Bet you said, “Ha! Must be a trap. Better not say preposition.”

We all learned it in grade school: from is a preposition. When I sat down to draft this post, I never intended to overturn this teaching. I set out to write a brief notice that, yes, sentences can end with prepositions. I ended up unlearning some “facts”—laboriously, by way of confusion and resistance—and expanding my perspective. I came to see that prepositions are not necessarily prepositions, that easy labels—who knew?—can obscure deeper truths.

I invite you to join me. Set aside for the moment what you know. Consider the outrageous notion that we can’t call from, by itself, a preposition or anything else. We can’t know what from is until we see what it does. Same goes for over, of, around, and the hundred other words that we have always thought of, automatically, as prepositions. A preposition is a preposition only when it acts as a preposition in a sentence, when it creates a certain kind of relationship between other words.

This thing that we’ve always called a preposition is a verb particle—not a preposition—when it acts as a verb particle, and it’s an adverb—not a preposition and not a verb particle—when it acts as an adverb.

In this post, I hope to leave you with nothing less than the exhilaration of a new way of seeing language. As a bonus, I wrap up with a few guidelines that enable you—within the admittedly narrow realm of this special group of words—to write with more confidence and freedom.

Preposition, Verb Particle, or Adverb?

Behavior defines these three word types.

• A preposition typically appears immediately before—in pre-position to—a noun phrase. The preposition connects the noun phrase to another word in the sentence. In The fox leapt into the river, the preposition into connects the river back to leapt.  The prepositional phrase into the river modifies the verb leapt. (Some linguists, incidentally, no longer count prepositions among English parts of speech. For grammar lovers, this news ranks up there with the deplanetizing of Pluto.[1])
• A verb particle combines with a main verb, and sometimes with other particles, to create a multiple-word verb with an idiomatic meaning, a meaning different from that of the individual words. For example, in is a verb particle—not a preposition and not an adverb—in chip in (help). Out is a verb particle in give out (distribute). Out and of are both verb particles in drop out of (quit). From is a verb particle in know from (understand, have a clue about).
• An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs commonly tell when or where or how something happens. In The couple strolled outside, the adverb outside tells where the couple strolled. Here, outside is neither a preposition (it has no object) nor a verb particle (it contributes to no idiomatic meaning).

The authors of Analyzing English Grammar summarize the distinctions this way: “prepositions have noun or noun phrase objects; verb particles are essential to the meaning of the verb; and adverbs often can be … deleted.”[2]

What kind of word is up in each of the following sentences?

Jack ran up a huge hill.

Jack ran up a huge bill.

When he got to the hill, Jack ran up, turned around, and ran back down.

Let’s zoom in on these.

Jack [ran] up a huge hill.
Up is a preposition because it connects a noun phrase (a huge hill) to another word in the sentence (ran).

Jack [ran up] a huge bill.
Up is a verb particle because it is essential to the meaning of the verb. The words ran and up function as a unit—as a single verb—with an idiomatic meaning: incurred. Ran without up makes no sense; a person can’t run a huge bill.

When he got to the hill, Jack [ran] up, turned around, and ran back down.
Up is an adverb because it tells how Jack ran. Up has no noun or noun-phrase object, so it can’t be a preposition. And up is not essential to the meaning of the verb—ran still means ran without it—so it can’t be a verb particle.

Verb Particles and Phrasal Verbs

Verbs that include verb particles—fight off, come up with, run out of—are called phrasal verbs because they are phrases. Even when separated, the main verb and its particle function as a unit. In Jane took the idea in, the verb is took in.

When I first read the term verb particle, I pictured a plastic model of an atom, a few colored balls held together by sticks. The main verb (chip, give, drop) is the nucleus. Verb particles (in, out, of) are electrons. The whole phrasal verb (chip in, give out, drop out of) is the atom.

English offers up thousands of phrasal verbs, each with its own idiomatic meaning. For example, cut it out has nothing to do with using scissors. Some phrasal verbs have multiple meanings. Check out might mean look at, go to a cashier, exit physically, or exit mentally. Put on might mean don clothes, josh a person, apply makeup, or play recorded music. Phrasal verbs can include nouns too; I especially like the oddly perfect wrap your head around (understand). UsingEnglish.com defines some 2,000 phrasal verbs—a mere sampling—based on 153 main verbs. Get alone spawns 167 phrasal verbs like these: get back, get ahead of, get along with, get over.[3]

We use phrasal verbs all the time. They give our language color and make it endearingly flexible. They also make it maddening to learn. One non-native speaker calls phrasal verbs “English mutant monsters.”[4]

When is a Word “Essential to the Meaning of the Verb”?

The quirkiness of phrasal verbs can make it tough to tell whether you’re looking at a verb particle (essential to the meaning of the verb) or a preposition (not essential to the meaning of the verb), especially when the slippery little word in question precedes a noun (which could be either the object of a preposition or the direct object of the verb).

In the following examples, the slippery little word with must be either a verb particle or a preposition—the only two grammatical possibilities. But which is it? Is with essential to the meaning of the verb, and thus a verb particle? Or is it not essential to the meaning of the verb, and thus a preposition?

Go play with those kids.

Don’t mess with those kids.

Let’s make up with those kids.

This analysis gets tricky.

Go [play] with those kids.

With is not essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete with, the verb play—as in frolic—still pertains to the meaning of the sentence. Play with is not idiomatic; it is not a phrasal verb. So, with is a preposition, not a verb particle.

(Play with would have idiomatic meaning if the sentence were Go play with those ideas. Here, play with means consider. With is essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete with, the verb play—as in frolic—no longer pertains to the meaning of the sentence. So, with is a verb particle, not a preposition.)

Don’t [mess with] those kids.

With is essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete with, the verb mess—as in make messy or eat a meal in a particular place—no longer pertains to the meaning of the sentence. Mess with is idiomatic; it’s a phrasal verb meaning bother. So, with is a verb particle, not a preposition.

Let’s [make up] with those kids.

This example shows a verb particle (up) butted up against a preposition (with). Each needs its own analysis.

• Up is essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete up, the verb make—as in create or force—no longer pertains to the sentence. Make up is idiomatic; it’s a phrasal verb meaning reconcile. So, up is a verb particle, not a preposition.
• With is not essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete with, the phrasal verb make up—as in reconcile—still pertains to the meaning of the sentence. So, with is a preposition, not a verb particle.

Is this a hoot or what?

The Context Beyond the Sentence Matters Too

Quick! What kind of word is along in this sentence?

Git along, little dogies.

Along can’t be a preposition because it has no noun object. (The speaker is neither telling someone to “git along the little dogies” nor telling the little dogies to git along something.) So, along must be either an adverb or a verb particle. But which?

In fact, we can’t say. The sentence doesn’t tell us enough. We lack context again, as we did in the beginning (What kind of word is from?). We need to know what the speaker means before we can classify along.

[Git] along, little dogies.
If the speaker wants the little dogies to stop dawdling, along is not essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete along, the verb git—as in mosey—still pertains to the meaning of the sentence. So, along is an adverb, not a verb particle. 

[Git along], little dogies.
If the speaker wants the little dogies to stop squabbling, along is essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete along, the verb git—as in mosey—no longer pertains to the sentence. Git along is idiomatic; it’s a phrasal verb meaning cooperate. So, along is a verb particle, not a preposition.

A Few Guidelines

Why bother with all this brain-taxing analysis? For me, wrapping my head around this stuff is its own reward. “Getting it” has been a rush. “Getting it” has also brought a few guidelines into focus, clarifying certain decisions. Mostly they’re small, but when it comes to writing, “no decision is too small to be worth wrestling with.”[5]  Here then are those guidelines.

USE PHRASAL VERBS—OR DON’T—ON PURPOSE.

When a phrasal verb suggests itself, your first decision is whether to use it. Consider several factors. In their favor, these idiomatic verbs are “natural-sounding” and “lend a relaxed, confident tone,” as Bryan Garner points out. On the other hand, he continues, they increase word count, so “some rhetoricians prefer avoiding them—hence handle instead of deal with, resolve instead of work out.”[6]

Also weighing against phrasal verbs, sometimes, is their informality. Bonnie Trenga, the author of Off-the-Wall Skits with Phrasal Verbs, gives this example: “If you were writing a dissertation on Henry VIII, you might not want to write, ‘The king hung out with all the nobles.’ It would probably be better to write, ‘The king associated with all the nobles.’ If there’s a doubt, use more formal language.”[7]

A summary of all this wisdom amounts to a counsel of perfection: choose terms—phrasal or not—that convey your meaning precisely and tightly, and that hit the right level of diction for your audience and your purpose.

Do I hear a chorus of angels?

PUT SPACES BEFORE VERB PARTICLES.

Nouns: giveaway, hangout.
Verbs: give away, hang out.

PUT SPACES AFTER VERB PARTICLES.

Quick! Sylvia went onto the stage or Sylvia went on to the stage? 

Have you ever wondered when to put a space between on and to? Between in and to? Between up and on? Wonder no more. If you’re looking at a verb particle, put a space after it.

After entering the movie theater, Sylvia [went] onto the stage.

On is not essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete on, the verb went—as in walked—still pertains to the meaning of the sentence. So, on is not a verb particle. It’s part of the preposition onto (no space).

After acting in many movies, Sylvia [went on] to the stage.
On is essential to the meaning of the verb. You know this because when you delete on, the verb went—as in walked—no longer pertains to the meaning of the sentence. Went on is idiomatic; it’s a phrasal verb meaning proceeded. So, on is a verb particle. It’s not part of a preposition. You put a space after it.

AVOID EXTRANEOUS VERB PARTICLES.

Verb particles sometimes crash the party, sneaking in where they don’t belong. Instead of separating things out, separate them. Rather than focus in on something, focus on it. When in doubt about a verb, research it out. I mean, research it. Dictionaries cover thousands of phrasal verbs. Some dictionaries cover nothing but phrasal verbs.

STAY DIALED, DUDE.

Fashionable phrasal verbs often absorb their particles. If you use slang in your writing, despite the risks[8], stay alert to changes. Once upon a time, we were bummed out; these days, we’re bummed. Back in the day, you’d challenge your rivals to bring it on; today, you say bring it. Hipsters don’t deal with problems; they deal. They don’t get psyched up; they get psyched. They don’t walk out on people; they walk. When Trailblazer LaMarcus Aldridge “twines eight in a row from 12 feet”[9], Aldridge is not dialed in; the man is dialed.

END A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION IF YOU NEED TO.

The so-called rule against ending a sentence with a preposition has been called a “durable superstition”[10], a “remnant of Latin grammar”[11], and “one of the top ten grammar myths.”[12] At least one editor has seen many a “tangled sentence due to reluctance to end a sentence with a preposition.”[13]

Finally, we arrive at the point that I originally set out to make: feel free to end a sentence with a preposition—but only if you can’t find a better word to end it with.

Now You Know From Prepositions—So What?

What does it matter that you now know from prepositions? Who’s going to notice when you confidently put a space between on and to, or when you freely place with wherever you please? Who will appreciate that you’ve seen through the label “preposition” to deeper linguistic truths? What critic will ever be impressed by such private indicators of your growing mastery over your craft? The only critic with the power to hold you back.

—

[1] Pluto analogy courtesy of my grammar-loving sister. The recategorization of traditional parts of speech requires a new vocabulary, which no footnote can do justice to. For a consciousness-altering treatment of this topic, see Thomas P. Klammer, Muriel R. Schulz, and Angela Della Volpe, Analyzing English Grammar, 5th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007). I’m grateful to Drs. Klammer, Schulz, and Della Volpe for their feedback on the content of this post.

[2] Klammer, Schulz, and Della Volpe, Analyzing English Grammar,117–123.

[3] “Phrasal Verb Quizzes – By Verb,” UsingEnglish.com, July 25, 2011, http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/phrasal-verbs/quizzes-verbs.html.

[4] Bonnie Trenga, “Phrasal Verbs,” Grammar Girl blog, July 4, 2008, http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/phrasal-verbs.aspx.

[5] William Zinsser, On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), xiii.

[6] Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage, 3^rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 628–629.

[7] Trenga, “Phrasal Verbs.”

[8] Some style guides advise avoiding slang altogether, but you might want to use it if it suits your audience and purpose. Consider whether the advantages of immediacy and color outweigh the risks of alienating some readers and sacrificing the long-term relevance of your writing. When you nail it, slang, like other “ephemeragy,” is “one of the most stimulating devices in the writer’s toolbox.” Arthur Plotnik, Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style (New York: Random House, 2007), 234–235.

[9] Example courtesy of my husband, whose encouragement and editorial suggestions have helped shape this whole post.

[10] Edward D. Johnson, The Handbook of Good English: Revised and Updated (New York: Facts On File, 1991), 386.

[11] Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage, 654.

[12] Mignon Fogarty, “Ending a Sentence With a Preposition,” Grammar Girl blog, March 31, 2011, http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ending-prepositions.aspx.

[13] Shauna Roberts, “Phrasal verbs: Cool, but often misused,” Shauna Roberts’ For Love Of Words blog, March 26, 2008, http://shaunaroberts.blogspot.com/2008/03/phrasal-verbs-cool-but-often-misused.html.

For example, you need both commas in all of these sentences:

• Fruit flies, for example, can breed up to ten times an hour.
• The TV, however, sat idle.
• The house that Sandee likes, the one with the striped curtains and the funny gargoyle on the second story, went up for sale last week.

With certain types of words, the second comma goes missing especially often. For example, even though most style guides would call for commas on each side of the following bolded words (right where you’d put your hands), many writers would use only the first comma.

• Macy’s, Inc., made headlines today.
• The plane will land in Portland, Maine, right on time.
• Rodney, Jr., has a birthday coming up.
• The letter dated January 2, 1987, changed George’s life.

I’m not sure why second commas get omitted so often. Leaving out half of a comma pair is like leaving out a parenthesis. You wouldn’t do that (would you?

Before:

After: I didn’t plan to write about run-on sentences[;] a much-hyped book by a respected author shocked me into it[.] Run-on sentences, the kind formed by comma splices, litter the pages[—]it ain’t pretty.

Before:  A comma splice is a comma between independent clauses, the comma joins (splices) the clauses together into a run-on sentence, comma splices work well for short independent clauses, like I came, I saw, I hopped the bus home, otherwise, comma splices make reading a chore.

After: A comma splice is a comma between independent clauses[.] The comma joins (splices) the clauses together into a run-on sentence[.] Comma splices work well for short independent clauses, like I came, I saw, I hopped the bus home[;] otherwise, comma splices make reading a chore.

Before: Some run-on perpetrators dispense with the comma splice altogether they fuse independent clauses together without a wisp of punctuation to give readers a clue one clause merges into the next buffered by nothing but a space some writers use this kind of run-on sentence (a fused sentence) to advantage if you know what you’re doing you can too but unless you’re after a breathless quality or a stream-of-consciousness effect don’t fuse your sentences punctuate them.

After: Some run-on perpetrators dispense with the comma splice altogether[.] They fuse independent clauses together without a wisp of punctuation to give readers a clue[;] one clause merges into the next[,] buffered by nothing but a space[.] Some writers use this kind of run-on sentence (a fused sentence) to advantage[.] If you know what you’re doing[,] you can too[.] But unless you’re after a breathless quality or a stream-of-consciousness effect[,] don’t fuse your sentences[.] Punctuate them.

Before: In short, avoid joining independent clauses with either commas or spaces, this is an independent clause this is too each independent clause has a subject and a verb and forms a complete thought.

After: In short, avoid joining independent clauses with either commas or spaces[.] This is an independent clause[.] This is too[.] Each independent clause has a subject and a verb and forms a complete thought.

Before: Luckily, you can fix a run-on sentence, whether it’s spliced or fused, in lots of ways. Sure, you can replace splicing commas and fusing spaces with stronger separators, like periods, semi-colons, colons, or dashes you don’t have to limit yourself to punctuation changes. Get a little wild! Slip in an occasional coordinating conjunction (like but or and) coupled with a comma you’ll win readers’ hearts every time.

After: Luckily, you can fix a run-on sentence, whether it’s spliced or fused, in lots of ways. Sure, you can replace splicing commas and fusing spaces with stronger separators, like periods, semi-colons, colons, or dashes[, but] you don’t have to limit yourself to punctuation changes. Get a little wild! Slip in an occasional coordinating conjunction (like but or and) coupled with a comma [, and] you’ll win readers’ hearts every time.

Before: You can also fix run-on sentences by subordinating one of the clauses. In other words, insert a subordinating conjunction (like because) to expose a logical relationship. Of course, you can’t use this technique to fix every run-on sentence not all clauses hang together as logically as the two you just read.

After: You can also fix run-on sentences by subordinating one of the clauses. In other words, insert a subordinating conjunction (like because) to expose a logical relationship. Of course, you can’t use this technique to fix every run-on sentence [because] not all clauses hang together as logically as the two you just read.

Before: You might wonder how to determine the best fix for a run-on sentence consider two things: the way the parts of the sentence relate to each other and the “tone and rhythm” you want to achieve. (1)

After: You might wonder how to determine the best fix for a run-on sentence[.] Consider two things: the way the parts of the sentence relate to each other and the “tone and rhythm” you want to achieve.

Before: If you struggle with run-on sentences or with punctuation in general, I recommend Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the author herself says, “You know those self-help books that give you permission to love yourself? This one gives you permission to love punctuation.”

After: Even if you excel at punctuation, drop everything and go get Lynne Truss’s fancy-tickling Eats, Shoots & Leaves, [about which] the author herself says, “You know those self-help books that give you permission to love yourself? This one gives you permission to love punctuation.” (2)

I could run on and on about punctuation a person could find worse things to love.

—-

(1) Mignon Fogarty,“What Are Run-On Sentences?” Grammar Girl blog, August 26, 2010, http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/run-on-sentences.aspx.

(2) Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, illustr. Pat Byrnes (New York: Gotham Books / Penguin, 2008 based on the 2003 British edition), 40.

For example, while working on a project for Nike, I find out that my desk phone is made of material from recycled NFL helmets. Too perfect. Got to tell friends about this. I draft a message:

Check it out—my Nike phone is made of old football helmets.

Then those magic words come to me as if the playwright himself is whispering them in my ear. Explore and heighten. Phone … helmet … put one on, pull it down over my ears … am I wearing the phone? … this phone is my helmet … I am a formidable phone-calling foe … who is my opponent? … I hate being on hold … endless marketing hype … why can’t they get some new music? … waste of time … makes me want to hurt someone …

I return to my message:

Check it out—my Nike phone is made of old football helmets. Don’t mess with me when I’m talking on this sucker. All those blasted answering machines out there can put themselves on hold from now on. I make a call, it’s going through.

A classic explore-and-heighten comes from the Monty Python dead-parrot sketch. Mr. Praline (John Cleese) walks into a pet shop, bird cage in hand, to complain to the shop owner (Michael Palin), that the parrot he bought a half hour earlier is, and for some time has been, decidedly dead. Over and over Praline pleads his case. Over and over the shop owner insists, ridiculously, that the bird lives. For example, he claims that the bird is simply “pining for the fjords” of its native Norway. An exasperated Praline launches into a tirade of explored-and-heightened phrases:

Mate, this bird wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts through it! ’E’s bleedin’ demised! ….  ’E’s not pinin’! ’E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ’E’s expired and gone to meet ’is maker! ’E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ’e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ’im to the perch, ’e’d be pushing up the daisies! ’Is metabolic processes are now ’istory! ’E’s off the twig! ’E’s kicked the bucket, ’e’s shuffled off ’is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! ’E’s [bleep]in’ snuffed it!….. THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

“Well and good for Monty Python,” you might think, “but the stuff I write involves a little less drama and far fewer dead birds.” I’m with you. But all of us spin out the occasional sentence or paragraph that’s somehow lacking—thin or unclear or mundane. We all make readers yawn or tilt their heads in puzzlement from time to time. Those are the times to invoke the magic of the mantra.

To give you an idea of how this mantra works for me, let me replay the Nike example in slow motion. I’ve drafted my original statement. I like its simplicity, but I don’t want to send it out yet. I sense potential. I relax, breathe. Explore! My sentence, that just-okay stretch of text, opens up. It becomes something palpable, something that I can crawl into. I feel it around my shoulders as I slip in, like a spelunker slipping into a small cave. I’m in a wonderland of half-seen crannies and cavities and side chambers. This space is pure possibility. I look around, expecting—knowing—that discoveries lurk just out of view. Now, heighten! Phone … helmet … put one on, pull it down over my ears … am I wearing the phone? … this phone is my helmet … I am a formidable phone-calling foe … who is my opponent? … hate being on hold … endless marketing hype … why can’t they get some new music? … waste of time … makes me want to hurt someone …  snap on the chinstrap … whose voice is that? … sounds distinctly like my husband … “Marcia! Get that phone on and get in there! Tell the quarterback to run dive-five-right. The left tackle pulls, blindsides the answering system, knocks it flat. Go straight through the line of clerks and into the secondary … you’ll pick up ten, twelve yards easy.”

Explore and heighten. Of course these words possess no magic in themselves. They can’t transform a single word. But they can usher you straight into your imagination, the place where ideas are born, where power finds its source, where the best sentences and paragraphs you will ever write wait for you.

My new e‑book reader, the Amazon Kindle Fire, blows my mind. It holds a fathomless supply of books, magazines, and movies—and it takes up less room in my purse than my make-up kit. The interface thrills like a party trick; if I had a library’s worth of e-books sitting on this infinite bookshelf, the gentlest finger stroke would send their bright covers flying off the edge of the screen like cards in a game of 52-bazillion pickup.

The user guide blows my mind too. It’s among the least helpful product manuals I’ve ever encountered, a distinction that’s tough to achieve.

This book has two dismayingly obvious problems. First, the how-to information lacks the universal cue of numbered steps. Consequently, the procedures—the most sought-after information in any user guide—blend in. The second, more maddening problem emerges after the reader uncamouflages the procedures: some of them don’t work in this book.

How can the preeminent e-book-reading device come with such a stunningly nonpreeminent introduction to e-book reading?

I turn on my new toy, and there’s the cover of the user guide. It’s a pleasing, tightly packed arrangement of the letters K, I, N, D, L, E in various sizes and styles. These wooden blocks of movable type, facing every which way in attractively juxtaposed shades of rust and pewter, say “Farewell, old ways.” I’m enchanted. I can’t wait to embrace the new.

I touch the cover, and the book opens. I flick through a few pages. I come to a picture of the main screen. Yes, I expect that image, those callouts. I keep flicking. Paragraphs, more paragraphs. Where’s the how-to? I want to know what I can do and how to do it. I comb the text for the 1, 2, 3s.

In the 60-some flicks that it takes me to reach the end of the book, I come across only one brief set of numbered steps. All of the other instructions—which make up at least half of the book—are left inexplicably unnumbered. Even more exasperating, they are strung together into soporific paragraphs like this one:

To add a note, press and hold on a word, or press and drag to select multiple words. When the contextual menu appears, tap Note and use the onscreen keyboard to type your note. To highlight a passage, press and hold until the magnifying box appears, then drag your finger to the last word you want to highlight and release. When the contextual menu appears, tap Highlight. Your Kindle Fire saves your place in whatever content you’re reading, or you can manually add a bookmark. To add a bookmark, tap the screen, then tap the bookmark icon at the top right of the screen. To delete a bookmark, tap it. To view your notes, highlights, and bookmarks, tap the screen to bring up the Options bar, then tap the Menu icon.

Really, Amazon? One blob of text for all these tasks? The information might be accurate, but did you test it for usability? Why force readers to hack their way through such a thicket of instruction?

Determined to learn what I can, I pick an action: “Tap the screen, then tap the bookmark icon.” I tap the screen. No bookmark icon appears. I tap again. And again. I feel stupid. What am I doing wrong? After a few frustrating and confusing failures, it occurs to me that this book does not support the bookmark function it describes.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Refusing to believe the evidence, I tap again. I hold my finger down longer this time, making a deal with the page: I’ll give you extra touch time, you give me that bookmark icon. Eventually, denial and bargaining give way to reluctant acceptance. I move on to the descriptions of note-taking and   highlighting. I discover that these two functions don’t work in this book either. I feel less stupid now than cheated.

Amazon, where were your user-experience designers when it came to the learning part of the user experience?

Mentally, I begin to edit. I tease the tasks apart. Subheadings and numbers find their natural places:

To Add a Note

1. Press and hold on a word.
2. (Optional) Drag either handle to highlight a group of words.
3. Tap Note.
4. Type your note.

Pssst. Don’t try these steps here; they don’t work in this book.

To Highlight a Passage

1. Press and hold on a word.
2. (Optional) Drag either handle to highlight a group of words.
3. Tap Highlight.

Pssst. Don’t try these steps here….

To Add a Bookmark

1. Tap the screen.
2. Tap the bookmark icon at the top right of the screen.

Pssst. Don’t try these steps here….

Before long, it hits me that I might now have put more thought into the usability of this book than Amazon did.

Admittedly, I’m a user-guide junkie. When I buy anything, I read the instructions. If a user guide is printed, I scribble in its margins. I like to understand how things work. I like to understand how information about things works. I get a kick out of thinking about how to do how-to. It tickles my brain to analyze explanations: those that work and—especially—those that don’t. I heart make-overs.

Come to think of it, Amazon … thanks for the good time! Let’s do this again. Call me?

If the editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin had had his way in 1959, Julia Child’s best-selling Mastering the Art of French Cooking — possibly the most influential work in American cookbook history — would never have been published. Even after Julia spent over a year tightening her manuscript at the editor’s request, condensing it as far as she felt she could, he still rejected it, judging it “so huge, expensive, and elaborate that it was certain to seem formidable ‘to the American housewife.’” *

This editor thought he knew his audience. He was wrong.

Julia knew her audience. She changed publishers. In 1961, Alfred A. Knopf served up this monumental pièce de résistance — all 734 pages — to the cooking world. That world, like Knopf’s, has never been the same.

Know your audience. It’s Rule #1. It’s simple. It’s fundamental. And it’s as easy to dismiss as a check box. (I always know something about my audience.) This rule skirts the question that matters: How well should I know my audience? After reading Laura Shapiro’s short biography Julia Child: A Life, I’m more convinced than ever that if I want my words to be read — whether I’m writing for pleasure or for pay — I, like Julia, must envision my readers precisely and constantly.

Julia’s envisioned reader was a virtual companion, an inseparable tagalong full of curiosity. This persona, a composite of “young bride” and “chef-hostess,” focused and energized Julia’s writing. As Shapiro says,

This imagined reader… who couldn’t cook until the right book fell into her hands, had a permanent place in Julia’s consciousness and directly inspired the immense amount of detail that characterized her recipes. Like a ghost from Julia’s own past, she trailed Julia from kitchen to desk and back again, forever trying to figure out whether the roast was done, why the chops were steaming in the pan instead of browning properly, what made the cream puffs soggy, and exactly how thick the beef slices should be: a quarter inch? an eighth of an inch?

Julia wrote specifically for people interested in creating peak experiences with food. These readers were so real to her, and so important to her, that she began her foreword in Mastering by describing them:

This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children’s meals, the parent-chauffeur-den-mother syndrome, or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat.

If only my readers were always this clear to me, and this central to my work.

Too often, I have only a superficial sense of the human beings on the receiving end of my efforts. For example, when I’m hired to describe how to install or use or repair some device, I rarely know enough about the installers/users/repairers to make solid decisions on their behalf.

• I don’t know how familiar they are with this product or with similar products.
• I don’t know what terms and concepts they already understand.
• I don’t know their surroundings, motivations, frustrations, burning questions.

Such indistinct personas — unlike Julia’s easy-to-conjure, would-be gourmets — can’t tell me what they need. I can’t hear them. I can’t see them. Even if I write well for them, I can’t write effectively.

How satisfying, then, to get to write for the occasional reader whom I can imagine fully and accurately. In these cases, writing is like making the perfect gift for a friend. The whole time I’m working on it, I have confidence that the recipient will open it and say, “I can’t wait to use this” — and mean it. Julia must have felt this very confidence every time she placed her book in the hands of an eager young cook.
——–
*Source: Julia Child: A Life by Laura Shapiro

“The Portland Content Strategy Meetup group is excited to bring Rahel Bailie to our city for a day-long workshop, CONTENT STRATEGY IN A DAY. If you’re a practicing content strategist or are interested in finding out more about this emerging field, you’ll learn new ways to look at best practices, walk through hands-on exercises facilitated by Rahel, and come away with new tools you can use immediately in your work.”

More…

Tropes, aka similes and metaphors, are handy devices that compare one thing to another. As Arthur Plotnik defines them in his stimulating, trope-filled writer’s guide Spunk & Bite (which I review here), tropes “heighten the meaning or clarity of a subject by relating it to something more vivid.”

For example, you might relate a trope to something pointy that you can poke readers with.

What makes a trope good? It has to be, well, just right. And tropes easily go wrong. (For some entertainingly egregious examples, see Bad Metaphors from Stupid Student Essays.) A reader sinks into a good trope comfortably, like Goldilocks easing into Baby Bear’s chair. Plotnik sums it up this way: “A good trope is factory-fresh, unpredictable, economical, and custom-fitted.” The ideal comparison works without working too hard.

You’ll find tropes that work in almost any piece of good writing, whether it’s a poem, a novel, an email, a blog entry, a brochure, a technical manual, or any other vehicle (!) of human communication. For today’s examples, I turn to tropemaster Mary Karr. Here are a few snippets of similitude from the opening chapters of her first memoir, The Liar’s Club.

“It was only over time that the panorama [of the painful memory] became animate, like a scene in some movie crystal ball that whirls from a foggy blur into focus.”

(Thanks to the image, the gradualness of this memory’s return is palpable.)

—

“The fact that my house was Not Right metastasized into the notion that I myself was somehow Not Right.”

(The trope sneaks in under the cloak of the verb metastasized.  The otherwise abstract Not-Right-ness suddenly takes on the ominous shape of cancer.)

((And in my comment above, the trope sneaks in under the cloak of the verb sneaks. The word trope itself suddenly morphs into a cloak-clad agent of surreptitious activity.))

—

“[Grandma had] started auctioning Mother off to various husbands when she was only fifteen. Like some prize cow… fattened for the highest bidder.”

(Prize cow. Two little words, and we’re there. Instantly, we “get” Grandma and have no choice but to despise her. Mother’s resentment washes over us. With two little words, Karr achieves what all authors live for: She places us — smack — into her characters’ psyches.)

—

“To Paolo’s credit, he didn’t give Mother up as easily as the others had. He chased her… like a duck would a june bug.”

(This comparison is both delightfully unexpected and perfectly custom-fitted. The hapless duck had no chance with the june bug.)

—

“His mother wore an enormous bonnet like a big blue halo.”

(That’s a bonnet we can picture.)

—

“The boys … are shirtless under their bib overalls; their matching close-cropped haircuts, which Daddy claimed you could rub the river water out of with three strokes of a flat palm, are dark and sleek as seals.”

(Seals are not only dark and sleek; they’re also playful. That hinted-at playfulness rubs off, advantageously, on our sense of the boys.)

—

“If Daddy’s past was more intricate to me than my own present, Mother’s was as blank as the West Texas desert she came from.”

(This trope multitasks. It answers the question “How blank was it?” even as it delivers information about Mother.)

—

“The same way tornadoes cut narrow paths — so an outhouse would be left standing alongside a house blown to splinters — the locusts chewed up fields at random.”

(This comparison of a locust swarm to a tornado is so cognitively natural that you hardly notice it as a writerly device.)

—

“The morning Mother decided to go back to Daddy, she and Grandma had a fight about whether her lipstick was too dark. Grandma had brought it up at breakfast and just clamped down on it like a Gila monster.”

(You can practically see Grandma’s mouth frothing.)

Some of Karr’s most affecting tropes can’t be easily snipped in to this list because they’re woven together over multiple paragraphs. For example, her comparison of East Texans’ use of the term nervous with Homer’s use of the Greek term ate (ah-tay) requires serious unfolding. This particular trope is so long that I almost spared you its heft. But experiencing the texture of such a masterful protracted metaphor is as satisfying as slipping on a luxurious robe; you wish that you could linger in it forever. Here, then, is Karr’s handiwork. Slip it on, and see if you agree.

“I knew that neither of my parents was coming. Daddy was working the graveyard shift, and the sheriff said that his deputy had driven out to the plant to try and track him down. Mother had been taken Away — he further told us — for being Nervous.

“I should explain here that in East Texas parlance the term Nervous applied with equal accuracy to anything from chronic nail-biting to full-blown psychosis. Mr. Thibideaux down the street had blown off the heads of his wife and three sons, then set his house on fire before fixing the shotgun barrel under his own jaw and using his big toe on the trigger. I used to spend Saturday nights in that house with his daughter, a junior high twirler of some popularity, and I remember nothing more of Mr. Thibideaux than that he had a crew cut and a stern manner. He was a refinery worker like Daddy, and also a deacon at First Baptist.

“I was in my twenties when Mr. Thibideaux killed his family. I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course  — I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother’s front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature. It was during one of these visits that I found the Thibideauxs’ burned-out house, and also stumbled on the Greek term ate. In ancient epics, when somebody boffs a girl or slays somebody or just generally gets heated up, he can usually blame ate, a kind of raging passion, pseudo-demonic, that banishes reason. So Agamemnon, having robbed Achilles of his girlfriend, said, ‘I was blinded by ate and Zeus took away my understanding.’ Wine can invoke ate, but only if it’s ensorcered in some way. Because the ate is supernatural, it releases the person possessed of it from any guilt for her actions. When neighbors tried to explain the whole murder-suicide of the Thibideaux clan after thirty years of grass-cutting and garbage-taking-out and dutiful church-service attendance, they did so with one adjective, which I have since traced to the Homeric idea of ate: Mr. Thibideaux was Nervous. No amount of prodding on my part produced a more elaborate explanation.

“On the night the sheriff came to our house and Mother was adjudged more or less permanently Nervous, I didn’t yet understand the word.”

Want more? Take up one of Karr’s books and go trope-hunting yourself.

For that matter, go trope-hunting in any good writer’s work. Discover your own gems. Admire them from all sides. Feel their edges. Study the way they gleam. Then don’t be surprised when your own writing starts to show a new sparkle.

The cover of Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style yanks on your eyes in just this way. Dare to hope; this is one cover you can judge the book by. Plotnik rewards readers with page after stimulating page of bold writing about bold writing.

The book, published in 2007, begins with a section delightfully entitled “E.B. Whitewashed.” Plotnik admonishes Strunk and White — whose names he has so deliciously twisted in his title — for failing to inspire writers to greatness with their venerated but “vulnerable” Elements of Style. While he admits that this “diminutive book” is helpful as far as it goes, he calls it “as pokable as the Pillsbury doughboy for determined critics.” He clarifies: “What powers the little work as much as anything is its strict formulation of ‘correctness’ in English.”

Plotnik sets himself a higher mission. For him, correctness is a mere starting point. “Jarring this sense of correctness… if done artfully can rocket words off the page. It can jolt readers awake. It can set them dancing.”

Plotnik wants his readers’ readers to boogie.

This inventive writer acknowledges the difficulty of being inventive. ”Reaching for extremes, nonwriters (or lazy writers) fall back on the vocabulary of disbelief: ‘It was just … incredible. I mean, unbelievable. Absolutely mind-boggling.’” How do you escape the lameness of such “used-up modifiers”? Plotnik suggests using what he calls megaphors and miniphors. A megaphor is a metaphor that “uses images of imposing size, force, or notoriety to augment a subject in an attention-getting way. Make it novel and clever and it’s doubly hot — as hot as these megaphors were in their day: killer abs; avalanche selling; Dow Jones meltdown; smash-mouth football.” Similarly, to impress smallness on your audience, you could say tiny or microscopic (yawwwn), or you could use a miniphor: a gnat’s-breath attention span, or a tennis player who stands the size of hotel soap.

The table of contents alone entertains and instructs, piques and cajoles. Here are a few of my favorite chapter titles:

• The Pleasures of Surprise
• Upgrading Your Colors
• Joltingly Fresh Adverbs
• Words with Music and Sploosh
• Words with Foreign Umami
• Enallage: A Fun Grammatical Get
• Intensifiers for the Feeble
• Opening Words: The Glorious Portal
• Closings: The Three-Point Landing
• A License. To Fragment. Sentences.
• Edge: Writing at the Nervy Limits

No matter how much you know about writing, this book will blast some of your assumptions and inspire you to think bigger. For example, Plotnik has reopened my mind to the power and pleasure of an adeptly wielded adverb. He knows why writers avoid this word form — raced is better than ran speedily, and glittered doesn’t need brightly. But he also knows that “certain adverbial forms are among the hottest locutions in contemporary prose.” And he tells you exactly what to do: ”Take a forceful adjective (say, withering), add -ly to make it an adverb, combine it with the target word (say, cute), and voilà — witheringly cute, a burst of wry wit, a ministatement.” He had to be smiling when he noted, “Perhaps those who are ‘follicularly challenged,’ such as this writer, are partial to the form.”

Here’s a sampling of other passages that I found both satisfying and edifying:

“Perceived correctness can be comforting to the reader, like a tidy house. But what distinguishes a piece of writing is the ambiance — the environmental mood — that language can create. That’s why locution, locution, locution is so important to us realtors of words. In its broad sense, locution refers to a particular mode of speech — the use of a word, the turning of a phrase in some stylistic manner. It doesn’t have to be fancy. ‘If a thing can be done, why do it?’ was one of poet Gertrude Stein’s typical locutions.”

—

“Consider these two efforts in a New York Times article about the Windows XP operating system. The first [comparison doesn't work]: ‘When it comes to obsessive, clean-freak tendencies, Windows XP makes Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets look like a slob.’ The image here is labored and arcane — intelligible only to those who have watched the movie, and even then, too ponderous to allow for surprise. But the second [comparison], even with its technical jargon [works beautifully]: ‘You may have to update its BIOS… before installing XP, a procedure about as user-friendly as a wet cat.’ Bingo! Dry tech-talk, and suddenly I’m smelling damp fur and feeling the scratches.”

—

“Whatever the base (main) tense of a story, earlier and later action must be expressed in other tenses. Knowing the grammatical names of these tenses is less important for writers than mastering the sounds of them. The models that follow should help you to leap from a base tense into past or future actions. ESCAPING THE PRESENT BASE TENSE — ‘She fires the shotgun. She has loaded it just minutes before. Tomorrow she will remember nothing. She will have lost all sense of time.’ ESCAPING THE PAST BASE TENSE — ‘He fell wounded. He had never expected her to shoot. Tomorrow they would ask him what had happened. He would have already asked himself a hundred times.’”

—

“Imagine legions of writers setting off on the marathon run to success. Among them are thousands who have mastered the basic skills of composition. Should you need to catch up, scores of worthy grammar/style books are standing by to help. But if your goal is to break away from the pack, some über force, some jack-rabbit anima has to inhabit your writing.”

A bestselling author and former publishing executive, Plotnik has filled his book with “sparkling examples from our best writers.” Even if you read nothing but the quotes, you get your money’s worth. My must-read list now includes several of the books he cites, books like John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flats, Alexander Theroux ‘s The Primary Colors, and Annie Proulx’s The Bunchgrass Edge of the World.

Don’t worry, though, if your aspirations are less literary than Steinbeck’s or Theroux’s or Proulx’s. Spunk & Bite is for novelists, sure, but it’s also for journalists and copywriters and corporate communicators: writers of articles, business reports, blogs, and emails.

If you want your writing — any writing —  to have spunk and bite, this book is for you.

My only quibble is that Plotnik’s creativity occasionally overreaches. For example, he compares “the inertia that sits on a reader’s mind” to a lump of clay. Suddenly, we picture a brain topped with a clammy, hard substance. As if this metaphor didn’t already suffer from “too much image” (the author’s own phrase), he adds, “Be original, and watch that lump of clay melt away.” Uck. The brain is now dripping with hot, grey goo. Bold, yes. Effective, not so much. You might call this a meh-aphor. This is one of the rare places where Plotnik misses his own mark. “Aptness,” he says,”is paramount. Unexpected is easy; unexpectedly perfect helps separate writers from hacks.”

So yeah, sometimes his unexpected falls short of perfect. But whose doesn’t? The miracle is, Plotnik hits perfect again and again.

Wish you could attain the unexpectedly perfect yourself? Want your writing to go places it has never gone before? Take Spunk and Bite for a spin. Open the yellow cover, climb in, strap on your seat belt, and put ’er in gear. Get ready to join the rush of passionate opinions and side-swiping examples. Get ready to find yourself in a new state where the familiar laws no longer apply. Get ready to discover that sometimes, to get ahead, you have to yield.

Guatemala trip, Part 1

(This series will unfold over the next couple of weeks. I won’t bother you with future notices.)