RULES OF THE ROAD Grammarly Love Valentine’s Day 2015 Dear Open Roaders, Valentine’s Day is nigh. This edition of Rules of the Road includes feedback from one of you on the most irritating word of 2014, good news about the impact of our language skills on our love lives, lessons in sentence structure from the MTA and a few of our authors, and emotionally driven punctuation from a famous poet. WORD OF THE YEAR: PART TWO In the last installment of Rules of the Road, I asked what you thought should be Word of the Year for 2014. Andrea W. writes: My vote for word of the year is hack, which has come to replace tips, secrets, pieces of information you might find relevant, etc. It’s so annoying. 20 New York City hacks! Thanksgiving turkey hacks! I miss the days when the only thing you could hack was a mainframe. How right you are, AW! With that in mind, here are some tips for getting the most out of this rote, commercialized holiday. GRAMMAR IS FOR LOVERS As a group, we Open Roaders have some pretty serious verbal skills. According to this infographic from proofreading and editing website Kibin.com, that makes us significantly more likely to have a date on Valentine’s Day. DON’T LET THE MTA RUIN YOUR VALENTINE’S DAY or Your Ability to Structure a Grammatical List In the name of grammarly love, let’s take a look at the MTA’s use of language and how it could be improved. “If you believe you have been the victim of a crime, tell a police officer, an MTA employee, or use the station’s customer-­‐assistance intercom.” For New York City subway riders, it’s a familiar refrain. The idea is a sound one, but its phrasing deserves to be reported to the authorities. This sentence is an example of what is known as nonparallel structure, when what we want is parallel structure. From Chicago: “Every element of a parallel series must be a functional match of the others (word, phrase, clause, sentence) and serve the same grammatical function in the sentence (e.g., noun, verb, adjective, adverb). When linked items are not like items, the syntax of the sentence breaks down.” In this MTA announcement, the verb to tell kicks off a list of three elements. The first two work well when taken alone with the rest of the sentence, while the third is nonsensical. If you believe you have been the victim of a crime, tell: • a police officer • an MTA employee • use the station’s customer-­‐assistance intercom This type of mistake is relatively common and unlikely to cause mass confusion—which is probably why the MTA has kept it around all these years—but the sentence structure is fundamentally unbalanced and needs to be corrected if the phrasing is to be considered logical. Luckily, fixing this kind of issue is almost always really easy: If you believe you have been the victim of a crime, tell [a police officer or an MTA employee], or use [the station’s customer assistance intercom]. By adding an or between the first two list elements above, we let the verb to tell correctly introduce them and effectively set the third phrase off with its own verb, to use. In the descriptive copy for Open Road author Gordon Merrick’s Perfect Freedom, we ran up against a sentence whose structure was similarly fractured: He takes his sizable fortune, a beautiful, young French trophy wife, and moves to the undiscovered paradise of St. Tropez. The first two elements after the phrase He takes work, but the third does not. He takes: • his sizable fortune • a beautiful, young French trophy wife • moves to the undiscovered paradise of St. Tropez The copyedited sentence reads as follows: He takes [his sizable fortune and beautiful, young French trophy wife] and moves [to the undiscovered paradise of St. Tropez]. Other Common Examples of Nonparallel Structure Correlative Conjunctions Nonparallel: She went to both the Uffizi and got gelato. Why: The elements following the conjunctions both and and are not functional equals: The first is a noun, while the second is a verb + noun phrase. Parallel: She both went to the Uffizi and got gelato. Why: Now each conjunction is followed by a verb + noun phrase. Nonparallel: I not only read fiction but poetry, too. Why: The elements following the conjunctions not only and but are not functional equals: The first is a verb + noun phrase, while the second is a noun. Parallel: I read not only fiction but poetry, too. Why: Now each conjunction is followed by a noun. Lists in Author Bios Nonparallel: Denton Welch wrote three novels, many short stories, journals, and poems. Why: The object of wrote, which initially appears to be a list, is actually just two elements—but one of them is sneakily complex. The first element is three novels and the second is many short stories, journals, and poems. The clue here is the presence of the adjective many, which modifies all the little subelements in the phrase short stories, journals, and poems, thereby turning them into a syntactic bundle. For this sentence to be logical, the two main elements have to be connected by an and, just as they would be if they were both simple—e.g., Denton Welch wrote plays and advertisements or Denton Welch wrote mysteries and thrillers. Parallel: Denton Welch wrote three novels and many short stories, journals, and poems. Nonparallel: Barbara Lovenheim is a journalist, author, and the founding editor of NYCitywoman.com. Why: The first and last elements in the list are each preceded by an article, while the middle element is not. Parallel: Barbara Lovenheim is a journalist, an author, and the founding editor of NYCitywoman.com. Why: By setting up the sentence so each element has its own article, we’re covered for parallel structure. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY FROM ROBERT FROST (1874–1963) Robert Frost’s gravestone, in Bennington, Massachusetts, includes the epitaph I had a lover’s quarrel with the world, a line from his poem “The Lesson for Today.” This Valentine’s Day, the poet’s sentiment and punctuation deserve a shout-­‐out. The accepted punctuation of the term lovers’ quarrel reflects plural lovers, the idea being that the dispute is between the two people in the couple. Frost’s punctuation, on the other hand, makes lover singular. It’s a bit of a head-­‐scratcher: How can two parties—Robert Frost and the world—get into a fight that we’re told grammatically belongs to only one of them? Was Frost confused? Is it a mistake? Did Robert Frost’s gravestone not get copyedited? The scholar Lawrance Thompson argues in his book Robert Frost that the poet, whose work is well known for its emphasis on individuality, used this line to express “his own sense of simultaneous separateness and integration.” It is entirely possible that Frost’s “incorrect” use of the apostrophe here is meant to convey his feeling of singularity. This all may sound a tad Lonely Hearts Club, but it’s also reminiscent of a moment on the NBC show Parks and Recreation, set in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. In season two, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), explains the concept of Galentine’s Day: Across space, time, media, and gender, Robert Frost and Leslie Knope just might be making oddly similar statements about the complexity of the human experience and our need to exist as individuals, regardless of whatever romantic or worldly liaisons we court. This Valentine’s Day, whether you choose to celebrate with awkward squabbles or brunch with friends—or maybe both!—let’s all feel free to mix up our singular and plural possessives as needed for maximum Valentine’s Day hacking potential. That’s all for now—stay tuned for the next Rules of the Road! Yours’ truly, Hilary