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Opinionaton
SEPTEMBER 2t, 2012, 9:30 PM
The Trouble
with Intentions
By VERLYN KLINKENBORA
On their own, sentences are implacably honest. They may be long, short, simple,
complex, clear, ambiguous, even incoherent. But they don't try to hide those qualities.
They are what they are and they say what they say. It's as plain as the words on their
faces. The trouble is that most sentences have w tels, a fact that rcaders are well aware
of. That makes it hard to consider sentences entirely on tleir o!vn. Other questions arise.
What's she saying? What did he mean?
To these questions, I'd add another. Does the writer know what that sentence actually
says? The answer is routinely no. A1ler years of teaching qeative \driting, I still find this
amazing. It means that, despite themselves, writers are often engaged in acts of unwitting
self-contadiction.
Imagine how it works. A writer speals the language, knows the vocabulary and tries to
honor the rules of grammar and s,'ntax. Yet he regularly produces sentences of whose
literal meaning he's completely unaware. In its own way, this is fantastic, like setting out
to knit a cardigan, producing an armoire, and wondering why it's so loose in the
shoulders.
Here's an example, written by a student several years ago: "I also had my father's thick
fingers, fingers tiat I often hid underneath thighs." You see tlle problem ofcourse. The
ar-rthor apparently hides his (or her) fingers under anyone's thighs, not just his (or her)
own. This is what the sentence actually says, though not what the !1, ter is hoping it says.
Here's another example: "Fixed-gear bikes are ddden exclusively on these tmcks." This
sentence is almost proud of its perfect ambiguity. It means one of two tlings: "People
ride fixed-gear bikes only on tlese tracks" or "On tiese tmcks people ride only fixed gear
bikes." BotI are statements about exclusivity, but one is about bikes, the other about
tracks. The sentence as written offers no way to choose between them. It would be
tempting to let the contert ma](e it clear if the contert itself wercn't so often ambiguous.
Besides, context isn't for determining the literal meaning of a sentence. It's for helping us
hear overtones and implications, allowing a writer to say more than what a sentence
literally says.
3/28/13 l0:58 AM
The Trouble \ryjth Intenlions In
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Why didnt the w ters catch these mistakes? Probably because they were looking at their
intentions what they meant to say not the words they put on the page. The sentence,
as written, was invisible to them. Readers also fail to catch such mistakes because they'rc
good at guessing what the writer really means. It's not that they're under-reading
skipping past the problem in a sentence. They're nearly always over-reading, alive to tJIe
writer's intention, as if the writer were somehow immanent in the sentence, looking over
the reader's shoulder, expecting the benefit of the doubt. We do this all the time in
convercation. And so the sentence ceases to be a sentence a verbal constNct ofa
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certain length, velocity and rhlthm with, at bottom, an unambiguous literal meaning.
becomes a sign instead that telepatlic communication is about to commence.
It
For the waiter
the maker of sentences -there's a contradiction here. You really are
present, as present as it's possible to be in ink or pixels, in the sentences you make, no
matter how plain they are. (writers who feel they lack a certain style tend to forSet this
and burden the prose with markings oftheir own identity.) Yet it's necessary to write as if
your sentences will be orphaned, because they will be. When called to the stand in the
court of meaninS, your sentences will get no coaching from you. They'll say exactly what
their words say, and if tiat mal(es you look ridiculous or confused, guess what?
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Sentences are always literal, no matter how much some writers abhor the idea ofbeing
Iiteral. In fact, nothing good can begin tp happen in a llriter's education until t}Iat sinks
in. Your opinion of what your sentence means is always overruled by what your sentence
literally says. A good reader may be good at following the leaps and bounds o{ your
thinking but is also, always, reading literally, alive to the misdirection of ambiguous
sentences.
This means you'll need to wdte, and revise, as if your iDtentions were invisible and your
sentences will be doing all the talking, all on their own. This may be the hardest tiing a
\r',dtei has to learn. Looking at a sentence youke made is like looking at yourself in the
shard of a mirror. A part ofyou has to be dreadfully literal-minded (and impervious to
self-flattery) in order to do the work of making good, clear sentences. Seeing what your
sentences acfually say is never easy, but it gets easier with pmctice. There's even a certain
pleasure in discovering the booby traps you've laid for yourself in your prose.
It's helpful to pretend you didn't w te t}Ie sentence, but that's not enough (and
self-deceit of that kind vanishes quicldy). Thc trick is discovering a litcral mindedness in
yourself and developing it until you can read with cunning. Try to practice reading yoru
own sentences the way the reader does
with no advance knowledge of what they say.
Be alert for ambiguities of every kind. Become a connoisseur of ambiguiry. Sentences are
wily and multifarious, secretive, mischievous. l,anguage is inherently playful, eager to
make nonsense and no-sense if it gets out of order. Inexperienced writem tend to trust
that sentences will generally turn out all fight or all right enough. Expe enced writers
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2
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3/28/13 10:58 AM
The Trouble With Intentions In
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every good sentence is
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will from the forces of chaos.
're saying. The senlence you ma-ke won l give
the reader may. And don t assume that the
important one. Its tle only important one.
s nothing to build o11. Even metaphors the
t that's a story for another day.
New Yorknnes Editoial Board qnd the
Settences About Witino ."
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