“Grammar. . . knows how to control even kings.” (Moliere)
What isn’t easily understood is easily written off as magic. Given the difference between language and the jargon that describes how it works, it’s easy to imagine how the word grammar,
whose usage trail is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary of the English
Language, came eventually to refer to spells and “mumbo-jumbo.”
At the beginning of the 14th century, Europe was just waking up after long, boring centuries of darkness, and learning of any sort was hard to come by. In those days the Old French word gramaire, an ancestor of the modern word grammar, referred to learning in general, especially learning written in Latin, which had otherwise died at the hands of the barbarians that destroyed the Roman civilization speaking it. Only children of privileged Europeans attended school, where Latin was taught artificially instead of picked up like the natural language that all humans learn without schooling.
At the beginning of the 14th century, Europe was just waking up after long, boring centuries of darkness, and learning of any sort was hard to come by. In those days the Old French word gramaire, an ancestor of the modern word grammar, referred to learning in general, especially learning written in Latin, which had otherwise died at the hands of the barbarians that destroyed the Roman civilization speaking it. Only children of privileged Europeans attended school, where Latin was taught artificially instead of picked up like the natural language that all humans learn without schooling.
Real grammar is the order a
particular language uses to lay out its information, and that grammar arrives quietly
on board with natural language. Without real grammar to keep words in
order, information cannot be broadcast
by speech or by writing and it cannot be understood by hearing or by reading. Most of us understand and use this real
grammar easily and naturally, even though we may be clueless about
grammatical terms like noun, verb, adjective, adverb.
Consider the
sentence
The mushy snowball melted quickly on the hot
stove.
Even without anyone’s
understanding grammar terminology, the sentence creates an organized head-picture
as the following words cannot:
Stove on quickly
the melted hot snowball mushy the.
The terminology of
grammar is just jargon--a set of specialized technical terms used by people who
study languages. Unfortunately that’s all
grammar means to a lot of people these
days: memorized terms and endless,
artificial exercises intended to show how the terms apply in natural language,
which can get along quite well, thank you, without the jargon.
By the end of the 14th
century, “grammar schools” were cramming
Latin into the heads of privileged children, and the term stuck, so that education itself eventually came to include
not only Latin but also arithmetic and
writing. This idea spread through the
British Empire until in Colonial Massachusetts, every decent-sized town had
a grammar school. Eventually grammar
schools in the United States were so called because they taught English grammar
to kids headed for high school.
To people
who study, as well as use, languages, the word grammar has an even narrower meaning: the rules for building
sentences from individual words. Grammar-savvy
can be handy for talking about foreign languages without being immersed in the
cultures of native speakers. But it
isn’t taught much for its own sake any more.
After all, who cares about rules of word order and punctuation (mere grammar-markers) when, in the present-day world of tweets, a message can be
carried by a minimum number of agreed-upon bits and minimal rules that connect
person to person without a lot of extras?
Truth is,
though, when you understand and exploit the rules of grammar, you have more
power than when you don’t. Grammar confers the ultimate power of mind-control, and it’s not superstitious
magic. Make grammar do your
bidding, and you can get listeners or readers to think what you want them to think,
at least while they are hearing or reading your words. It allows you to control
their attention, and it allows you nuance—subtle shades of intent that would
otherwise be impossible to communicate. In another
sense, ignoring the potential power of grammar is a lot like going around naked. People meet you unprepared for what they see,
and they don’t quite know where to look.
Tweets are kind
of like an undergarment of natural language. Just as sometimes it’s fun to wear, instead of plain whiteys, novelty garments depicting superheroes, so too does the 140-chracter limit offer something novel and entertaining, even spectacular. For example, the tweet character-limit encourages the use of rebuses,
symbols that represent words with the same sounds (4 for “for” and U for
“you,” for example). But even this wink-wink, nudge-nudge code of keyboard
symbols is far removed from natural human speech. The grammar and vocabulary of tweets permit only
the barest of messaging. Shakespeare or
J. K. Rowling would be hard pressed to get much done in 140 characters.
Because information
confers power, it is communicated most efficiently when grammar-savvy speakers
and writers pack otherwise bare and basic messages with meaning. Better yet, grammar allows speakers and writers
to consider not only the states of their own mind-brains but also
those of their listeners and readers. Through minor
adjustments in word order and word-forms, a sentence can communicate a request
for more information (Is it raining?), a statement of fact (It’s raining), a
plea (Let it rain!), or speculation (It would rain), each according to how
its words are put together to communicate with a listener or a reader. No one’s mind-brain gets insulted, and
everyone’s attention gets called to the right place.
A basic, grammatical
power-kit includes four tools that correspond handily to the amount of information
they can supply:
a
word and its variations (like the -s ending meaning "more than one" or the spelling variation that changes goose to geese),
which identify a thought (for example, snowball, snowballs)
a
sentence, which completes a thought (for example, “The mushy snowball melted
quickly on the hot stove.”)
a
paragraph, which expands a thought (for example, a series of sentences telling
the story that led up to the snowball’s melting on the stove)
an
essay or other series of paragraphs, which elaborate more broadly on the
thought (for example, a series of paragraphs about the events and what
they might mean in some bigger story or scheme)
The more complex
the tool, the more detail it can convey.
For example, the word snowball
makes a picture in your head of the thing that it names. The sentence about it supplies the picture with
some action and more detail. A paragraph
about it contains even more detail, and an essay (or other literary form) would
present the snowball’s story in a way that might make it apply to human
experience in general.
To communicate completely, though,
we need more kinds of words--well more than 140 characters--than just those that name things, like snowball and stove. We need words for
actions (like melt plus –ed,
its past-time marker), words that explain how many or what kind (like the, mushy,
and hot), and words that tell when or
how (like quickly). We also need words that show relationships
among the other things in the sentence, like on. We can change the
picture painted by the sentence “The mushy snowball quickly melted under the
hot stove” by changing on to under and thus changing the position of
the snowball with respect to the stove.
But it’s difficult to supply a
definition for on or under.
We can use our hands to try to convey some idea about relative position
or place. These words do not have very
much meaning on their own, but they really can change the picture that the
other words draw in someone else’s head:
The mushy snowball quickly melted
on the hot stove.
The mushy snowball quickly melted
under the hot stove.
We use certain kinds of words to
build more detailed units that allow us to communicate to other people exactly
what we are thinking. The next more
detailed unit is a sentence, a group of words with a certain order that
communicates an action or a condition. By
themselves the phrases “The mushy
snowball,” ”quickly melted,” and “on the hot stove” are not sentences because
in each of them nothing is happening, and no condition is being communicated,
either. A sentence must present somebody
or something doing something or being in some condition or other,
as in “The mushy snowball melted quickly on the hot stove.” The something is the snowball, and the doing
is melting.
Consider
another possibility:
The snowball is
mushy.
Notice that
is doesn’t say much about doing, but
it certainly says something about being--the snowball’s being mushy. So a sentence can relay a complete idea even
if there isn’t action in it. “The
snowball melted ” and “The snowball is mushy” are both sentences because each
of them communicates a complete idea about somebody or something doing or
being.
Now
consider this:
Because the snowball
melted.
The phrase
certainly has somebody or something doing or being, but when you hear it or
read it, you want more information. You
want to know what happened because the snowball melted. You want the rest of the story. That is because your mind-brain is wired to
find an answer to the question “Who did what?”
If that question isn’t answered, your mind-brain wants more
information. That is why “Because the
snowball melted” has to be connected to some other idea.
Of course
it goes against common sense that if an idea, like “The
snowball melted,” is already complete, adding another word, like because,
could make it incomplete, but that is exactly what happens. Notice that if we hook “Because the snowball
melted” onto some complete sentence, like “My gloves got wet,” the mind-brain
is reasonably satisfied:
My gloves got wet because the snowball
melted.
Or we could cast the sentence the other way around:
Because the
snowball melted, my gloves got wet.
(If you have ever been told not to begin a sentence with because, now you can see why. When kids are first learning to write down
their thoughts, they write “My gloves got wet.”
They concentrate on spelling the words and putting a capital letter at
the beginning of the sentence and a period at the end. Then they go back and read what they have
written, to check it out. They think
about it some more and write “Because the snowball melted.” In order to prevent little kids from writing
incomplete sentences, elementary-school teachers sometimes say, “Don’t start a
sentence with because.” It’s perfectly all right to start a sentence
with because as long as you make the
rest of the sentence supply the information your reader’s mind-brain is looking
for.)
That leaves us with two conditions
that a sentence must meet:
1. somebody or something doing or being
and
2. a complete thought.
Now
consider another example:
My gloves got wet
because the snowball melted. Yeah,
right.
“Yeah, right.” begins with a capital letter and ends with a
period, but is it a sentence? Certainly
it seems not to be because it doesn’t have somebody or something doing or being. But it does express a complete thought: the writer disagrees with or doesn’t believe
the information in the first sentence. In
other words, it communicates the state of the mind of the person who spoke or
wrote it. Perhaps the speaker or writer
thinks that “My gloves got wet because the snowball melted” just covers up what
really happened: they were carelessly left out in the rain the day before.
So it is possible to express a complete thought without
writing a complete sentence. Here are
some other examples:
Big
deal.
No
kidding.
Not. (as in
“Winter is always sunny in northern New Hampshire. Not.”)
Right
on.
Yes,
indeed.
Notice that these expressions sound like conversation, and
perhaps you’ve been told not to use them in writing. Much of the time that is good advice, but
once in a while to emphasize a point, you can use these expressions and others like
them to make your writing more lively and more personal. If you wrote only with such expressions
(called non-sentences), though, no one would know what you were talking
about. Even though non-sentences can
express complete thoughts, they need a context, a story, and other sentences,
which are complete, to do the job.
So,
each
sentence has somebody or something doing or being
and
it
expresses a complete thought.
Incomplete
sentences (also called sentence fragments) may have somebody or something doing
or being (as in “Because the snowball melted”), but they don't express complete
thoughts.
Non-sentences
(like “Yeah, right.) express complete thoughts even though they lack somebody
or something doing or being.
Now
consider this example:
The
snowball melted my gloves got wet.
What’s the problem? There
are actually two sentences here, each of which needs to be packaged with a
capital letter and a period in order to be understood:
The
snowball melted. My gloves got wet.
Each of these sentences is short but complete. Sometimes people run sentences like this
together because the sentences by themselves don’t look long enough to be
sentences. They are, though. Each one has somebody or something doing or
being, and each by itself expresses a complete thought. The reader or listener’s mind-brain is
satisfied.
Natural-language
speakers have extensive tool kits for expressing the states of their minds: tone
of voice, pause, emphasis, and volume are a few. Lacking these, writers instead use punctuation
like periods, commas, and semi-colons, to refine and specify the meaning that
could otherwise be communicated by the human voice. These marks help do the job of intonation,
pause, emphasis, and volume.
When writers
sidestep punctuation, they disrespect their readers, who cannot benefit from
the sounds of a human voice, so meaning gets fogged instead of clarified. To be read easily, “The snowball melted my gloves got wet” needs
to supply more information.
Notice that without the period we are tempted to read, “The snowball
melted my gloves. . .” before realizing that there are actually two separate
ideas. At that point we have to take the time to reread in order to understand what is going on.
Consider
this example:
The snowball melted after sitting
for three long months in a muddy puddle on top of the ice in my backyard during
the whole month of April before the warm rain and the hot sun of May.
It certainly goes on and on, and it is probably boring
because of the way it is built, but it is not a run-on sentence. It has somebody or something (the snowball)
doing or being (melted), and it expresses a complete thought. The other information just supplies more
detail about when, where, why, and how the action happened. If the other information were set down to
look like a sentence, it might look like this:
After
sitting for three long months in a muddy puddle on top of the ice in my
backyard during the whole month of April before the warm rain and, finally, the
hot sun of May.
Still, the mind-brain wants more information: Who did what?
We know when, where, why, and how from reading this fragment, but we
still need to know who did what. The
sentence fragment does not answer that question, so it is not a sentence. When the question is answered, the sentence
is complete:
After sitting for three long
months in a muddy puddle on top of the ice in my backyard during the whole
month of April before the warm rain and, finally, the hot sun of May, the
snowball melted.
Now consider
what happens if we put two complete sentences together like this:
The
snowball melted, my gloves got wet.
It is true that we are no longer tempted to read “The
snowball melted my gloves.” But the
problem is that, as written, this sentence says, “The snowball melted my gloves
got wet” is one idea. As we have seen,
that is not the case. Each sentence
contains its own idea. That’s why a
comma can’t do the job. A period, a mark
signaling the end of an idea and, when it is followed by a capital letter, the
beginning of another, is needed.
So:
A fragment
is an incomplete sentence because it doesn’t supply a complete thought.
A run-on sentences supplies two (or
more) complete thoughts mistakenly packaged as one. A period and capital letter must separately package each
complete idea.
Some writers try to avoid run-on
sentences by separating the complete thoughts with commas. But a comma is only a section-marker whose
job is to mark different parts of a complete sentence so that it is easier to read. By itself it can’t splice ideas--that is the job of the period.
A
comma-splice uses a comma where a period is needed. One easy way to fix a comma- splice is to
substitute a period and a capital letter for the comma:
The
snowball melted. My gloves got wet.
These sentences are complete because the way they are
packaged alerts the reader to the relationships among the words. But what would happen if we built all sentences
this way?
The snowball
melted. My gloves got wet. It snowed all
morning. The road was slippery. I had to drive to school. My tires began to
slip toward the ditch. I couldn’t hold
onto the steering wheel. I went flying
into the snow bank. My car had a big
dent in the door. I couldn’t get
out. Somebody else had to call the tow
truck. The damage cost $2000 to
fix. I was late to class.
Too many such sentences sound like dripping water or the
tick-tock of a clock. They don’t flow along smoothly. They sound choppy. They seem to communicate events just by
listing them in the order they happened.
A reader has to guess at the connections and associations among them.
We could make
the story more accurate, easier to read and understand, and even more pleasant
to listen to aloud if we combined some of the sentences so that they explain
the relationships among the ideas in each of the separate sentences. We can’t use commas by themselves, but we can
combine the ideas in different ways to
make the idea relationships clearer and the sentences easier to read and
listen to.
As it turns
out, there are only three basic ways ideas are related to each other.
One is
addition. For example, “The snowball
melted, and my gloves got wet.” In this
sentence the relationship word and
connects the ideas in the two sentences by saying to the reader, “Here’s one
piece of information, and here’s another piece of information. See what sense you can make of them.”
Another
relationship is cause-effect. For
example, “The snowball melted, so my gloves got wet.” In this sentence, the relationship word so connects the two ideas by saying to
the reader, “The reason my gloves got wet is that the snowball melted.”
The third
possible relationship is contrast. For
example, “The snowball melted, but my gloves got wet.” In this sentence, the relationship word but connects the two ideas by saying to
the reader, “I didn’t expect my gloves to get wet when the snowball melted, but
they did.”
On a first reading, this
relationship might seem to make no sense, but consider this scenario:
Looking to buy a
pair of waterproof gloves, you walk into a sporting goods store and say to the
clerk, “I’m looking for a pair of gloves that will stay dry all day while I’m
making snowballs.”
“We have just what
you’re looking for,” says the clerk. “Step
right this way. Even if the snowballs
melt in your hands, these gloves will stay dry all day.”
She invites you to
try on the gloves, and when she sees that they fit, she invites you to test
them by catching a mushy snowball she has made from slush in the parking
lot. She winds up and throws the
slushball, which melts and splatters when it hits your gloves, which you have
really been hoping will stay dry.
Unfortunately, though, they are soaked.
Disappointed,
you say, “The snowball melted, but my gloves got wet.”
In other
words, the relationship word but
shows not only what happened but also that you had expected the gloves to stay
dry despite the slush.
The words and, so,
and but change the relationships (and
the meanings) of the sentences they connect:
The
snowball melted, and my gloves got wet.
The
snowball melted, so my gloves got wet.
The
snowball melted, but my gloves got wet.
Look at how adding a few relationship words can enhance the
story about the automobile accident:
The snowball
melted, so my gloves got wet. It snowed all morning, so the road was slippery. I
had to drive to school, but my tires
began to slip toward the ditch, and I
couldn’t hold onto the steering wheel, so
I went flying into the snow bank. My car
had a big dent in the door, so I
couldn’t get out of the car, and
somebody else had to call the tow truck.
The damage cost $2000 to fix, and
I was late to class.
Notice that
and is the weakest connector because
it is least specific. It simply lays out
another piece of information and leaves it to the reader to decide why the two
sentences have been connected. The story
might begin
The
snowball melted, and my gloves got
wet.
but the reader would have to figure out that the sentences
are packaged next to each other because the melting of the snowball caused the
wet gloves. When we leave this work to
the reader, we trust the reader a little too much to guess what we mean.
So and but, though, are far more specific--they not only supply another
piece of information (cause-effect or contrast), but they also specify that the
information is related by cause-effect or by contrast to the idea right before
it. This means clearer communication and
less work for the reader, who, like us, prefers to do as little as possible to
get the message.
Still, even
though the details of the automobile-accident story are now connected with and, but,
or so, the story doesn’t sound quite
right, and the repetition of the three relationship words doesn’t make it
particularly interesting to listen to.
After all, the mind-brain needs not only information. It needs also something interesting and novel
to pay attention to, or it wanders off somewhere else.
Now that
you have watched the three relationships in action, consider other words that
can express them in different ways so that your reader doesn’t get tired of
reading and, but, and so.
There
are seven words in this group:
and addition
but contrast
or addition (adding choices)
nor addition (adding non-choices)
for cause-effect (as in “My
gloves got wet, for the snowball melted.”)
so cause-effect
yet contrast
(Sometimes you hear people connect ideas with “but yet”
instead of but or yet.
These words mean about the same thing [yet sounds a little more formal], so using them together is
repetitive.)
Regardless
of the relationships they express, all these words behave in the same
way. When they join two complete
possible sentences, they express the relationships between them. They work like this:
[and
but
or
[Complete
possible sentence] , nor [complete possible sentence].
for
so
yet]
For
example,
[The
snowball melted] , [so] [ my gloves got wet].
Now we need to ask another question: If we have two complete ideas, how should the
reader pay attention to them? Are they
equally important? How would we know?
One way is to track what the reader is thinking when he
reads a sentence like “The snowball melted, so my gloves got wet.” Just as in a race, there are two important
places in any sentence--the start and the finish. The start is important because it is the
first thing the reader sees, and it sets him or her up for what’s coming. The finish is important because it’s the last
thing the reader sees before going on to the next sentence. So if we’re trying to decide whether one idea
is more important than the other in this sentence, it might help us to look at
the position of each idea:
The
snowball melted, so my gloves got wet.
That won’t help here, though, because there are only two
ideas, one at the beginning and one at the end.
Another thing that might help is looking to see whether each
idea is a complete possible sentence, which could, with a capital letter and
period, stand by itself. In this case,
each idea could be a complete possible sentence:
The
snowball melted. My gloves got wet.
So if we consider the position of each idea in the sentence,
they are equally important (one idea in each important place in the sentence).
All the words in the and-but-or-nor-for-so-yet
group join complete possible sentences in such a way that the ideas are equally
important. A comma, which is placed
before the relationship word, works with it to mark each idea as a
complete possible sentence:
The snowball melted,
so my gloves got wet.
Now consider this sentence:
My
gloves got wet because the snowball melted.
We have already noticed that “Because the snowball melted”
is a sentence fragment, so it has to be connected to a complete possible
sentence in order to supply all the information a reader wants to know.
Because is like so because it expresses a cause-effect
relationship. But that’s about the only
similarity. Unlike so, it turns the idea it is stuck to into a sentence fragment, an
idea that cannot stand by itself.
Another reason that because is
different from so is that the ideas
in the sentence can be written in either of these orders:
My
gloves got wet because the snowball melted.
or
Because
the snowball melted, my gloves got wet.
Notice that when the fragment part of the sentence comes
first, a comma marks the end of the fragment and warns the reader to look out
for the beginning of the complete part of the sentence. When the fragment comes last, no comma is
needed because the reader has already read the complete part of the sentence
and needs no warning-marker.
So, when two complete
possible sentences are connected with because,
the complete part—the part without the because—is
more important.
Other words behave like because,
and each of them communicates a relationship between the ideas it connects:
addition: when
after
before
while
cause-effect: if
when/whenever
because
unless
after
before
since
contrast : though
although
even
though
Notice that some of these words, which make ideas unequal in
importance, can be used to communicate more than one relationship. The nature of the ideas that are being
joined, though, keeps the reader from getting confused. For example,
When it stops raining, I will be able to
weed my garden.
and
When the phone rang, I was weeding my
garden.
In the first example, when
communicates cause-effect. In the
second, when communicates addition. In each sentence, the idea that could stand
as a complete sentence becomes more important.
If we reverse the order of the ideas, their importance with
respect to each other does not change because each idea is still packaged either
as a complete idea or as a fragment that must be connected to it. When the order of the ideas is reversed, the
punctuation-pattern is different:
I will be able to
weed my garden when it stops raining.
and
I
was weeding my garden when the phone
rang.
Notice that words in the because
group behave differently from those in the and-but-or-nor-for-so-yet
group. They express the same
relationships, but when they do, they make one idea more important than another. They make it possible to set down the ideas
in two different orders. They are also
punctuated differently:
[Because]
[complete possible sentence] ,
[complete possible sentence].
[Because] [the snowball melted] , [my gloves got wet].
(Note that "Because the snowball melted" by itself would now be a sentence fragment.)
or
[Complete
possible sentence] because [complete possible sentence].
[My gloves
got wet] because [the
snowball melted].
(Note
that "Because the snowball melted" by itself would still be a sentence fragment.)
The because group and the and-but-or-nor-for-so-yet
group represent two ways to supply idea-relationships when you are joining
sentences. There is yet one more way to
join sentences that is sometimes useful, especially when you are tempted to
write comma-splices.
One of the reasons people write comma-splices is that they
sense the ideas they are trying to set down are complete, but they also
sense that a close relationship exists between them, as in
The
snowball melted, my gloves got wet.
As we have seen, a comma, which is a section-marker, can’t do the job in this situation
because only a period can shut down one sentence before another one can
begin. But there’s one mark of
punctuation, a hybrid of a comma and a period, that works well in this kind of
situation; it closes down the idea of first sentence but still shows
that the idea of the next sentence is closely related
to it:
The
snowball melted; my gloves got wet.
The semi-colon says to the reader that the ideas it connects
are equally important and closely related in meaning. Using a semi-colon is different
from using and because it means that
the meanings of the connected ideas are closely related. Still, like and, it adds information.
Remember: And is
the weakest connector because it doesn’t specify the nature of the relationship
between ideas--only that there is another idea for the reader to consider. The semi-colon has the same problem. Sometimes the relationship is so obvious, as
in the example above, that it may not need to be expressed. Sometimes, though, you can help your reader by
specifying the nature of the relationship: addition, cause-effect, or
contrast. So we have a group of words
that can be used with semi-colons to do just that. The three most common ones are furthermore, therefore, and however. The sentence above, packaged with a
semi-colon and a companion, connecting word, would look like this:
The
snowball melted; therefore, my gloves got wet.
Therefore
specifies the relationship of cause-effect; however,
the relationship of contrast; and furthermore, that of
addition.
The pattern looks like this:
[Complete possible
sentence] ; [relationship word] , [complete possible sentence].
For example,
[The snowball melted]
; [therefore] , [my gloves got wet].
It is also possible to write these ideas down as two
separate sentences, using a relationship word at the beginning of the second
one:
The
snowball melted. Therefore, my gloves
got wet.
Now that we have some different ways to connect sentences,
the question still remains: Why
bother? We have already said that
sentences are more interesting to read when they are built in different
ways. But why would it matter which word
group is used to join ideas?
In other words, what are the differences among these five
sentences?
1. The snowball melted, so my gloves got wet.
2. Because the snowball melted, my gloves got
wet.
3. My gloves got wet because the snowball
melted.
4. The snowball melted; my gloves got wet.
5. The snowball melted; therefore, my gloves got
wet.
It all has to do with the way you want your listener or reader
to pay attention to the ideas you lay out.
In the first example, both ideas get equal attention. In the second,
the first part alone would be a fragment, and information is being withheld about the
result until the second half. In other
words, the sentence has a bit of suspense in it. In the third example, the reader learns the
most important information right off, and “because the snowball melted” is
tacked on as a bonus. In the fourth
example, the reader learns that there is a close relationship, but he or she
must figure it out from clues given in the sentences. In the fifth example everything is spelled
out.
This might seem like no big deal when you are writing, but
it is. When you write, you control your
reader’s mind-brain, and at least while he or she is reading what you have
written, you are in charge. No matter
what its apparent purpose, all writing seeks basically to persuade--to persuade
the reader to accept, at least while the reading is going on, the ideas that
the writer sets down. You probably don’t
want to over-analyze each sentence you write.
But you do want to make sure that the beginning and ending sentences in
your paragraphs and in your longer pieces control the reader’s mind exactly as you
wish so that your ideas and your intent are communicated clearly and precisely. You also want to make sure that you keep your
reader interested, since like us, he or she probably has other things to do.
Knowing how grammar works, then using it to express complete
ideas clearly and efficiently, is similar to using a code of keyboard symbols to
pack as much information as possible into the 140 characters of a tweet. But it offers infinitely more ways to connect
one mind-brain to another, and it permits the transmission of infinite amounts
of detail, perhaps in ways that have never before been expressed. That is what human communication
of any sort is all about. It is also why
grammar is more than an assortment of jargon-words and memorized rules about
putting words together. Hundred-forty-character tweets use limited
grammars of their own, but they barely get the job done. Using grammar to manipulate your words and
sentences to control your reader’s mind-brain, ultimately convincing him or her
that your ideas are worth remembering--now that’s magic.
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