On Filling a Linguistic Hole

As I've written before, there's an annoying and uncomfortable "hole" in the English language - namely, its lack of a neuter, singular, third-person personal pronoun. We can use "he" and "she" for people and "it" for objects, but there's no universally accepted way to refer to a person whose gender is unknown.

On Ten-Dollar Words

In your written compositions, it is well-founded to refrain from the utilization of immoderately substantial verbiage, lest you come across as needlessly vexatious.

Translation: Don't overuse big words.

On Stating One's Opinion

Among the most common errors I see in beginning writing is misuse and overuse of phrases such as "in my opinion." I mentioned this previously in my piece on avoiding redundancy, but it's such a complex issue that it's worth a closer look. There are good reasons to say that something is your opinion, but most of the time, it actually detracts from your writing.

On a Linguistic Hole

There's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the bottom of the... English language.

Ahem. What I'm referring to is a linguistic “hole” that, while it's been especially contentious in the politically correct atmosphere of the last 40 years or so, has vexed writers for centuries. I'm talking about our language's lack of a neuter, singular third-person personal pronoun.

On Being Concise

I remember being told, though I can't recall by whom, that the mark of a good writer is being concise; that is, using as few words as possible.

Accordingly, I'm ending this post right here.

On the "Because Club"

Back in elementary school (I believe it was second grade), I remember being taught never to start a sentence with the word “and” or “because.” My teacher even created two “clubs,” the And Club and the Because Club, for students who dared to use those words incorrectly.* The message was simple: You don't want to be in either club.

*We were also cautioned not to start a sentence with the word “but,” but there was no But Club. I leave it to the reader to ponder the reasons for this omission.

Now that I work with high school students on a pretty frequent basis, I'm learning that I was far from unique in being taught these things many years ago. In the past year, I've probably had a dozen different people assert that it's not okay to start a sentence with the word “because.” Years after learning how to write much more interesting sentences, they're still trying to stay out of the club.

On Proper Pronoun Usage

A pronoun is just a word that stands in for a noun, which is a person, place or thing. In many cases, pronouns serve to make sentences clearer and more concise by preventing word repetition. Consider the following sentence:

I went to the Empire State Building; the Empire State Building was very tall.

Technically, this sentence is fine, but it's awkward and wordy. Now, consider the following revisions:

I went to the Empire State Building, which was very tall.

I went to the Empire State Building; it was very tall.

Each revision uses a pronoun to stand in for the Empire State Building, making the sentence much more concise without obscuring its meaning. In this case, the Empire State Building is the antecedent, the word or phrase that the pronoun replaces.

Pronouns probably aren't the most difficult words in the English language to understand, but they may be the hardest to use properly in writing. In everyday speech, we use pronouns very casually, which isn't a big deal as long as our meaning is clear. In formal writing, though, we have to be very careful to avoid pronoun usage errors.