Author Topic: Parenthesis isn’t just those twin curved marks but any amplifying material  (Read 15409 times)

Joe Carillo

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Part I

We are all familiar with the two curved marks that we know as the parenthesis ( ), but what some of us may not know is that in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence that’s set off from a sentence or passage by some form of punctuation. That punctuation can be those two curved marks (they are called brackets in British grammar), of course, but depending on the importance of the inserted information and the writer’s intention, it can also be a pair of enclosing commas or a pair of enclosing dashes.



Let’s take a look at the following examples:

(1) Parenthesis by comma: (a) “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” (b) “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

(2) Parenthesis by dashes: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.”

(3) Parenthesis by parentheses: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.”

In each of the three examples above, the information set off by the punctuation marks—whether by commas, dashes, or parentheses—is called a parenthetical, and its distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically and semantically correct even without it. A parenthetical is basically added information; however, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. It may be needed to put the statement in a desired context, to establish the logic of the sentence, or to convey a particular tone or mood for the statement. In fact, the punctuation chosen for a parenthetical largely determines its optionality or importance to the statement.

So the big question about parentheticals is really this: Under what circumstances do we use commas, dashes, or parentheses to punctuate or set off a parenthetical from a sentence?

In Example 1(a) above, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” is what’s known as a nonrestrictive relative clause. A nonrestrictive relative clause is a parenthetical that provides information that’s not absolutely needed to understand the sentence; in other words, it is nondefining information. The sentence will remain grammatically and semantically intact without it: “Ferdinand Magellan was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Without the nonrestrictive relative clause, however, the sentence loses a lot of valuable information about its subject, “Ferdinand Magellan”; in fact, the intended context for the statement disappears completely.

For such type of parenthetical, the most appropriate choice of punctuation is a pair of enclosing commas, as was used in the original sentence. It won’t do to punctuate a nonrestrictive relative clause with dashes or parentheses, for either of them would render the information optional, as we can see in these two versions of that sentence: “Ferdinand Magellan—who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521—was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” “Ferdinand Magellan (who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521) was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Both of these sentence constructions run counter to the writer’s original intention.

We must keep in mind, though, that the same parenthetical—“who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521”—would have become a restrictive relative clause had the subject been a generic noun like, say, “the explorer,” in which case the pair of enclosing commas would have been rendered unnecessary: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

We will continue this discussion in the next essay. (January 12, 2008)

NOTE: In the essay above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.

MORE RECENT REFINEMENT: For greater clarity, the title of the original posting of this essay, "Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought," has been changed to "Parenthesis isn’t just those twin curved marks but any amplifying material." Part I of the discussion now also takes note that what's known as "parenthesis" in American English is called "brackets" in British English. (Jose A. Carillo, August 26, 2022)
« Last Edit: May 04, 2023, 03:15:20 PM by Joe Carillo »

Joe Carillo

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Part II - Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2009, 03:01:40 PM »
Part II

In the preceding essay, I pointed out that if we substitute a generic noun for a proper noun that’s being modified by a nonrestrictive relative clause, the pair of commas enclosing that clause would be rendered unnecessary. Thus, the sentence “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães” takes the following form when its subject is replaced with the generic noun “the explorer”: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The absence of the enclosing commas indicates that the nonrestrictive relative clause has become a restrictive one.

Obviously, the following questions will come to mind when that happens: Why not leave those enclosing commas alone? What difference does it make if we let those commas stay even after changing “Ferdinand Magellan” to “the explorer”?

The reason lies in the basic grammatical difference between a proper noun and a generic noun. We will recall that a proper noun is one that designates a particular being or thing, and that as a rule in English, it is capitalized to indicate this fact. A proper noun, moreover, has this important characteristic: as a rule, it won’t accept a limiting or restrictive relative modifier to define it. By its very name, a proper noun is supposed to have already defined itself, making it one of a kind.

Now, we need to recall at this point that a relative clause or a “who”-parenthetical that comes after a proper noun—“Ferdinand Magellan” in this case—becomes a restrictive clause or limiting modifier when it’s not enclosed by a pair of commas. It is therefore grammatically incorrect for the subject “Ferdinand Magellan” to be followed by a relative clause that’s not enclosed by commas: “Ferdinand Magellan who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” will always need the pair of enclosing commas in such cases: “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

It’s an altogether different thing when we replace a proper noun with a generic noun in such sentence constructions. We will then have two grammatical choices. If our intention is to, say, make “the explorer” specifically refer to “Ferdinand Magellan” and to no other person, then we need to modify it with a restrictive relative clause—one without the enclosing commas, as was done previously: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

On the other hand, if by “the explorer” we mean any explorer at all who had claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown, we would need to modify that generic noun with a nonrestrictive clause or nonlimiting modifier instead: “The explorer, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The enclosing commas indicate that the person referred to isn’t unique; he might not have been Ferdinand Magellan.

Now let’s evaluate the second sentence that I gave in last Saturday’s column as an example of parenthesis by comma: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” Here, the parenthe¬tical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” is what is known as the appositive phrase. It is a statement that serves to explain or identify the noun or pronoun that comes before or after it.

The appositive phrase is an extremely useful grammatical device for giving context and texture to what otherwise might be very bland or uninformative sentences. We will discuss it in detail in the next essay. (January 19, 2008)

NOTE: In the essay above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2009, 03:12:16 PM by Joe Carillo »

Joe Carillo

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Part III - Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #2 on: December 25, 2009, 03:05:00 PM »
Part III
 
We will now discuss the appositive phrase found in the following sentence that I presented for evaluation in the preceding essay: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” The appositive phrase here is, of course, the parenthetical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” It’s an added statement that gives context and texture to this vague, bare-bones sentence: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

On closer scrutiny, we will find that the appositive phrase is actually a simplified form of the nonrestrictive relative clause in this sentence: “Cleopatra, who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” It is, in fact, the relative clause “who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” with both the relative pronoun “who” and the linking verb “was” taken out.

That grammatical streamlining process produces a modifier in noun form—“the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later”—that is in apposition or equivalent to the noun form it modifies—“Cleopatra.” Indeed, appositive phrases are a compact and concise way of describing people, places, and things or of qualifying ideas within the same sentence. They allow us to provide more details about a subject without having to start another sentence—a process that sometimes undesirably slows down the pace of an unfolding exposition or narrative.

The use of appositive phrases, we now will probably recall, is also one of the most efficient ways of combining sentences. It allows a related statement from another sentence to be folded into the sen¬tence that precedes it. The sentence that we are evaluating now, for instance, has combined these two sentences: “Cleopatra greatly in¬fluenced the affairs of the Roman Empire. She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” By making the state¬ment in the second sentence an appo¬sitive in the first, we get a sentence that’s richer in texture and more interest¬ing to read: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

Such constructions also have the added virtue of allowing us to develop the basic statement of a sentence unimpeded. Assume that we have already written this basic statement: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” If we use the appositive phrase “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” to form a new sentence after it, that new sentence would often become a stumbling block to developing the basic statement. Indeed, with a powerful statement like “She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” getting in the way, it won’t be an easy task to go back to the thread of our basic statement and develop it. In contrast, folding that powerful statement into an appositive phrase in the first sentence neatly sidesteps the potential continuity problem while making that first sentence much more readable and interesting.

The appositive phrase we have discussed above is of the non¬restrictive type, which means that it isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence even if it adds important additional information to it. Nonrestrictive appositive phrases are parentheticals that, like non¬restrictive relative clauses, need a pair of enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence.

But some appositive phrases are of the restrictive type and they don’t need those commas. We will take them up in the next essay. (January 26, 2008)

NOTE: In the essay above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2009, 03:12:43 PM by Joe Carillo »

Joe Carillo

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Part IV - Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #3 on: December 25, 2009, 03:10:31 PM »
Part IV

We already know that a parenthesis or parenthetical is basically added information whose distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. So far, however, we have taken up only its first two types, the nonrestrictive relative clause and the nonrestrictive appositive phrase, both of which require enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence. We have also taken up the restrictive relative clause and the restrictive appositive phrase, but we have seen that they aren’t really true parentheticals because they are not expendable—we don’t really have the option to drop them from the sentence.

This time we’ll take up the two other kinds of parentheticals: the parenthesis by dashes, and the parenthesis by parentheses. They differ from the parenthesis by comma in that neither of them can be punctuated properly by a pair of enclosing commas. In their case, though, the use of dashes or parentheses is generally interchangeable and is often a matter of stylistic choice. This choice largely depends on whether the parenthetical is really optional or contextually necessary, perhaps simply an aside; in any case, however, using enclosing commas to set it off is out of the question.

Parenthesis by dashes. This kind of parenthetical normally folds another sentence into a sentence, as in this example: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” What sets off the parenthetical “they said they didn’t know it then” from the main sentence is a pair of double dashes, which indicates a much stronger break in the thought or structure of the sentence than what a pair of enclosing commas can provide.

See what happens when we use commas instead to punctuate that kind of parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill, they said they didn’t know it then, but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” The pauses provided by the two commas are much too brief to indicate the sudden shift from the major developing thought to the subordinate idea; structurally, they also truncate the sentence. 

If the writer so chooses, however, parentheses may also be used for that same parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill (they said they didn’t know it then) but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” When parentheses are used, however, the implication is that the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he or she would when using double dashes instead.

Parenthesis by parentheses. This is the preferred punctuation when the writer wants to convey to the reader that the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to his exposition, as in this example: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.” However, if the writer intends to take up the dealer’s apparently false assurance in some detail later in the exposition, the parenthesis by dashes would be a good foreshadowing device: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan—the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled—busted one of its pistons.”

Parentheticals enclosed by parentheses need not be complete sentences, of course. They can be simple qualifying phrases within or at the tail end of sentences: “Many elective officials (of the dynastic kind, particularly) sometimes forget that they don’t own those positions.” “The disgruntled cashier took the day off (without even filing a leave).”

Even more commonly, parentheses are used to add a fact—maybe a name or number—that’s subordinate or tangential to the rest of the sentence, as in this example: “Recent geologic research (Alvarez, Alvarez et al, 1980) indicates that the dinosaurs went extinct when an asteroid some 10 km in diameter smashed on present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago.” (February 9, 2008)

NOTE: In the essay above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2009, 03:13:11 PM by Joe Carillo »

maxsims

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #4 on: December 25, 2009, 08:56:51 PM »
in English grammar,

Is not the above phrase parenthetical?

Joe Carillo

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2009, 01:25:43 AM »
It would depend on how it correlates with the sentence. The prepositional phrase "in English grammar" couldn't be a parenthetical on a stand-alone basis, but it becomes one in a sentence like, say, "The grade that teacher gave me (in English grammar) was 1.25" or "The grade that teacher gave me--in English grammar, in particular--was 1.25." In contrast, it isn't a parenthetical in a sentence like, say, "In English grammar, I got a grade of 1.25"; it's simply an alternative construction of the sentence "I got a grade of 1.25 in English grammar" where the prepositional phrase "in English grammar" has been placed up front of the sentence for emphasis.     

maxsims

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2009, 08:29:18 AM »
"...but what some of us may not know is that in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, etc..."

I meant in the above example.....    :-[


Joe Carillo

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2009, 09:36:44 AM »
No, I don't think so. As constructed, the phrase "in English grammar" in that sentence is integral to the relative clause. However, if the writer wants it to be parenthetical because he or she doesn't consider it that important to what's being said, he or she could do so in three ways, as follows:

"...but what some of us may not know is that, in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, etc..."

"...but what some of us may not know is that (in English grammar) the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, etc..."

or:

"...but what some of us may not know is that--in English grammar--the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, etc..."

The use of parentheticals is often an indication of the importance being given by the writer to certain details in a statement, and the punctuation used--whether commas, parenthesis in the form of the pair of curved marks, or double dash--is a measure of its optionality to the statement (as far as he or she is concerned).

maxsims

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2009, 03:36:37 PM »
If it's not parenthetical, what is the function of the comma after "grammar"...?

Joe Carillo

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2009, 03:55:51 PM »
Just a good, old pause, maxsims, as I'm sure you will now recall. The comma is best suited for that.

maxsims

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #10 on: December 26, 2009, 04:04:11 PM »
I agree, as I'm sure you will agree that there is a good old pause after "that", too.

maxsims

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #11 on: December 26, 2009, 05:33:15 PM »
"...Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought

We normally use the pair of curved marks known as the parenthesis to indicate textual material that’s optional to our sentence or that’s simply an afterthought. This, for instance, is the role that the parenthesis performs in the following sentence: “Jennifer (who is my cousin by the way) has just won the Most Outstanding Youth Award for 2009.” But the parenthesis is etc...
.."

In the parenthetical statement "who is my cousin by the way", is not the phrase "by the way" (a phrase much over-used in the Philippines) itself parenthetical?   

And is it not superfluous, since the "by the way" aspect of "who is my cousin" is already provided by the parenthesis).

And should there be a comma after "cousin"?

Joe Carillo

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #12 on: December 27, 2009, 08:47:42 AM »
You’re correct that “by the way” is itself parenthetical, but who are we to say that it’s superfluous? If that’s how the speaker wants to say it, particularly if the statement is spoken, why argue with him or her on the chosen phraseology? It’s obvious that the speaker is using the phrase as part of the rhythm of his or her speech, and it has the added virtue of being consistent to—and reflective of—his or her mood or attitude towards the subject of the statement. And remember, maxsims, the pair of curved marks known as parenthesis—and the same is true for the pair of commas and the pair of double-dashes—doesn’t show up or is indicated as such in spoken English; it’s only manifested by the pause, the length of which indicates that the phrase being tucked in is a parenthetical.

Should there be a comma after “cousin”? It’s optional, and I won’t argue with comma-lovers who’d want it tucked in there for good measure. But I would say that it’s unnecessary in this particular case because the expression “by the way” is a very common and familiar idiom that poses no risk of semantic trouble; also, because it comes at the tail end of the statement it modifies, it’s unlikely to cause any grammatical or structural confusion in the sentence. Of course, it’s different when “by the way” is placed ahead of a statement as forethought or pre-modifier, as in “Jennifer (who, by the way, is my cousin) has just won…” As we can see, this time the pair of commas becomes mandatory from a structural standpoint; the commas are needed to set off the phrase from the relative clause “who is my cousin” and provide the needed pause in the process.

One last thing, maxsims: A parenthetical is defined as “an amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence inserted in a passage from which it is usually set off by punctuation.” I have italicized “usually” lest you miss it and still insist on and persist with the notion that a comma is absolutely necessary for a parenthetical’s existence. It just isn’t.

maxsims

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2009, 09:52:18 AM »
That's your definition.   Strunk & White and Fowler would not agree!

Joe Carillo

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Re: Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought
« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2009, 12:08:27 PM »
As to H. W. Fowler, maxsims, I’m afraid you must have misread or only partly read him. Here’s what he says about the parenthesis in The King’s English (boldfacing mine):

Quote
Parenthesis.

In one sense, everything that is adverbial is parenthetic: it can be inserted or removed, that is, without damaging the grammar, though not always without damaging the meaning, of the sentence. But the adverbial parenthesis, when once inserted, forms a part of the sentence; we have sufficiently dealt with the stops it requires in the last section; the use of commas emphasizes its parenthetic character, and is therefore sometimes desirable, sometimes not; no more need be said about it.

Another kind of parenthesis is that whose meaning practically governs the sentence in the middle of which it is nevertheless inserted as an alien element that does not coalesce in grammar with the rest. The type is—"But, you will say, Caesar is not an aristocrat." This kind is important for our purpose because of the muddles often made, chiefly by careless punctuation, between the real parenthesis and words that give the same meaning, but are not, like it, grammatically separable. We shall start with an indisputable example of this muddle:

"Where, do you imagine, she would lay it?"—Meredith.

These commas cannot possibly indicate anything but parenthesis; but, if the comma'd words were really a parenthesis, we ought to have would she instead of she would. The four sentences that now follow are all of one pattern. The bad stopping is probably due to this same confusion between the parenthetic and the non-parenthetic. But it is possible that in each the two commas are independent, the first being one of those that are half rhetorical and half caused by false analogy, which have been mentioned as common after initial And and For; and the second being the comma wrongly used, as we have maintained, before substantival that-clauses.

"Whence, it would appear, that he considers that all deliverances of consciousness are original judgments."—Balfour.

"Hence, he reflected, that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercial undertaking, he might gain a considerable..."—Hutton.

"But, depend upon it, that no Eastern difficulty needs our intervention so seriously as..."—Huxley.

"And yet, it has been often said, that the party issues were hopelessly confused."—L. Stephen.

As to Strunk and White in The Elements of Style, yes, indeed they prescribed that parenthetic expressions should be enclosed between commas, and I’ll also admit that I learned a lot of my basic English grammar from them in my younger years. On the matter of the parenthesis, however, a lot of modern-day linguists have questioned or even derided their judgment as too unreasonably prescriptivist as to verge on being nonsense.

Related to that matter, here’s a posting in Language Log on April 8, 2008 by Heidi Harley under “Prescriptivist Poppycock”:

Quote
Nodding to the giant posts of yesteryear, I return to the Language Log classic of finding howlers in that horrid little book [The Elements of Style].

I hadn't looked at the thing since freshman composition, remembering it vaguely only through the scientific and unbiased reminders provided by Language Log posts. But a talk I attended last Friday referred to a S&W [Strunk and White] rule, purportedly about avoiding ambiguity: "Keep related words together".

I was curious about how Strunk and White would formulate the notion of "related words," so I went to check it out. And, I kid you not, this is the formulation of the rule:

"The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning."

I was afraid someone was playing a joke on me. But no, that's really it!

I was so amazed, of course, because the statement of the rule violates itself. In the sentence, the verb be is the "principal verb." The parenthetical as a rule could be transferred to the beginning. The subject of the sentence is the NP The subject of the sentence and the principal verb. So the rule breaks itself; to be true of itself, it should say, As a rule, the subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.

This amusing little property of this rule has been noted before, particularly in this list of deliberately self-refuting grammatical rules that circulated a while ago (and some of which are indirectly credited to [the late William] Safire). I doubt that S&W intended this one, though. Indeed, in this single section on keeping related words together, the S&W-authored prose (not the examples) consists of eleven sentences. Three of them directly violate the rule, including the rule itself; the other flagrant one is:

"The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related."

Here, the parenthetical so far as possible comes between the subject The writer and the principal verb bring when it would have been perfectly possible to put it at the front of the sentence.

This objection, however, does not usually hold when the order is interrupted only by a relative clause or by an expression in apposition.

(Of course, S&W had firm opinions about  the placement of however — it couldn't, in their view, come at the beginning of the sentence—so perhaps this one isn't a violation within their own crazy little code, though since the however rule is itself insane, I still think this is a violation of the parenthetical placement rule.)

Two others of the eleven sentences violate the spirit of the rule, if not its letter, by interposing parentheticals which would have been fine at the beginning, albeit not directly before the principal verb—in these cases, directly after it:

"The relative pronoun should come, as a rule, immediately after its antecedent."

"Modifiers should come, if possible, next to the word they modify."

So out of eleven sentences about keeping related words together, in which one key tip is to keep any parentheticals which can be sentence-initial in sentence-initial position, five of them counterexemplify the point. That's got to be a record, no?

The prevailing objection to Strunk and White’s sometimes extreme, wrongheaded prescriptivism is summed up by linguistics professor Geoffrey Pullum in “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice,” his scathing review of The Elements of Style in the April 17, 200 issue of The Chronicle Review:

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The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules … It’s sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write “however” or “than me” or “was” or “which,” but can’t tell you why.

So as you can see, maxsims, Strunk & White and H. W. Fowler really agree with the definition I gave for the parenthetical (which happens to be not mine but that of the Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary)*, but not on whether the comma is absolutely necessary to indicate a parenthetical.

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*Now that one's a real parenthetical that needs a pair of curved marks but not your beknighted pair of commas, thank you! ;) ;)

NOTE: The quoted paragraph below is the original closing statement of the posting above. Forum member maxsims found it difficult to understand, as he notes in a posting commenting on it. I found the statement to be indeed problematic, so I have provided a rewrite clarifying it.
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So as you can see, maxsims, Strunk & White and H. W. Fowler really wouldn't agree--not with the definition I gave for the parenthetical, though (which happens to be not mine but that of the Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary)*, but with each other's appreciation of it!
« Last Edit: December 27, 2009, 06:29:30 PM by Joe Carillo »