Grammar questions answered: Restrictive and non-restrictive

I asked for some grammar questions, expecting/wanting some softballs. Ha! Not a chance. But I will throw myself to the wolves and try to answer.

Stacey asked-
Here's my question(s): What is a restrictive clause? What does it mean, really? What makes it restrictive?

I ask this, because I have a note that says if I'm using the word "which" in a restrictive clause, I should replace it with "that." It would be a helpful note if I knew what it meant! Hahaha! :)
 Okay, to get very basic, a clause is an element which has a subject and verb, and it can be "independent" (can be a sentence on its own, like This will be a long and tedious explanation), or dependent, (which can't be a complete sentence on its own, like which will be hard to understand). 
 Dependent clauses can be used in many ways in a sentence, like to establish some time or place condition--
When I was young, we used to have to walk three miles uphill to school.
or
Wherever we stay that night, we should get a suite with a view of the river.
"Restrictive" clauses are special types of  "relative" clauses. (A relative clause – I know, this gets arcane, but you know, you say and write these every day, even if you don't know the terms—is a clause which "relate" one thing to another. Forget that—just know that relative clauses start with those relative pronouns—who, which, that, what— and then have a verb, like Relative pronouns, which include "which and who," are how relative clauses start.) Relative nouns are usually "adjectival", modifying a noun (often but not always the subject of the sentence). So they are usually used as "appositives" and tell more about the noun that precedes them:  Governors, who serve a four-year term, are the chief executives of their states.
 You can see there that the relative clause—the appositive—just tells us more about governors. (Not all appositives are clauses—they can just be phrases, like The lady in the red hat ordered the soy latte. But let's not deal with that now. :)
What's important in that example is that it tells us more about ALL governors- that is, the meaning of the noun governor isn't narrowed by the appositive. ALL governors serve a four-year term.
 That is a NON-restrictive clause. It tells us more information about the noun it modifies, but it doesn't "restrict" the noun.

Relative clauses can be restrictive or non restrictive.  That is, they either restrict or don't restrict the noun they modify.

Let's come up with a RESTRICTIVE appositive/relative clause (so many terms! But "appositive" is syntactical—about the role this plays in this particular sentence—while "relative clause" is a grammatical term… well, never mind J).  
A restrictive clause will "restrict" or narrow the meaning of the noun it modifies, like:
Governors who take bribes should be impeached.
In this case, the relative "who" clause "restricts" the noun to a specific and narrow meaning. There are many governors, but in this case, I'm speaking only of the ones who take bribes. I'm not saying every governor should be impeached, only that special group who take bribes (I'm hoping that's a small percentage of them!). The restrictive clause stuck in there actually "restricts" the noun, see.
Now the noun phrase isn't just the single word "governors," but the narrower term "governors who take bribes."

Let's diagram both those sentences:
Subject (noun phrase)
Predicate (verb phrase)
Governors, who serve a four-year term, are the chief executives of their states.
Governors who take bribes should be impeached.
See the difference? Who are the chief executives of the states? Governors. You can take the appositive clause out and the main clause still means what you want it to mean—
Governors are the chief executives of their states.
But see what happens when you take the appositive out of the second one:
Governors should be impeached.
Even if we don't like politicians, we probably don't mean that all governors should be impeached!

So…
Relative clause (who/which/what/that + verb)
Appositive (a clause or phrase which explains more about a noun)
Restrictive clause (a relative clause which "restricts" the meaning of a noun) Governors who take bribes should be impeached. This is NOT set off with commas before and after because it is necessary to the meaning and actually becomes part of the noun.
Non-restrictive clause (a relative clause which explains more about a noun but doesn't restrict the meaning)- Governors, who serve a four-year term, are the chief executives of their states. These are set off before and after with commas, to show that they are "unnecessary" to the meaning.
--
What about "which and that"?
They are both "relative pronouns" which start relative clauses.
"Which" is used in non-restrictive clauses JUST BECAUSE. (I mean, I don't know why.) That means you use commas before "which"—not because it's "which," but because it's non-restrictive, which uses "which".
"That" means exactly the same thing, but is used with restrictive clauses and no commas.
(With people, btw, no matter what, we use "who." Also, my cat, WHO is named Bandit, reminds me we also use "who" with pets.)

Restrictive clause –  Pedestrian malls that are successful share three important factors. (that is, we're only talking about successful pedestrian malls).

(People= who) Pedestrians who cross against the light are taking a big risk. (Only those who cross against the light are taking a big risk.)

Non-restrictive clause -- Pedestrian malls, which limit car traffic on downtown streets, are popular with businesses because they increase foot traffic. (All pedestrian malls are popular with businesses.)

Pedestrians, who are often walking for their health, are tempted by the bakeries which line Ontario Street.

What do you think? Does that make sense?  Often if you speak the sentence aloud, you can tell if you mean the more narrow subject ("Governors who take bribes"), as you will speak that without the pause that would indicate commas.

Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive always gives me a headache to explain, and anyway, it's been explained better by others:
Restrictive_and_Nonrestrictive
Another site for this
Check these out. :)

Back to sentences

We're both still alive! Just distracted. Anyway, I came across a sentence construction that made me long to blog again. Here it is--

Josie, whose experience with the police department had given her a jaundiced view of City Hall, nodded agreement to her friend Bill's admiration about the mayor.

I know, too complex, too wordy, all that. That always happen when I try to riff on an actual sentence to disguise where I got it. (Sure, the Major Author I'm paraphrasing probably isn't following this blog, but once I discussed a poem I'd read -- fortunately not negatively-- and the poet popped up and commented... so I'm spooked. This internet thing sure ruins the secrecy of sniping.)

But what I want to talk about is how we can use sentence construction to amplify or clarify the meaning. The context on the page is that Josie need Bill's help but hasn't broached the subject yet. But the way the above sentence is constructed, with the "conflict" kind of encapsulated in the relative clause (whose experience). The conflict is the point of the sentence, to show that Josie is going against her own beliefs to agree.

One way I (and many readers) mentally distinguish sentence and sentence parts is "positive and negative," or as I actually think of it, "Plus 1 and minus 1."  Basically, is the message sent by this a yes or a no? For example:
Josie, whose experience with the police department had given her a jaundiced view of city government, 
That's negative, in that she is "jaundiced" (cynical) about this.

About this same thing (City Hall, that is, mayor?), Bill is "positive". And Josie is positive also suddenly:
nodded agreement to her friend Bill's admiration about the mayor.

The reader has to get the idea of the conflict, or she'll say, "Huh?" and go back and read to find out if she missed something ("Did I misunderstand what 'jaundiced' means? I'll go look it up").  Here, Josie's shift from negative to positive (about the same subject) in one sentence would usually indicate the need for a "conflict signal," that lets the reader know that the author knows that this is a conflict, that there's been a shift. (Hang on there-- I'm anticipating your objections, and I'll get to at least one, but this book didn't do what could have made this right. Anyway, I want to make this one point first. :)

Another issue is that the negative (her cynicism) is as important as her action-- the juxtaposition makes them both important. The point is  not that she's cynical or that she nods agreement, surely, but that she's cynical and yet she nods agreement. The juxtaposition can be more evident if one element isn't buried in a relative clause. That is, as you revise sentences, think about what the "weight" of each element is. Generally (there are exceptions, as when you want to trick the reader or be ironic), important things are in the main clause. (Putting important things in minor sentence elements can create subtext-- but "subtext" exists because we have "text" first-- we might have to know how to do things conventionally in order to do the unconventional really well, at least those of us who aren't naturally unconventional. :) (BTW, my husband just reminded me of the single greatest recognition I ever got in my whole life -- except the boys telling me that I was the best mother evuh, and I suspect a lot of other mothers got something similar in their Mother's Day cards-- was that at Blacksburg High School, senior year, I was voted "most non-conformist" in the class. You can tell what a repressed class we were, if I ended up being the wild one.)

By far the most common way to signal a conflict is to use the word "but". "But" usually introduces an independent clause, so I'd merge the relative clause with the subject and make that an independent clause, so we'll end up with two independent clauses of the same "weight," thus syntactically the same importance:

Josie's experience with the police department had given her a jaundiced view of City Hall, but she nodded agreement to her friend Bill's admiration about the mayor.

(Consider the different "feel" if we used "so" as the conjunction-- ironic? Grim?)

Now both parts of the sentence are of equal importance, and the juxtaposition (negative/positive) of both creates the joint sentence experience. It will cause the reader to pose the right question, which isn't "How does the dictionary define 'jaundiced'?" It's "What's her purpose in pretending to agree with him about the mayor?" Getting the reader -- with a single sentence-- to ask the right question helps create that "narrative propulsion" that keeps the reader reading (to find the answer).

Readers can be quite sensitive to nuance, and a sentence that doesn't create the experience you want them to have-- yes, a single sentence-- can throw them out of the fictive world. It's often hard to find those "clunker" sentences, but once you put on your reader hat and read like a reader and find them, they're usually easy to fix.

But... exception! Objections! As I said, the book I paraphrased this from didn't supply the context-- this was in fact the first sentence of a scene. But if there had been some context (like that she needed to stay on Bill's good side or get him to give her an introduction to the mayor) set up in the passage above, or the paragraph above, then the original sentence:
Josie, whose experience with the police department had given her a jaundiced view of City Hall, nodded agreement to her friend Bill's admiration about the mayor.

... would have been a lot more understandable (in the right way). It would have been like Josie Smiling Very Hard-- we would probably have understood quickly that this action of nodding was both against her own inclinations (revealed in the relative clause-- see, relegated to secondary "weight" because it is now less important) and in furtherance of the previously identified or intimated goal. If we had a bit of context, we'd know she's "not herself" because she's playing a part, not because the author screwed up the characterization. :)

Context is all, and we don't have to supply enormous buckets of it. But in the absence of context, our sentences should say what we mean, or rather, say what they need to say to give readers the experience we want them to have this very moment. In this case, it might be "asking the right question;" in another, it might be "understanding the context." 

We are the ones in control, and control of prose is based on the sentence level. Lots of writers are quite intuitive and don't need to second-guess themselves... but the rest of us might need to check to make sure we're creating the experience we want the reader to have-- at that very moment, and in accumulation of moments of the story.

Alicia 

Squinting Modifiers

A couple of weeks ago, in the course of another post, I used the term squinting modifier. This drew several comments, and I thought it made sense to explore this concept a little more thoroughly.

To begin (as we always begin posts about modifiers and sentence structure), let's review the Golden Rule of Modifiers. Say it with me now after the chorus of angels sings its fanfare.

*chorus of angels sings fanfare*

The Golden Rule of Modifiers
Modifiers go next to the words they modify.


Over the years, we've talked pretty extensively about dangling modifiers, which are words or phrases that modify no word in the sentence, such as my perennial favorite:

Relaxing on the patio, the pizza tasted great.

Pizzas might taste great, but they don't relax on patios. Who is relaxing? Presumably the person or people eating the pizza, but there's no noun in that sentence that relates to the pizza eaters.

We've also talked pretty extensively about misplaced modifiers, primarily in the context of the dreaded PPP.

The inmate tried to escape when he saw the doctor, slipping into the nurse's station.

Who slipped into the nurse's station? The doctor or the inmate? Placement suggests it's the doctor, but logic suggests it might have been part of the inmate's escape attempt. Changing the placement clarifies the meaning:

When he saw the doctor, the inmate tried to escape, slipping into the nurse's station.

Still not a great sentence, but now it's clear which character is doing what. All we had to do was move the adverb clause, which contained a noun (doctor) that intruded between the modifier (slipping etc.) and the noun it modified (inmate).

When you're checking your sentences for clarity, try this trick. Isolate the modifying phrase, and then pick the word you mean for it to modify. We used to use the umbrella trick in grammar school. We would circle the modifier and the word it modified, and draw an umbrella arc connecting them, like so:








If another noun is under the umbrella (hello, doctor!), then you've got the potential for confusion. Try moving the phrase or clause with that under-the-umbrella noun out from under the umbrella, and the sentence is instantly clearer.


There's a third strain of this placement issue in which there are two possible modified words bracketing the modifier. In that case, the phrase can lean on either noun and create two totally different meanings:

Mary said at the prom Greg embarrassed her.

What happened at the prom? Did Mary say this, or did Greg embarrass her?

In this example, at the prom is the modifier. If it leans on the preceding clause, then we have two units of thought as so--
Mary said at the prom
Greg embarrassed her.

But if it leans on the following clause, our units of thought are--
Mary said
at the prom Greg embarrassed her.

This placement issue is known as a two-way modifier or a squinting modifier. Fixing it is easy. Figure out which way the phrase leans, and then move it in that direction. So if it leans toward Mary said, move it to the other side of that clause --

At the prom, Mary said Greg embarrassed her.

And if it leans toward Greg embarrassed her, move it to the other side of that clause--

Mary said Greg embarrassed her at the prom.

This is very easy to see when you only have three units in the sentence, as here, where we have two clauses and one modifying phrase. It gets trickier with more elaborate sentences, but only because you have to be more careful about identifying the actual direction and length of the lean. Make sure you isolate the phrases and clauses so that you move the squinter to the right place, and you'll be fine.

Theresa

Introductory clauses COMMA

Here's why introductory elements should usually be set off with a comma:

When I returned home and enrolled in college for the first time I really studied hard.

Question-- what was for the first time? Enrolling in Union College? Then:
When I returned home and enrolled in Union College for the first timeCOMMA I really studied hard.

But what if it's "for the first time I really studied hard"?
Then:
When I returned home and enrolled in Union CollegeCOMMA for the first time I really studied hard.

I know. No matter what, it's not a great sentence. But point is-- it's pretty much incomprehensible without the introductory element distinguished by a closing comma.

The reader needs to know what goes with what. Need that comma!
(Yes, yes, it's paper-grading time again. I need sympathy. And whiskey.)
Alicia

Extremely minor point

This is pretty minor, but my mind flagged it as I read, and I thought it might be an example of the reason it's good to keep sentences as simple as you can, to make that an actual part of revision.

Here's the sentence, from a NYT article on California's water problems (you Californians must feel like a plague of locusts is next)--

...(I)t was Mark Twain who was believed to have said, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over” ....

What's wrong? Well, the awkwardness of that "who was believed" is a clue. It's actually introducing a new "character"-- the unidentified person or persons who believed Twain said that. Notice the passive construction-- well, how this forces a perfectly active subject/verb (Twain said) combo into passivity (Twain... was believed, and who believed is never stated, so passive), and then into some weird past perfect tense, and for what? To indicate that the reporter isn't sure Twain really said that? (I do understand-- I'm sure he never said a lot of the pithy quotes attributed to him.) But then also the past tense there -- was believed? So he's no longer believed?-- starts forcing questions on us (who believed that, do they still believe that), and why? Why construct a sentence that opens up so many irrelevant issues? If you want to use the quote, go ahead, but simplify the sentence so it says ONLY what you want it to say:

Twain said this maybe
Here's what he maybe said

What's the problem? Well, first, "it was Mark Twain" diminishes the sentence's true subject (Mark Twain, the one that did the action of saying) into a predicate nominative (what "it" was), thereby diminishing the importance of the most important word. There are reasons to use "it was" there-- for rhythm, for a longer sentence-- but the tradeoff is wordiness-- and an editor (obviously not the NYTimes editor:) will probably try to cut that and put Mark Twain in the pride of place-- the subject position.

Second, it's that darned relative clause:
... who was believed....

Relative clauses are adjectival usually, modifying a noun-- here Twain (they can be adverbial and modify a verb, but that's less common). Relative clauses start with a relative pronoun (usually who or which). Clauses of any kind take on more importance in the sentence just because they're clauses and have a subject and verb (Subject -- who, verb-- was believed). But that means that relative clauses (which are JUST modifiers, that is, not syntactically that important) often distract from the main clause of the sentence, especially when they break up the subject/verb sequence as here.

The first technique to trim and simplify a sentence is to decrease relative clauses to a modifying word or phrase. Doing that will put the emphasis back on the most important elements (subject and verb-- actor and action), and also get rid of that distracting and complicating clause in the middle of the sentence.

So how would I edit this? Well, the "who was believed" is really meant to say, "Twain is reputed to have said this." So go with an adverb that modifies the verb! After all, it's the verb (said) that you want to call into doubt, not Twain-- Twain did exist, so HE is not alleged. It's his saying this that is alleged. Also if I diminish this from a clause (which needs a verb and so tense) to an adverb, I just move around the issue of tense (is he still believed to have said that, or was it only in the past he was believed) by not presenting it as an issue in the "was".

So:

Mark Twain supposedly (allegedly, reputedly) said, "===."

Or I might make the quote tag a dependent clause, and the quote the main clause, depending on whether I want the emphasis on Twain or the quote:

As Mark Twain allegedly said, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over” ....

To simplify, determine what's important in the sentence, and make that or those the clauses, and avoid making the less important thoughts into clauses. Simple! :)

Alicia

Dependent clauses and commas

Mystery Robin said...

Quick follow up question re: your "because I failed Algebra" example. I thought "because" was always preceeded by a comma, just like 'and' or 'but'.

Is that not a hard and fast rule? Or not a rule at all and I'm just confused?


"And" and "But" are coordinating conjunctions. That is, they (among other roles) connect two independent clauses, and yes, in that case, they are preceded by a comma (or rather, the first independent clause is followed by a comma and the conjunction to the second independent clause). This is called a "compound sentence" because it connects two units of equal grammatical weight (both independent clauses-- can be sentences on their own).

But "because" is a subordinating conjunction, which subordinates or makes a clause subordinate, dependent rather than independent. The dependent clause cannot be a sentence on its own. When you use a dependent clause with an independent clause, this becomes a "complex" sentence-- complex because you are presenting a distinction between the two elements, one being more important (the main/independent clause) than the other.

The "because" (or "although" or "as" or "before" -- there are a couple dozen of these) is called the "subordinating conjunction". The rule is-- when the dependent clause comes first in the sentence, there's a comma after it. But when it comes AFTER the main clause, there's no comma.

I occasionally put a comma in there to separate the independent/main clause from the trailing dependent clause, especially with "because"-- when? I think when it's clearly a conclusion and the comma signifies that, or when it's non-restrictive (not necessary).

But the rule is, dependent clause comma independent clause.... independent clause no-comma dependent clause. Of course, here I go again-- if we know the rule, we can then violate it for a desired effect, as long as we understand the editor might change it back. :)

Let me see if I have a link to a punctuation website.

Since and Because

Here's a little nit that hardly ever gets picked any more. In popular parlance, since and because have become more or less interchangeable. However, they don't actually mean the same thing.

Since implies a temporal relationship between two factors. The item in the dependent since clause (or phrase -- since can be used in either) sets the moment at which the topic of the independent clause became true. It also describes an ongoing situation or event that has been roughly continuous from the moment of the since until the "present" of the main clause.

Since the day we met, I've been able to think of no other man but you.

In other words, something changed, and that change can be traced to the since moment, and that change has been constant from the moment of the since. You wouldn't write,
Because the day we met, I've been able to think of no other man but you.

Because implies a causative link between the independent and dependent clauses. The item in the dependent because clause led to the existence of the item in the independent (main) clause. Get it? Because = cause.

Because the temperature dropped below freezing, all my tomato plants died.

The temperature change led directly to the death of the tomato plants. The death of the tomato plants is a one-time event, not ongoing or evolving.

In the common tongue, people frequently say,
Since the temperature dropped below freezing, all my tomato plants died.

And loads of perfectly respectable, well-educated folks don't shudder at the horror of the botched adverb. I know, I know. Hard to believe. But there you have it. And those of us who know better -- which now includes you fine readers -- have to accept that the language changes over time.

So when is the difference between since and because relevant or irrelevant in your writing? My rule of thumb is to correct it outside the quotation marks. Inside quotation marks, the difference can be ignored unless the character would not ignore it. Lawyers, for example, with their obsessive addiction to causation and the types of links between things, understand the difference between since and because. They're trained in it. Their speech is more likely to reflect that training. So if you have a legal thriller under way, you might search your manuscript on the keyword since and fix it throughout. What other types of characters would preserve this difference?

I'm tempted to go on a mini-rant here about why precision in word choices is so crucial to good writing, but it's Monday morning, and who needs that on a Monday? None of us. So instead, I'll treat myself to a fresh cuppa and skip the rant.

January was bedlam for me this year. So glad it's February. It's lovely to have a moment to commune with the blog. :)

Theresa

Back again...

Well, have a few minutes between papers and manuscripts. All day I've been working on writing something to help students understand what a sentence is and what a fragment is, and everything seems confusing and unhelpful. I mean, just about all the characteristics of a sentence can be replicated by a fragment ("A sentence has a clause, subject/verb"-- well, so does "Because I wanted to"... "A sentence states a complete thought"== Oh, yeah? How about "I'm not?" And lots of fragments are complete thoughts plus a word like "which" that diminishes it syntactically)...

The last straw was an otherwise helpful grammar website which defined clause as "A syntactic element that has both a subject and a predicate." Okay, let's move right past that "syntactic element" thing. "Predicate" was hyperlinked to its own definition. Yeah. "Part of a clause." Clause was, of course, hyperlinked to the original definition. Nothing like circularity. Oh, also, apparently a predicate "says something about the subject." (So does an adjective.)

No wonder students have so much trouble recognizing sentences and fragments. (Well, the major reason is, and here's where I get thrown out of the Teachers of English groups, kids don't grow up diagramming sentences. Weird that it's considered useless, when I took advanced grammar in grad school, and what was the main exercise? Sentence diagramming.)

So I decided to make my own schemata for clauses and sentences. And I'll share it with you. :) I'm trying to keep it simple, and trying not to despair ("There's no way to explain this! And they don't care! And anyway, everyone uses fragments all the time now!") and trying not to use complex terms. Just keep in mind, this is for students who don't understand sentences -- that is, not writers who occasionally choose, for effect or emphasis, to use fragments.

If you have suggestions, let me know. I'm going to post this to a couple of my classes later in the week. What has helped you know what a sentence is? How do you deal with all those existential questions? I mean, one of the definitions was that a sentence "states a proposition". Huh? It's like they're only talking about certain types of sentences.

(This had a box around it in Word, but apparently the lines disappeared into the ether. AND there were pretty colors distinguishing the subject and predicate. Sigh.)
Clauses
A clause is a unit of grammar that has a main subject and a main predicate combination. It is the essential building block of a sentence, expressing something about an object or person (the subject).


The subject is an item in the sentence that either acts:
• Paul hit the ball.
Or is acted upon:
• The ball is hit by Paul.
Or just exists in some state of being:
• Paul is good at hitting the ball.
The subject is usually a noun (thing-name) or pronoun (he/she/it/they/this/that—replacement for noun), or a combination phrase that centers on a noun or pronoun, but includes modifying words or phrases, like:
The dirty old baseball
The old baseball sailing into right field

The predicate is always a verb or verb phrase which identifies the action of the clause's subject:
• Paul hit the ball.
An important group of predicates identifies a state or condition of the subject. The two most common of these "stative predicates" are is and have.
• Paul has a lot of experience playing baseball.

The predicate phrase can have auxiliary verbs like was and could, which express tense or some other aspect of the action:
• Earlier, Paul was hitting the ball over the fence.

It can also have adverbs which modify the action somewhat.
• Paul hit the ball weakly.

Clauses and sentences:
A clause then combines a subject (the actor or acted-upon, usually earlier in the sentence) and the predicate.

A clause can be either independent (subject-predicate):
• Schools should not require the driver's exam.

or dependent (subject-predicate with a diminishment like a dependent conjunction):
Although schools should not require the driver's exam,

Independent clauses can be full sentences on their own, even if they are very short:
• I run.
Dependent clauses, no matter how long, cannot be full sentences on their own.
They must be attached to an independent clause to make a sentence:
• Although schools should not require the driver's exam, students should be encouraged to take the training course.


The best way I've found to learn how sentences work is to diagram sentences. This gives you a graphic and hands-on way to analyze what roles different words and phrases play. Here's a great site with lots of sentence diagramming exercises. Be sure and find the "Enter" button in the middle of the front page to get access to the exercises. Really, this is fun! Trust me!

Sentence element order -- edit instinct analyzed

Sometimes we edit on instinct, just knowing that a sentence would be better with a different order. Here's an example (modified from a real sentence):

Original:
She didn’t look healthy now, though Tasha was normally a fitness nut.

Without much thought, I flipped the order there, and then went back and considered why. Here's my edited version:
Though Tasha was normally a fitness nut, she didn’t look healthy now.

So why did I do that? When I tell you, you'll probably tell me to go back just to doing it by instinct, because puzzling it out takes too long. :)

First, while I think the majority of sentences should be (or maybe that's too strong... maybe "are allowed to be?" "can be?") in the declarative order-- Subject, verb, object-- that sets up a need for the occasional non-simple sentence, just for variety. So whenever a sentence can start with an element other than the subject and verb, I like to try that, just for balance.
Second, when there's a pronoun replacing a noun, especially a name, I like to see the antecedent (the noun) first. "Ante-" means "before," and of course if there's a "replacement," that would suggest that the replacement comes "after." So name first, pronoun second. That can be done either by flipping the clauses, or by just flipping the subjects:
Tasha didn’t look healthy now, though she was normally a fitness nut.
Which option I choose depends on all the other factors that go into sentence order, but it's something to consider.

Third, logic would suggest (not require) that in a sentence like this, where the two elements are the exception and the rule, the rule would go before the exception. You know:
Three strikes means you're out (rule), except when (there are at least three exceptions to this rule, so I won't list them).
Rule, then exception. You don't have to do it that way, but I'd say if you don't do it the logical way, you should be able to articulate a good reason, or don't bother arguing the point. :)

Fourth, the main clause, that is, the independent one, usually (but not always) goes last, because the most important thought is usually (not always) put in the main clause, and the most important thought usually (but not always :) goes last.
What if you think both thoughts are equally important? Well, don't put one in a subordinate (dependent) clause. Almost all subordinating conjunctions (though, since, because) have a corresponding coordinate conjunction (and, or, so, but, then). So try that, transforming the sentence from a complex one (dependent clause + independent clause) to a compound one (independent clause + independent clause), and ensuring that the two clause-thoughts are read with equal weight:
Tasha was normally a fitness nut, but she didn’t look healthy now.

Fifth, and I did warn you, didn't I, that instinct was quicker? As with "rule first, exception second," the logic of our earthly insistence on the centrality of time indicates that, all other things being equal, most human minds are most comfortable with sentences that proceed in a chronological order. The observation here is -- what was true in the past, and what is true now-- so the chrono-logic would be past (normally a fitness nut) and then present (now not healthy). It doesn't HAVE to be that way, and there are going to be instances that the present --> past order works better. But ordinarily, I'll go with time order.

Finally, sentences (and especially paragraph-ending sentences) should, if possible, end on the most emotionally significant note. Tasha doesn't look healthy now... that has emotional resonance. It forces the reader to end with a question (usually a good thing if you want her to keep reading). Is she sick? Is she depressed? It's immediate because of the "now", while the past is interesting but, well, past.

As I said, there are many times when these considerations get discarded because of some other factor. But "other factors" tend to predominate with important sentences, those that begin and end paragraphs, for example, or especially act as a pivot point in a scene, or a conclusion. And the wording of those sentences especially have to be seen in context of the entire passage or scene. Maybe you WANT to focus on the past, not the present, because you decided my hatred of flashbacks is irrelevant and this sentence introduces a flashback (past, that is), so you're really moving from the present to the past. If you feel strongly that a sentence should be structured in the order you structured it, see if you can puzzle out why-- that might actually tell you how to develop the rest of the scene, or revise the passage to set up for this important development.

Journeyman sentences, those that convey some information but are not pivotal, should generally (but of course not always) follow the conventions of structure. Why? Because then the structure itself adds meaning to your sentence. If you remember to end the sentence on the most emotionally resonant phrase or word, then the reader will get that, will get a deeper sense of the emotion there. You don't want to undercut that meaning-amplification by ending on something confusing or unimportant.

Now... it's taken me a half hour to think through and type all this. Keep that in mind when an editor revises a few of your sentences. If she's a good editor (never assume ), she's got reasons for changing the sentence order. However, while revising the sentence might take her 20 seconds, articulating those reasons could take a half hour. If you go through the line-edited copy sentence by sentence, comparing against your original, and demand an explanation for each change, you're going to take up a lot of time the editor doesn't have. (If you must do this, do it on the phone... talking takes less time. But you should pay for the call, if only to keep you mindful of the time-expense therein. :)

And what happens to the next submission of writers who take up ten times more time than the editor gets paid for? I'll leave that to your imagination.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't explain why particular sentences should be structured a certain way. But pick your battles here. If you pinpoint four sentences out of 200 pages for such defense, you'll have a much better chance winning the argument than if every single blasted change has to be debated.

And no good editor would object to a request like, "I see you've taken out a lot of my participial phrases. Could you explain why? I really want to learn how to improve my prose."
Alicia

Bloggus Interruptus

Things have been insanely busy chez nous, which you may have already guessed because of the blog silence. The world blew up on Wednesday, and I've just now caught enough of the falling pieces to start cobbling it back together. Happens sometimes. I'm sure everyone knows what it means to be busy.

I want to respond to some of the comments to the post on dull verbs, but before we do that, I thought I'd post the next Redlines column. This one tackles the same basic idea from a different angle. After we've looked this one over, we'll come back to some ideas and questions about dull verbs.

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Last month, we continued examining subject-verb-object dynamics. This month, we’re going to look at other types of tangled constructions, in particular, sentences that don’t put the strongest verb into the best sentence slot. In other words, we’re going to learn a trick to help you organize sentences for power and impact.

Let’s start with a core idea. As we have already seen, simple sentences contain a main subject, verb, and sometimes an object. But not all sentences are simple -- some are compound, complex, or all dressed up with phrases and clauses. Unfortunately, the more pieces you hang onto the basic subject-verb-object spine, the more likely it is that your sentence will lose focus.

One form of lost focus occurs when you have lots of action words -- verbs of any tense or variation -- competing for attention. Generally, verbs do the heavy lifting in a sentence because they literally tell the reader what is happening, where the action is. But not all verbs are active.

Here’s an example:
He was the kind of man who liked to build model airplanes.

In this case, everything that comes before “who” (the relative pronoun) is the main part of the sentence. Everything that comes after “who” is a subordinate clause. The subject-verb-object slots in the main sentence generally will draw a reader’s attention more than the subordinate idea. This is why we say that ideas of greater importance usually go in the main part of the sentence, and ideas of lesser importance (subordinate ideas, get it?) usually follow the relative pronoun.

The sentence contains three action words: was, liked and build. Of these three, one is very weak (was), one is weak (liked), and one is strong (build).

What’s the difference between a weak and a strong verb? Weak verbs describe states of being, emotional states, preferences, and similar intangibles. Conjugations of the verb “to be” are so weak as to be nearly transparent. The reader’s mind interprets “to be” verbs similar to the equal signs in math equations. “He = the kind of man.” It barely registers, which makes it weak.

Strong verbs, by contrast, are ones that describe an activity or a dynamic state. Strong verbs can be simple enough to include in first grade primers (run, walk) or precise enough to describe distinct shades of activity (waddle, toddle).

In our sample sentence, the weakest verb is the main verb of the main clause. This is a powerful slot in the sentence, and is being filled with a nearly invisible word. So, to maximize impact, remove the weak verb from the strong slot.

Thus,
He was the kind of man who liked to build model airplanes.
becomes
He liked to build model airplanes.

Notice that “who” is nowhere to be found in the second sentence. So the edit completely removes the weak main clause, and lets the formerly subordinate idea claim a more important role. If we wanted, we could take it a step further, by letting the dynamic “build” function as the main verb instead of as an infinitive. Remember, dynamic verbs (build) are stronger than verbs of emotion (liked).

In that case,
He liked to build model airplanes.
becomes
He built model airplanes.

There are shades of meaning between these two sentences that might not warrant the change. For example, perhaps the second sentence would be more appropriate if the man’s job was building model airplanes, and the first sentence would apply more to a hobby. So I present this second-level edit of our original sentence mainly as a way of completing the thought, with the caveat that authorial judgment must come into play.

I want to return now to the word “who.” It’s a danger word, a red flag. Along with its cousins (whom, which, that, whose), “who” signals the possibility of a twisted sentence. Writers are generally aware that “that” is a dangerous word. But how do you untangle sentences loaded with danger words? The process is similar to the one we’ve already described -- identify the verbs, measure their relative strength and weakness, and sort them out accordingly.

Let’s practice on a couple examples.

Past relationship failures were the issue that kept her from trusting Lucas.

You see the weak verb, “were,” in a position of power. The other verb is “kept” and it follows one of our red flag words, “that.” If we move “kept” into the power slot, we get:

Past relationship failures kept her from trusting Lucas.

Let’s try one more:

She’d been in a weird limbo for months, a limbo that made her feel as though her life was going nowhere.

Once again, we have a weak verb as the main verb in the main clause -- been. We have a red flag word -- that. But this time, the writer needed to repeat the object (limbo) in order to append the descriptive clause. Why? Most likely, the original sentence contained a dangling modifier. (Think, “She’d been in a weird limbo for months that made her feel as though her life was going nowhere” -- obviously, the months didn’t make her feel anything, but the limbo did.)

A better fix would be to ditch the weak main verb and avoid dangling by putting the temporal reference right up front and out of the way.

For months, a weird limbo made her feel as though her life was going nowhere.

The sharp-eyed among you will note that "as though" also introduces a clause. It's an adverb clause, not a relative pronoun clause, and we'll leave it be for now.

As with any editorial technique, this is not a one-size-fits-all application. Some sentences will function beautifully with a relative pronoun (who, whom, which, that, whose) and would actually suffer otherwise. I leave you with one of my favorite examples of a good one, the first sentence from “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

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This is the seventh in the Redlines series.
Redlines One (on paragraph logic faults) can be found here.
Redlines Two (on dialogue sequencing) can be found here.
Redlines Three (on using frames within scenes) can be found here.
Redlines Four (on avoiding the need for "sequel") can be found here.
Redlines Five (on description) can be found here.
Redlines Six (on passive voice) can be found here.

Theresa