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In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

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Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#51

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

watwut wrote: post #44
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point is not only are what Strunk & White talk about not rules followed by good writers, they're not rules that have anything to do with English in the first place. For instance, from my link: > Strunk makes are foolish assertions like that however in the sense "nevertheless" cannot be correctly used to begin a sentence Why is it that Strunk would assert this? On what basis? It's not rooted in any linguistic…

They are not supposed to be gramatical rules. They are supposed to be style rules that makes normal person write better and to teach you to think about writing. Of course it is made up. Style manuals are made up and not meant to be comprehensive list of everything possible.

That still doesn't address my point. If these are not rules of English, then what are these (style) rules based on? What is the justification for not using however at the beginning of a non-dependent clause ('sentence')? If it's not actual rules of English grammar and also not what writers that are generally recognised as 'good' writers do, then what value could it have?

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#52

Post by wrycoder »

cafard wrote: post #50
gumby wrote: post #23

Nothing wrong with long sentences. In fact I am not a fan of Hemingway whose sentences are typically short. I particularly like them in German, though they are uncommon on the web. I think I demonstrate a bias: I tried to make my sentences in this comment hemingwayesque, but it appears I failed...yet they are, for my typical writing, brief!

Ah, yes. Nothing like Hegel, with one half of the separable verb on page n near the top, and the other half near the bottom of page n + 2.

Said the tedious German lecturer to the couple who stood up to go after twenty minutes: “Don't leave yet, I’m just getting to the verb!”

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#53

Post by watwut »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #51
watwut wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not supposed to be gramatical rules. They are supposed to be style rules that makes normal person write better and to teach you to think about writing. Of course it is made up. Style manuals are made up and not meant to be comprehensive list of everything possible.

That still doesn't address my point. If these are not rules of English, then what are these (style) rules based on? What is the justification for not using however at the beginning of a non-dependent clause ('sentence')? If it's not actual rules of English grammar and also not what writers that are generally recognised as 'good' writers do, then what value could it have?

It makes texts easier to read. Grammar is not about readability nor meaning nor pleasure, it is purely about syntax. Analogy is that syntactically correct code does not imply maintainability nor means the code is pleasant to work with.

Plenty of good writer followed those rules. Many of people break those rules and create completely crappy text. In here, few writers are cherry picked as examples why long sentences are fine - most of those sentences are for purely emotional hit and frankly, none of those sentences came across as somehow all that much awesome to me. They are the kind of sentences I normally glaze over.

Really, James Joyce breaks those rules, is considered good writer, but the fact is that most readers suffer as they attempt to read it. Now, you can go on trying to simulate what he did, but readers will suffer. He had success with it, because he knew why is he breaking the rules and had elaborate system for it.

You can have non-minimalist style and it can work well too. I think that simply in practice, people tend to use non-minimalist style when they don't know what they are doing and end up with long hard to understand texts.

---------------------

However part says something different then you think. According to book, however may mean either "nevertheless" or "whatever way or to whatever extent". When however comes first, it means in whatever way or to whatever extent. So, the explanation is in how they understood the meaning of the word depending of where it is placed in 1918. And you can use it, if you use the word with proper meaning.

Also, however is in chapter with following intro: "Many of the words and expressions here listed are not so much bad English as bad style, the commonplaces of careless writing. As illustrated under Feature, the proper correction is likely to be not the replacement of one word or set of words by another, but the replacement of vague generality by definite statement."

Elements of style have explanations in it and is free on the internet.

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#54

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

watwut wrote: post #53
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn't address my point. If these are not rules of English, then what are these (style) rules based on? What is the justification for not using however at the beginning of a non-dependent clause ('sentence')? If it's not actual rules of English grammar and also not what writers that are generally recognised as 'good' writers do, then what value could it have?

It makes texts easier to read. Grammar is not about readability nor meaning nor pleasure, it is purely about syntax. Analogy is that syntactically correct code does not imply maintainability nor means the code is pleasant to work with. Plenty of good writer followed those rules. Many of people break those rules and create completely crappy text. In here, few writers are cherry picked as examples why long sentences ar…

There are many things which are simply factually incorrect. However as 'not being able to mean "nevertheless" when at the beginning of a main clause' is utter fabricated balderdash.

It has been able to be used like this for at least a few hundred years in English, and you can find examples of this use from Shakespeare and Burke and so on. And it's not as if Strunk & White couldn't have checked on this in 1918, such examples are given in the OED's 1899 edition.

And this is not an explanation: "Many of the words and expressions here listed are not so much bad English as bad style, the commonplaces of careless writing. As illustrated under Feature, the proper correction is likely to be not the replacement of one word or set of words by another, but the replacement of vague generality by definite statement."

What justification do they give for what they consider 'bad style' or 'careless writing'?

I do wish they could have followed their own recommendations, especially as concerns the last clause, for this is nothing but vague generality, and a mistaken one at that.

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#55

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

svat wrote: post #32
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strunk & White is, of course, nonsense and doesn't even follow its own made-up rules most of the time. See, e.g., http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15509

Pullum (the author of the above) keeps criticizing Strunk's The Elements of Style (a style guide) for its rules not being rules of grammar, when the whole point of a style guide is to state opinions in cases where both alternatives are in fact grammatically correct, except that the author prefers one less. This activity of Pullum's is very strange, as he has written a book of grammar and is presumably capable of seei…

As a stylistic claim, their statement about however is also incorrect. They could have easily turned up examples of this exact use from well-regarded writers over the last few centuries. On what basis is using however at the beginning of a main clause with the sense of 'nevertheless' unclear or careless?

A worse example of 'careless writing' is writing about things you don't actually have much idea about, but with an air of authority.

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#57

Post by Ma8ee »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #7

Dylan Thomas was always good for a few of these. “Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, be…

Long, but not particularly complicated.

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#58

Post by svat »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #55
svat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pullum (the author of the above) keeps criticizing Strunk's The Elements of Style (a style guide) for its rules not being rules of grammar, when the whole point of a style guide is to state opinions in cases where both alternatives are in fact grammatically correct, except that the author prefers one less. This activity of Pullum's is very strange, as he has written a book of grammar and is presumably capable of seei…

As a stylistic claim, their statement about however is also incorrect. They could have easily turned up examples of this exact use from well-regarded writers over the last few centuries. On what basis is using however at the beginning of a main clause with the sense of 'nevertheless' unclear or careless? A worse example of 'careless writing' is writing about things you don't actually have much idea about, but with an…

Yes of course, for every single rule stated in any decent style guide, one can find examples of that rule being violated by well-regarded writers; often even the authors. That's what style guides are. What they contain are not "claims", but the authors' whimsical opinions, based on what they consider infelicitous in the writing they often encounter (in the case of Strunk, his students' essays).

You could carry out this exact exercise with any style guide, even a bland and inoffensive one like the Chicago Manual of Style (which barely even gets into stylistic issues). The books to compare Strunk & White with are not grammar textbooks (I don't know why Pullum keeps doing this) but things like Steven Pinker's A Sense of Style or Ben Yagoda's The Sound on the Page or Zinsser's On Writing Well or Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft etc.

I have said all this in the answer I linked to in the comment above (and comments on other answers at that question), so now I'll stop getting drawn into the same argument again. :-)

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#59

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

svat wrote: post #58
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a stylistic claim, their statement about however is also incorrect. They could have easily turned up examples of this exact use from well-regarded writers over the last few centuries. On what basis is using however at the beginning of a main clause with the sense of 'nevertheless' unclear or careless? A worse example of 'careless writing' is writing about things you don't actually have much idea about, but with an…

Yes of course, for every single rule stated in any decent style guide, one can find examples of that rule being violated by well-regarded writers; often even the authors. That's what style guides are. What they contain are not "claims", but the authors' whimsical opinions, based on what they consider infelicitous in the writing they often encounter (in the case of Strunk, his students' essays). You could carry out th…

But I'm not talking about isolated examples, which you keeping trying to pull the discussion back to, I'm talking about widespread, 'good style' usage. What S&W recommend is simply bad style, and I (like Pullum) wish people would stop recommending it.

Re: In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence

#60

Post by svat »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #59
svat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course, for every single rule stated in any decent style guide, one can find examples of that rule being violated by well-regarded writers; often even the authors. That's what style guides are. What they contain are not "claims", but the authors' whimsical opinions, based on what they consider infelicitous in the writing they often encounter (in the case of Strunk, his students' essays). You could carry out th…

But I'm not talking about isolated examples, which you keeping trying to pull the discussion back to, I'm talking about widespread, 'good style' usage. What S&W recommend is simply bad style, and I (like Pullum) wish people would stop recommending it.

Now that's new. All the objections I've heard so far, from Pullum and from you, were about the fact that the rules stated by Strunk & White are not rules of grammar and are often violated by good writers including the authors, etc. As I've said, that is a nonsensical objection that rests on a misunderstanding of what a style guide is.

But what you seem to be saying now is that if someone follows the recommendations of S&W (and in the way intended by a style guide, i.e. not blindly), their writing will amount to "bad style". Now we're actually discussing style (matters of taste), not grammar -- that's great!

Of course tastes differ so this is fully to be expected, but I'm curious: do you have examples of why you think that what they recommend is bad style? If it helps, and so that we can discuss something concrete, the original 1918 The Elements of Style is available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134 -- it takes less than an hour to read, and even less to skim. (At least its "I. INTRODUCTORY" is well worth reading, to set the book in context.)

My opinion: It is hard to define any writer's style, but overall, the style advocated by Strunk is one of clear ("plain"), concise, and "direct" language. Of course literary writing need not conform to this style, but in most cases it serves well. For most of the examples in the book, although it is easy to imagine situations where a sentence similar to the "before" case would be better than the suggested fix, overall it seems to me that in most cases the changes would be an improvement. (And in some cases the book itself points out contradictory rules explicitly, e.g. Rule 4 and Rule 14.) One only needs to look at the very last section of the book (Exercises 9 to 25) to see how such awkward writing is still very common today, especially in writing by students, and how Strunk's recommended style would improve things.

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