to be useful that the Ironic Overpowers are indeed a benevolent force; on the contrary, they’re known to be quite annoyingly malicious, like a cousin who re-gifts one’s present to oneself knowingly or perhaps a sibling who tells you to fetch something which is closer to them than to you just because they can or the English teachers who insist that the I comes before the E when we can all see that the teachers (and the dictionary, and the other dictionary, and the thesaurus, and google search) are clearly wrong; no, indeed, the Ironic Overpowers can take any statement out of your mouth and twist it to their advantage (whatever that is) in the most horrifying ways—imagine, for instance, that you have just come back from a truly arduous mission in which you had to trek for several swampy miles in order to keep up with your supernatural target before you assassinated it; imagine that you are covered in muck from your toes to the roots of your hair; imagine that perhaps your target preyed on your partner’s favorite character and as a result he or she harps mercilessly on every typo in your charge list in the throes of deep depression; even in this harrowing case, the Ironic Overpowers are quite willing, nay, happy to take your groan of “Ye gods, I’m really looking forward to a shower” and viciously subvert it with their incomprehensible might to make your console go BEEEEEEEP and send you off on yet another mission to the Sahara without even a pause for breath or perhaps a soldier’s bath of a bucket of water dumped over the head; therefore, when walking in the PPC Headquarters, do be careful about everything you say and do, since not only do the Ironic Overpowers love to prey on your statements made in times of hope and joy but they are also willing to use the statements made in times of deep, dark, terrible despair, especially the ones that begin with such phrases as “Surely it can’t get any (insert adjective here) than this”, “At least he didn’t (insert verb here)”, and/or “This has to be the worst (insert noun here) of my life”, and as such, you must always respect the Ironic Overpowers even when not in the multiverse, as they reside in our universe of monotheists, atheists and polytheists with only partially decreased power and the fatally deceptively innocuous name of “Instant Karma”; consequently, do not scoff at my tales of woe, thinking that they have nothing to do with you, but rather, as a acolyte of great understanding and worth, take my warning to heart and do not abuse the existence of the Ironic Overpowers or speak lightly of them, as their power is far-reaching and their malevolence immense, and if you do so they may choose to do something bad to you, like override your automatic reluctance to ramble and loose your inner writer, which, of course, is rather like an untrained puppy that wants nothing more than to run around in circles, claw up your lovely new upholstery and perhaps widdle on the carpet, thus spoiling your merit as a writer in the eyes of your teachers, fellow students, and whatever additional poor blokes try to read your writing and understand it.
We never got to do those extremely long sentences in my English classes, but it would've been awesome if we did. That looks like great fun.
There is no law that says you can't write 200+ word sentences outside of English class.
(But I get the idea...)
I'd hate to read it out loud, though. That would take some serious lung capacity.
It also might be funny to send the agents to a fic in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm. "You want a shower? Here, have all the shower you can handle, and a little extra!"
I did consider sending them off to an underwater place without scuba equipment, but then decided that was a bit too much. Don't worry, the Sahara is perfectly horrible enough, as it will cause the mud to cake on everything and then turn into dusty stuff. I think.
This is reminding me of the narration in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. It's quite clever how you hinted at what the PPC does without coming out and hitting the reader over the head with it.
I'm curious: Why did your teacher ask your class to write such a long sentence when this style of writing isn't really accepted anymore?
My teacher is having us write a "multi-media" paper, which employs over 8 different types of writing. It appears that the odder the method of writing, the better.
So maybe if we have an Escher room or a ee cummings room, I'll be dropping in...
I can not begin to describe how lucky you are if your English teacher assigns this sort of material. Today, our class read selections from the Elements of Style. AGAIN.
I actually like that book. By someone-or-other White, yes?
However, I see that if you've already read the book, re-reading it out loud could become tedious.
our teacher sees the book as a religious text rather than a set of guidelines. I have had a stylistically solid sentence graded down because it violated a rule laid out in the book. There are exceptions to EVERYTHING in the Elements. To make it worse, some rules are contradictory, so you just have to guess which rule she likes rather than apply the rules situationally.
Sounds ... difficult.
I really like writing. SOMEHOW, this teacher managed the impossible: She took one of my favorite pastimes and sucked all the joy out of it. Writing is all about experimentation and variety, not following a rote formula. It's just... arg. You don't want to hear me rant.
I think this was what I hated most about earlier English classes; everything, everything was by formula. Anyone remember Five Paragraph Essays?
Introduction: summarize explain the arguments/statements you wish to make in your paper (one sentence for each body paragraph, plus an Introductory Sentence (a question mark, or something to grab the reader's *interest!), and a transition sentence.
Three Body Paragraphs: make sure your strongest argument/point goes last, for best impression!
Conclusion: restate your introduction, but... stronger.
*Yeah, spoiler alert: unless your reader is also your English teacher, their interest is nil.
The first really good English teacher we had marked down if we had five paragraphs in a paper, just to get us out of the habit. Writing by formula is the best way to strangle someone's voice.
tl;dr: Public Education, I dislike it.
I would say that sometimes writing by formula can be a good thing, the problem is the degree to which it is required in most high school English classes.
Used well a formula gives shape and allows the writer to focus on other aspects of writing. Often a given formula exists for a reason, for example the inverted pyramid used for news article - in which the important points are stated first and each paragraph contains additional, but less necessary, details exists in part because during WWII (iirc) the reporters couldn't be certain the entire article would make it through, and wanted to be certain the most important parts did.
Another issue I have with a lot of English teachers is that they don't give a flip about the students's natural voices, and mark in ways which are stifling.
There is something to be said for knowing how to follow the rules before you decide go about ignoring them. That way, it's an informed choice rather than just ignorance. Strunk and White may not be God, but I know plenty of authors who would benefit from omitting needless words, or understanding why splitting infinitives is a bad idea most of the time, or why ending sentences on prepositions is usually silly. Note, of course, my use of conditional modifiers: these rules don't always apply, but knowing what they mean and when they should be followed is important.
Bear in mind, plenty of badficcers would tell us that sticking to canon and/or using good SPaG stifles their natural voice. {= P
~Neshomeh
You have a point, and I'm all for improving my writing. However, Elements is only the latest in a series of these "learn to write" books we've been subjected to. What's irritating isn't that we're being educated on writing, but rather that we haven't actually written that much. Knowing the basic rules of writing is helpful, but in order to learn when and how to apply them you need lots of practice and criticism - neither of which our class is getting.
Moreover, the class is not "Creative Writing" or something. It's English, and high school English classes generally contain some literature. This entire year, we've only read two books-- A Separate Peace and Slaughterhouse Five.
This reminds me of something from one of the Discworld Books (I'm pretty sure it's The Thief of Time) in which one of the characters says that maybe "Rules exist so you think before breaking them."
Well, I laughed. It's strange how such long, long sentences only seem to turn up either a) in bad writing or b) in high-school and college literature.
There are some excellent, really fantastic authors who make great use of such long sentences, and I promise you this, they do not turn up only in bad writing or in high school and college literature.
It's really close minded for you to say that, since if you think that long sentences like that only pop up in those contexts, you need to read more, because while styles come and go, writing off works that have extremely long sentences in them as being only bad writing or the focus of high school and college classes is simply incorrect; even then, you see, there's a massively wide variation, especially once you hit university where thinking in terms of 'books I read in class that I would never read otherwise'- which is what you've implied there, with that statement of yours- is false because schools with a wide swath of writing classes or English classes have such a wide variety to them, to the point that in one semester alone I read (for three different classes, mind) Roberto Bolano's Amulet, John Milton's Paradise Lost, William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; I could have, if I wanted, taken a course on modern fiction, or get into a YA literature class, but then I would've had to have read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight*- which would also be considered 'college literature' due to its use in an upper level setting as something to read and examine (which on its own sorts out the illusion that 'high school and college literature' are things no average person would ever be caught reading).**
Here's a brilliant long sentence (in its passage, for sake of some context) from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West***:
Already you could see through the dust on the ponies' hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes made from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding-veil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with the old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hillarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet that the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
That main sentence, and what it's supposed to show, has been burned into my mind**** for over six years now.
*Yes, Twilight is now considered something acceptable to read and analyze in university in a class for credit and a grade and not for fun.
**253 words, ladies, gentlemen, and starfish.
***Please do not read if you are overly sensitive to violence. Or a lack of quotation marks for speech. Or a lack of apostrophes for contractions. Or hoping for nice things to happen. No, seriously.
****No red hot brands involved.
I just find it hard to parse, I guess. I'd rather have it broken up so I don't need to keep track of a hundred half-finished thoughts.
(Don't mind me, just testing something)
-Dann
I'm sorry. I'm perfectly aware that long sentences don't always pop up in those two contexts, and I understand that I was making a very, very broad generalization. At the time I was thinking both of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, and of some really good books I've read in class which happened to include long sentences. I was attempting a joke, which proves once again that my sense of humor doesn't translate well at all from my head to my keyboard. In the future, I'll try to clarify things a little more.
It also had the added benefit of showing us all what JulyFlame's berserk button is.
She has a lot of them, as you'll learn if you stick around long enough.
Ah-hem. I'm not entirely sure who posted this, but I'm rather certain that it wasn't Aster. The IP address, which is normally located right under the name listed above, doesn't even come close to Aster's usual ISP, and I have other reasons for doubting it as well. (The original IP was 81.2.197.33 - unfortunately, in adding this note, I've changed that record) I'm just appending this to keep subsequent conversation sensical - if it happens again, I will straight-up delete it.
I am watching.
-The Nameless Admin
I really am. This was pretty obviously an attack on both you and July, and I'm really sorry for not checking before going after you for it.
(Also more than a mite furious at whoever not only went after July under a proxy, but used someone's name to do it, knowing the response this would get.)
You are right to be angry, VM. This was, from what I can tell, done intentionally by someone with a knowledge of the past tensions in the community. So, it was either a very patient troll or someone from the community (much as I hate to think about that). Why someone from the community (if it wasn't a troll) would want to start more fighting and drama, I have no clue.
Never thought I'd say this but, let's hope we have a troll.
-Phobos
I didn't think July would call someone close-minded. *whew*
But a troll of that much... thoughtfulness? It scares me.
Yes, I did. Wow, I'm really out-doing myself today. Third foot-in-mouth today, and only one of them was on purpose.
Forgive me, I'm going to need another one of those explanations.
Why... are people saying there's a troll, again? I thought it... oh, bah humbuggery.
Could someone take pity and just tell me what happened?
Then mPoet posted a comment that was somewhat thoughtless.
Then someone posted as Aster a comment that was almost but not quite an outright attack.
Then someone went 'wait! That's not Aster, look at the IPs!'
Then Data added 'someone tried to join the chatroom while pretending to be me, except I was already in there'.
The last two items are why people are suspecting/hoping there is a troll rather than someone trying to purposefully be a saboteur in a community of which they are a member.
I'll try to pay better attention in the future.
I'm sorry July, I spoke without thinking.
Also it sucks that we have an imposter.
Not unless she changed her IP address within about four hours of her last post.
Also supporting the "It's not Aster" theory is that someone showed up on the IRC around the same time using my name, while i was already online. Possibly same person.
Calling the reaction a berserk button was entirely uncalled for. If the term was in reference to July's lengthy sentence, she wrote that way deliberately as illustration, rather than any sense of uncontrolled or thoughtless rage, as the word implies. The description is thoroughly unwarranted.
If it was intended as being used flippantly, it is just as unwarranted, but you also need to remember to show some sensitivity. We can be silly here, but think carefully before claiming anything about someone else's personality.
Furthermore, I find it somewhat galling that someone could find humor in the idea of deliberately pushing anything that might upset another Boarder.
However:
Rule 1: Treat others with respect.
Rule 3: 'This sort of goes along with Number 2 . . . No Flames Allowed! (The definition of flame used here is "A verbal attack/insult on an individual.") It's one thing to say "I don’t agree with your opinion," to a person, but entirely inappropriate to say, "You're such a flipping idiot for thinking that, you flipping moron!"'
Rule 11: 'If you have a problem with a fellow PPC Boarder, please try to work it out in private emails. Don't turn the Board into a free-for-all Flamefest.'
These first two were, to some degree, already coming into play with mP's comment.
Aster? You openly, on the Board, drew attention to and supported a comment with seriously derogatory connotations, about another Boarder's expressing of her opinion. Not only that, her opinion was given thoughtfully, with clarity and precision, and with the kind of language that lively debate should have. Not only did you support the description of 'berserk,' however flippantly it was intended, your comment added to an entirely unnecessary attack on July's willingness to speak her mind. Your word choice strongly conveys a sense that it is a trial to live through those opinions which must be endured. You have no cause to treat another Boarder's opinions that way, especially not in public.
As if that weren't enough, I am going to do what just about everyone will consider that most heinous of crimes: mentioning the past. Given history, clearly you two have problems. You've aired that from an offensive position on the Board itself. That's rule 11; mP's post combined with your response creates a personal attack which breaks rules 1 and 3. Even if you hadn't managed to effectively breach multiple Board principles in a single sentence, there's a far more troubling aspect to your behavior.
Not six months ago the Board had an intense discussion about certain behavior in the IRC, behavior of which you were explicitly a part. The discussion was sparked specifically because of behavior which left July feeling marginalized, disrespected, and used as an acceptable target for degradation.
You're doing it again. Only this time? You've done it on the Board.
If you say, in your next post, that it was all done thoughtlessly and not intended as such, guess what? That kind of thoughtlessness actively hurts people. Moreover, this time it actively hurts a Boarder who has given so much love to this community, and who has been specifically targeted by actions you took part in.
If it was thoughtless, I'm not sure if I'm more disgusted than before or not.
I know I'm also airing my private problem with you in public--but you've bullied a Boarder before. You've bullied July before. And you just did, again, in public. There will never be a day that I have ethical problems calling you out for that.
That was a very...vivid description. Whew.
I'm pretty sure.
... this is weird.
Well, I hadn't had a open-foot-insert-mouth moment yet this month. So there, there's two of them now. *ah, yes, I love that boot-leather taste*
Sigh. At least the email notification system pointed that out before someone else did.
But why would I comment "that was a very...vivid description" on my own comment?
...*confused*...
It was in reply to my post there.