Part 2: Clarity of Thought

36. Can The Subject Do The Verb?

The subject of a sentence must be capable of doing the action implicit in the verb to which it is attached. In formal writing this ability should be simple and clear, without poetic or imaginative leaps of logic. For instance, rivers can "run," "flow," "flood," or even "meander," but they cannot "leap for joy," "flutter," "promenade majestically down the valley," or "grunt." Sound formal style steers away from lyricism. Unfortunately, humans have a tendency to "personify" objects—Disney should be sued—which can lead to confusing imagery. When you are describing the action some thing takes, make sure to evaluate whether that object is easily seen as engaging in that action. If not, find a different action that more simply makes your point. There is a place for creative imagery in this world, but formal writing is not that place.

• Bad Example: “The Kassites drive researchers mad.”

It is perfectly viable to suggest that the study of some little-known historical entity can be frustrating. However, that's not what this phrase says. The Kassites, an ancient Mesopotamian culture for which comparatively little documentary evidence exists, do not take researchers for a wild ride in some ancient, Flintstonian Buick. The author probably means that the lack of documentary evidence frustrates modern researchers and may indeed cause them a certain degree of anxiety, which is all too often part of the research process. In literal terms, however, the Kassites cannot "drive" anyone anywhere, much less to insanity.

• Bad Example: “The temple records found at Lagash show a net reduction in crop yields as a result of salinized soil.”

Temple records, as an inanimate object, cannot show anyone anything. "Reveal" or "document" or "evidence" is better, since these are all actions that "records" can readily do. This common misuse of the verb “to show” ought to be shown the door.

• Bad Example: “The Arabian desert sees little to no rain in the summer months.”

Oh my! I imagine a whole desert of little eyes popping up looking about for rain, something like the disembodied eyes of an Arabian Punxsutawney Phil. If the author means the desert receives little rainfall, or that precipitation is rare in the deserts of the Near East, he should say it that way because that's what the desert can actually do.

37. Was It Then, And Is It Still?

History really happens in two different contexts. Those who write about events in the past live in the modern world. Keeping those time frames clear and distinct is essential in sound formal style.

• Bad Example: “It turns out that the precipitation in Ancient Mesopotamia is devastating to the inhabitants there because it can lead to both severe flooding in the rainy season and severe drought in the dry season.”

If the author is speaking about antiquity, this is a clear error of verb tense (Section 14) because we the readers are not living in ancient Mesopotamia and cannot experience what the Babylonians, for instance, did. But in a modern context, the statement is valid because the amount of rainfall is still a factor in life today in that part of the world. The writer is pointing to a fact that was and still is a truth. When that is the case, what's the best way to describe the situation in formal writing?

Let's look at another example:

• Example: "The Nile was essential to human life in Egypt."

The correctness of this statement depends of the context in which it is made. It is a fact that, as Herodotus says, "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," but whether that should be stated in the present or past tense depends on which time frame the author is referring to: the past or the present. If the focus is on ancient life, the sentence should make that explicitly clear:

• Example: "The Nile was essential to human life in ancient Egypt."

If the author is comparing ancient and modern life, that also needs to be clear:

• Example: The Nile was and still is essential to human life in Egypt."

An equivalent statement which uses only the present-tense ("The Nile is essential to human life in Egypt.") will rarely be needed in formal historical prose, since historians tend to talk about the past. Remember that this rule applies only to facts which "were and still are" valid both then and now, and writers need to make it clear to their reader whether their focus is on the past or the present or both, and employ tenses accordingly.

The take-way here ought to be clear: context matters in formal, historical writing. You need to be clear about certain conditions that either mattered then, matter now, or both—and to whom they mattered is really the core of the question! By following the guidelines above, the context of the paragraph should make this clear.

38. Might This Sound A Bit Pretentious?

Being pretentious is a bad idea for several reasons: it alienates people, it suggests you're smarter than perhaps you actually are, and it invites unfriendly scrutiny. Moreover, it's just irritating, ipso facto.

I. Pretentious Word Choice

• Bad Example: "Personal property such as weapons, kitchen ware and idols limn the civilization which made and employed them."

There will be two types of readers here: those who know what "limn" means and those who don't. The latter will be befuddled and either consult the dictionary, killing any momentum they might have had in absorbing the author's argument, or move on without the benefit of understanding what was said. The former will wonder why the author chose to use so obscure a term when "show," "demonstrate," or "outline" would serve just as well. That group is really the more dangerous foe here in that, when the author then goes on to say "Primary sources are a key source to knowledge of the convictions, habits and religions as well as the authors intentions," where he repeats words (7), does not mark a possessive properly (13) and uses the wrong preposition (6b), those who know what "limn" means and were ruffled by such pretentiousness will pull out sharpened swords and set to hacking.

Closely related to this peccadillo is the demeaning perspective which leads authors to speak about the "peasant" or the "Babylonian" as a collective singular. While that may be the way Marie Antoinette saw things, she was not much of a historian. Condescension toward one's subject is just as odious as pretentiousness is in general. Avoid conveying any sense of your own superiority—which should be obvious from the quality of your writing, not because you impose that attitude on the reader.

II. Casting Generalizations

• Bad Example: “The historian should never ignore the value of geology to his own discipline.”
• Bad Example: “The Mesopotamian farmer preferred the shaduf to carrying water on his gnarled back.”

Both of these examples exhibit the same fault: in casting a generalization about a population that is not supportable by hard fact, you have created a pretentious tone in your writing that suggests you know so much about the subject you are able to explain the patterns of an entire group of people by the general actions of one representative of that group. I might equally say:

• (yet another) Bad Example: “The USU Aggie wears blue on game days, studies hard, and drinks deionized water.”

Clearly this is a stupid assertion. One, it borders on overstatement (section 3), and two, to clearly isn't applicable to every element of the whole subject. What if I'm an Aggie that hates blue, refuses to study, and drinks Mountain Dew? Am I actually not an Aggie, according to this statement? In logic, this error is called the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. In historical writing, it's called being a self-righteous prat. Don't employ generalizations by describing conditions using a single entity as universally representative of the whole.

In sum, pretentious writing forces on the reader some condition or argument, not through the strength of the evidence or rhetoric, but rather through the creation of some arbitrary standard. Yes, you should be forceful in your writing and be bold in your argumentation, but do so through the authority of the information and its organization, and not through subtle linguistic tricks that imply a sense of looking down your nose at the rest of your audience.

39. Is My Metaphor Like A Sultry Summer Day?

Metaphors in writing are like leaves on a tree—they're great for beauty but terrible when mucking up the groundwork. I mean to say that they have a place in prose but less so in formal argumentation. On occasion, metaphor can help clarify your point or add character to your language. But you quickly move beyond the effective use of metaphor and begin to overuse or incorrectly use it. There are words that trigger metaphorical thought but that don't actually introduce a metaphor. Coincidentally, these words are verbs that often accompany nouns that can't possibly do the verb to which they are associated (section 36).
There are times, though, when you intend to personify an object with a verb it can't possibly do. Done intentionally, this is called metaphor. However, when these metaphors are left open to interpretation—what I will call open metaphors—they can actually distract from the point of the argument. Therefore, work to identify words that trigger open metaphors. These words ought to be avoided like the plague.

• Example: “Flooding had a serious impact on Mesopotamian agriculture.”

“Impact” is a metaphorical word in this context. It can be a noun—an event when one thing runs into another—but as an adjective it is less meaningful. What you mean to say is that flooding caused change of some kind in Mesopotamian agriculture, but that isn't want you actually said. Did the flooding in Mesopotamia strike the agriculture like a meteor from space? I don't know because you didn't actually tell me what your metaphor means. You actually didn't say anything because you are relying on the reader to interpret your metaphor instead of explicitly stating your point. It would be more effective to say:

• “Flooding adversely affected agriculture in Mesopotamia”

This says what you meant, and now I have no room to question where you are going with this assertion. And, I don't have to imagine some massive flood running fists into an ancient Mesopotamian farm, or a meteor made up of flood water hurtling towards Mesopotamian agriculture. When it's not up to me as the reader to determine the meaning of your language, I have no choice but to evaluate your argument instead. And that, of course, is what you actually want me to do.

Another metaphorical error borders on personification. This is when you try to ascribe an animate action onto an inanimate object. If the object obviously cannot do the action you are suggesting, you giving it a personality that it otherwise couldn't have. This can be done intentionally, but ought to be done carefully so as not create an open metaphor (a metaphor that doesn't actually have a valid comparison and so is open to interpretation by the reader).

• Example: “The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers hit the Persian Gulf in a wide, swampy delta.”

This is not dissimilar to “impact.” You're describing an action that an inanimate object takes in a way that is not possible. Since metaphor is one thing standing in for another equivalent thing, you must draw an explicit connection of the likeness of the replacement thing to the original. Otherwise, it becomes incredibly easy to misinterpret the analogy you are actually making. Is the river actually punching and kicking the Persian Gulf? If you are intentionally describing the action of the river in these terms, make sure the context is clear in the sentence. Perhaps you might say:

• “The force of the river was like a flurry of blows from a trained ninja.”

But that sounds more like a poetic comparison—and poetry is a more traditional place for the use of metaphor—than a description of fact from which we can draw historical conclusions. What you actually meant to say:

• “The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers end in a wide, swampy delta near the Persian Gulf.”

Not only have you avoided the personification of the subject (see section 36), you are no longer creating an open metaphor that distracts from the point of the argument.

40. Should The Passive Be Avoided?

Grammarians uses the term "voice" to express who in a sentence is doing an action and who is receiving it. In the active voice, a subject acts upon an object. In the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by an agent. While the difference between these voices is simple in principle, in practice it can be very complicated. Let's start with a simple example:

• Example (active voice): "The girl ate bread."

The subject "girl" is acting directly upon the object "bread." This same thought can be expressed in the passive voice:

• Example (passive voice): "The bread was eaten by the girl."

In the first example (active voice), the direct object is "bread" because it's receiving the action of "eating." In the second example (passive voice), "bread" is the subject but still receives the action of the verb because the verb is passive ("was eaten"). To indicate who's doing the action in the passive voice, English uses "by" which shows the person, called the agent, who's doing the action. In the second example, "girl" is the agent. Notice that the active voice says exactly the same thing but is more direct, clear, and forceful. While in some circumstances the passive voice is called for, the active voice works better in formal argumentation the vast majority of the time. Whenever you have the choice, you should use the active voice.

In formal discourse, the passive voice is unacceptable if it is being used to avoid saying who did some thing. There are two instances when this typically happens. The first involves an attempt to avoid first or second person. The second derives from a lack of knowledge or research.

I. Passives with a First- or Second-Person Form Implied

• Example (with passive voice construction): "The ancient shaduf is seen as a tool for raising water."

Seen by whom? One possible answer is "by you," but you can't say "you" in formal discourse. Another is "by me or us," but this is also to be avoided. If it turns out that the passive construction is useless—and they often are!—then simply remove it.

• Example (without passive voice construction): "The ancient shaduf was a tool for raising water."

II. Passives Covering up a Lack of Knowledge or Research

• Example (passive voice covering up a lack of knowledge): "It has been shown that tokens are a precursor of cuneiform writing. "

Again, shown by whom? The absence of the historian's name who has argued convincingly tokens were a precursor of cuneiform suggests the writer of the sentence above either does not know the name or couldn't be bothered to look it up. Since it's important to be specific about facts and authorship in historical writing, you must show you have done the proper research and know whose idea this is:

• Example (active voice showing knowledge): "Denise Schmandt-Besserat has shown that tokens are a precursor of cuneiform writing."

In sum, if you are asked—or can be asked—by whom, then you need to fix your sentence and most often by removing a passive form or making it active.

Technically speaking, the passive voice in English is constructed by combining a form of the verb "to be" with a past participle (usually ending in -ed). This makes clever mnemonic tricks involving zombies unreliable for determining voice. Avoid zombies. Just look for a form of the verb "to be" (is, are, am, was, were, have been, etc.) followed by a verb usually (but not always) ending in -ed: is attacked, are eaten, am bitten, was infected, were contaminated, have been disemboweled, etc.)

Below are several examples of sentences where the same thought is written in each of the two voices. On the left are those which use the passive. To the right are the same thoughts rewritten in the active.

Passive Verb	Active Verb
This can be shown by the evidence.	The evidence shows this.
Gaul was attacked by the Romans.	The Romans attacked Gaul.
This work must be done.	The students must do this work.
The car will need to be packed.	You will need to pack the car.
Vercingetorix was able to withstand Caesar's onslaught until his supply lines were cut off by the Roman reserves.	Vercingetorix was able to withstand Caesar's onslaught until the Roman reserves cut off his supply lines.
While being chased by the police, the thief ran into a building.	While the police chased the thief, he ran into a building.

 

The previous examples illustrate passive constructions that must be reordered to correct. The examples below show active solutions that involve removing the passive contruction entirely.

Being shown as central to understanding ancient languages, the Rosetta Stone is among the most important archeological finds of the 19th century.

The Rosetta Stone, which is central to understanding ancient languages, is among the most important archeological finds of the 19th century.