Yet another misplaced modifier, this one affecting a cast of MILLIONS.

I have an endless supply of these revision-needed sentences, so I'm going to continue to harangue you. :) 

In longer sentences, you will often have several nouns and several verbs, and some of those will have modifying words, phrases, and clauses. Here's one:

Let's not elect high-level government officials who make decisions for millions who have clear ethical issues. 

Question: WHO HAS THE ETHICAL ISSUES?

The officials, presumably. Or maybe it's "the millions"? 

The verbs don't help. Sometimes the "number" (singular or plural) form of a noun can help us figure it out--

If this were:

Let's not elect A high-level government OFFICIAL who MAKES decisions for millions who HAS clear ethical issues. 

Because "a" and "official" and  "makes" and "has" all mean "one person", we can assume that "has clear ethical issues" refers to the "official". 

We can assume... but the writer shouldn't rely on OUR superior understanding of subject-verb agreement to make sense of the sentence. Better would be:

Let's not elect A high-level government OFFICIAL who HAS clear ethical issues who MAKES decisions for millions.

Now if you read that aloud, you would probably mentally edit that to get rid of the second "who" and maybe the first too--

Let's not elect A high-level government OFFICIAL with clear ethical issues to MAKE decisions for millions.

Here we reduce a clause {"who has clear ethical issues" and "who makes decisions" are both relative clauses with a subject --who-- and a verb) to a phrase ("with" starts a prespositional phrase here, and "to make" starts an infinitive phrase). Reducing the, shall we call it "syntactical complexity", of a modifier usually makes the sentence clearer, as it's more obvious what the main subject/verb unit is (Let's not elect). 

So... back to the original sentence. 

Let's not elect high-level government officials who make decisions for millions who have clear ethical issues. 

The quickest fix is moving the "who have" clause to be adjacent to the word it modifies:

Let's not elect high-level government officials who have clear ethical issues 

Then again we are going to have to go with an infinitive (to make) because now those stacked "whos" don't work--

Let's not elect high-level government officials with clear ethical issues to make decisions for millions.

I'm not pretending this is a great sentence. But it's a grammatical sentence that clearly conveys exactly what the author meant.

Another episode of  read and revise like an editor. :) 

Correctly Placing Misplaced Modifiers

 Alas, I constantly edit, even when I'm not being paid for it, the author didn't ask for it, and I can't actually share it. It's just a compulsion that happens as I read, especially news stories that have presumably already been edited. 

And heck, why not share the compulsion here? Maybe someone will learn from it. I do 'revision sessions' sometimes with students, just editing on-screen and explaining as I go, and this misplaced modifier problem is one of the most common and also one of the most easily fixed mistakes.

In a sentence, a "modifier" is a word or phrase or clause which "modifies" or deepens or narrows the meaning of another part of the sentence. The most common modifiers are the one-word adjectives and adverbs which add to the meaning of a noun or verb, like: The girl's outfit proudly proclaimed her Ukrainian heritage.

But often the modifier can be an entire phrase: 

• The play took place in the old Gem Theater. 
• He was waiting for the bus to come. 
• The morning before the party, the dog got sick.

Or the modifier can be an entire clause (with a noun and verb):

• He didn't notice the shocked silence that fell across the room when he wrote his name on the board.
• The more you remember, the more you have to forget.
• --

Some modifiers are "bound"-- that is, they have to be in a particular position, like just before the noun they modify. You know-- The pink dress. (Not --  The dress pink.) These "bound" modifiers are usually single words or short phrases that modify a noun (that is, they are "adjectival," which means "modifies the noun" :). 

Usually, however, modifiers are unbound, especially the phrase and clause ones, and therein lies the problem. An unbound modifier can "legally" be moved around to different parts of the sentence, but what's possible isn't always what you mean. Sometimes being too free-range with modifiers creates the horrific crime of a dangler, where impossible and sometimes painful things happen:

One day she hunted for a moose wearing diamond earrings.

Decisively blocking the knife, her eyes narrowed with purpose.

Ouch.

I have a lot of examples of this kind of mistake, but just for now, let's fix an easy one, adapted from a sentence in a major mag article:

She admitted her enjoyment of the bullying on Facebook last year. 

Many misplaced phrases have to do with time or place-- the "where and when" of the sentence. I see this most often when there are more than one actions in the sentence, as here:

She /admitted /her enjoyment /of the bullying. (Ignore the "on Facebook" and "last year" for a moment so we can focus on the kernel sentence.)

Subject/Verb/direct object/prepositional adjectival phrase.

We usually think of action as being represented by the sentence verb (here, admitted), but actions can also be shown in nouns (participation, bullying). So here there are three actions, all of which took place but perhaps not all at once. 

Actions take place somewhere sometime, and "somewhere sometime" are often important "condition markers" to add to a sentence. (I mean, these words and phrases mark an important condition that changes or specifies something about HOW the action happens.)

But while the position of where/when modifiers might be moveable, the reality isn't: SOMETHING happened last year. SOMETHING happened on Facebook. 

Options:

1. The admission.

She admitted last year...

And/or-

She admitted on Facebook...

2. Her enjoyment.

...  her enjoyment on Facebook...

and/or-

...  her enjoyment last year...

3. The bullying.

...of the bullying on Facebook.

and/or-

...of the bullying last year.

(I know it's not a great sentence because I modified it to protect the guilty. :)

Because the author placed the where/when modifiers at the end of the sentence, right after "bullying", readers will be forced to assume that the bullying took place last year on Facebook. And that might be exactly what happened (although it's not in this case).

But... what if that's not right? What if the bullying took place last year at school, and she enjoyed viewing a video about it last week, and is only admitting it on Facebook?

What happened on Facebook?

What happened last year?

(Some of this info might have been revealed in previous sentences, though not in this case. And still, that's no excuse for imprecision in this sentence. When all it takes is a moment to get it right, make it right. :)

What's a revision which makes those very clear so that the readers won't be confused about what happened when and where?

On Facebook, she admitted her enjoyment of the bullying last year.

or

She admitted on Facebook her enjoyment of the bullying last year.

Sometimes it helps to "bind" a modifier to the modified word so that there's absolutely no question--

She admitted on Facebook her enjoyment of last year's bullying.

==

This is just one sentence and one set of facts, and one point of misplacement. Though I will try, there's no way to identify every possible opportunity for imprecision. 

There are as many options as there are possible permutations of actions and actors and conditions in any sentence. But ONLY ONE IS CORRECT. This isn't about delicate subtext or deliberate ambiguity or debated issues. This is just about placing factual information in the correct place in the sentence. You can get it right as easily as you can get it wrong. But you have to recognize when it's wrong, and then make it right.

Anyhoo, point is: Be sensitive to the meaning you create when you put a modifier somewhere in the sentence. Stop and think about the various interpretations the readers might make of this placement, and whether moving the modifier might make more sense. Time and/or place modifiers are especially tricky.

So if I mean the ADMISSION, not the enjoyment or the bullying, took place on Facebook, I have two easy options (the first being optimal). While we're at it, let's make clear it was the bullying and not the admission that took place last year.

On Facebook, she admitted her enjoyment in the bullying last year.

She admitted on Facebook her enjoyment in last year's bullying.

I have a bunch more examples that I'll post and fix in the future. Usually in order not to shame the writers and editors (who, grumble grumble, should know better), I'll change the words and keep the construction.

This is what passes for giggly gossip in my life. :)

A blast from the past-

The columnist James Kilpatrick used to devote his first column of the year to the many ways you can place and misplace the word "only" as a modifier in a sentence, and used this example to show the difference in meaning:

1. Only John hit Peter in the nose.
2. John hit only Peter in the nose.
3. John hit Peter only in the nose.
4. John only hit Peter in the nose.

(Wouldn't you say "ON the nose"? I would. I'm not sure how deep I would want to hit IN the nose.)

"Almost" and "already" and "just" are other common modifiers that can be moved almost anywhere, but each placement means something different.

Here is a nice British professor who does a great job of showing how to determine what a modifier modifies and how it works in a sentence. 

You can find some good examples of misplaced modifiers at this Guelph University site. 

How to Write a Great Sentence  Joe Moran, The Guardian

Every writer, of school age and older, is in the sentences game. The sentence is our writing commons, the shared ground where all writers walk. A poet writes in sentences, and so does the unsung author who came up with “Items trapped in doors cause delays”. The sentence is the Ur-unit, the core material, the granular element that must be got right or nothing will be right. For James Baldwin, the only goal was “to write a sentence as clean as a bone”.


An Edited Page from Flaubert's manuscript for Madame Bovary

Sequencing action in a sentence with verbing

(I think I made the word "verbing" up.)

One task of revision is to make sure that sentences make sense. There's the semantic sense-- the reader understand easily what you mean. (Harder than it sounds, ain't it?) Then there's the sequence of action. I try to revise sentences to be coherent, that is, if there would be a pause between actions, then I try to put them in different clauses or different sentences.

This isn't a rule or anything, but there's some sense here. If you have a group of actions that take a couple minutes to perform-- getting the groceries out of the car, carrying them up the stairs and into the kitchen, unloading them and putting them away-- well, the reader isn't going to get much sense of the experience if you jam all that into one long sentence that takes two seconds to read. If you group the actions together (carrying upstairs and into kitchen could be a one-sentence group), then you'd have two or three sentences which would take a longer time to read, echoing the longer time it would take to do that sequence of actions. If this long sequence of action isn't important enough for three sentences (and the grocery sequence probably isn't), then consider skipping the earlier actions and use the latter one as a quick narrative bridge, relegated to a dependent element connected to a more meaningful main clause, like:
(The reader will assume she somehow got the groceries into the kitchen.)
Halfway through putting the groceries away, she found the wine underneath the 12-grain bread and sat down to get moodily drunk.

There's an interrupted action there, then a new action coming out of the initial action/interruption. I notice that I've got verbals (a verbal is a form of the verb which won't be a predicate, like "putting" and "to get") which refer to the things that don't happen right then-- the "putting" is interrupted, and she "sits down to get drunk"-- that is, we know she's going to get drunk, but within this 10 seconds or so, she just sits down TO GET drunk.

Is this important? Well, maybe not, but using verbals rather than actual verbs is a subtle way to indicate un-actions-- things that don't quite happen or don't fully happen. Would there be a difference if we stressed the actions that weren't completed in the original? I don't know. Let's see:

She put half the groceries away, then found the wine underneath the 12-grain bread and sat down and got moodily drunk.

In this case, the main clause action is putting half the groceries away (She put) rather than "she found" the wine as it had been in the previous version. Which is more important? For my purposes, what was more important was this almost accidental "finding" of the wine which leads to her quitting what she'd been doing (putting away the groceries) and embarking on a, shall we say, less productive plan.

What happens when the drunk part stops being a intended/prospective thing (to get drunk) and becomes a certain thing (got drunk)? My main problem with that is that getting drunk takes some time, while the earlier part of the sentence could be measured in a minute or so. So we'd have a sequence of actions that might take a minute (stopping the grocery putting away, finding the wine, (presumably opening it-- probably it's a screwtop :), sitting down), and then at the end of the sentence, an action (getting drunk) that would on its own take, well, even if she's very determined, ten minutes.

In contrast, "sat down to get drunk" -- that is, sitting down with the intention to get drunk-- would take only the amount of time it takes to sit down. (Intending, alas, takes no time at all.)

So... no rules here! But as you revise, look at a sentence or sequence of sentences where there is a group of actions. How can you give the reader the experience of this span of time and motion? What actually happens, what almost happens, what might still happen, what was meant to happen but never did? Is there some way to indicate which action falls into what category?
And what is the most important action? Should that be in the main clause?
Do you have too much for one sentence?

I am puzzling right now over a sentence where the man takes several actions in sequence. They're important in aggregate (he's coming forward to confess to a murder), but one isn't that much more important than another. 


Before she could answer, Winstead rose suddenly, pushing back his chair with a clatter, and stepped in front of his wife.   
Right away I see the problem that "she" (who couldn't answer in time) and "his wife" are the same person, so .... ugly....! And heck, why not dialogue it, huh?
"Don't answer that!" Winstead rose suddenly....
Hmm. Suddenly-- to convey that, I think I'll make it the harder-sounding word "abruptly" and put it first so that it's an interruption--
"Don't answer that!" Abruptly Winstead rose....


I have "rose" and "stepped in front" as equal in importance (both are verbs/predicates, which is fine), and pushing the chair back relegated to a participial phrase, so that's okay too, I think. The sequence wouldn't take long physically, so one sentence would be about right. I do notice that the rising and the pushing back are probably actually one motion-- or? Let me act it out. (One moment please. :) Well, you can push the chair back a bit by the act of rising, but you can't really push it very far, and I do mean this to be emphatic. 
Question for me: Look at the "and". Does the pushing back motion go better with the "rose" or better when the stepping in front?


"Don't answer!" Abruptly Winstead rose, pushing back his chair with a clatter, and stepped in front of his wife.

or


"Don't answer!" Abruptly Winstead rose, and pushing back his chair with a clatter, stepped in front of his wife.

I like the feel of the second, but I don't think it's entirely logical as the participle means that he's more or less simultaneously pushing and stepping.

I think I'll get rid of the pushing. :)

"Don't answer!" Abruptly Winstead rose and stepped in front of his wife.

Not much of a sequence of motion, but at least it's physically logical. 

You can see why it takes me so long to edit my books. I fret about this sort of stuff.

What are some motion-sequence sentences of yours? Can you make them more logical and coherent?

Alicia

Coolkayer commented:

Alicia, perhaps you've already done this, but please consider a post on capitalization after a colon. Every time I think I've got it--if the post-colon portion of the sentence is a full sentence unto itself, capitalize--then I see someone not cap a full sentence, and once again, I'm sunk. It's better than he thought: He can run all day now. Or It's better than he thought: he can run all day now. (This example confuses me to no end as it might be a semicolon or an em-dash instead of a colon. Ugh!) Thanks! on Sentences: Why a clause? Why a comma? Rules bend for meaning construction

Good question! I think part of the problem is that like so much else, the colon does double duty. It's used to join an introduction with an explanation or definition:

(Explanation... "why")

You should know why I left the party: My former business partner, the one who embezzled, was holding court by the pool.

(Definition "what")

First, understand what sociopathy is: a personality disorder that causes the person to engage in antisocial behavior due to a lack of an awareness of morality.

But the colon can also signal that what follows will be a list:

(list of three or more)

My cousin has failed at marriage three times: with Mike the love-maker, with Joe the taker, and with Pete the faker.

The list can be bulleted or numbered also:

My completed legal coursework includes: 

• ·         Legal Research and Writing
• ·         Advanced Legal Research
• ·         Legal Ethics and Law Office Practice
• ·         Business Law  
• ·         Tort Law
• ·         Practice and Procedure in Litigation

Now the rule about capitalizing after a colon is conventionally that if what follows is a complete sentence, you capitalize the first letter after the colon. Why? Because the colon is sort of a super-powered period (end stop) then. It's separating two sentences:

You should know why I left the party.

My former business partner, the one who embezzled, was holding court by the pool.

But here we don't want to just be making two different sentences. We're connecting them to say that they go together, that (in this case), sentence B explains what we mean in sentence A:

You should know why I left the party: My former business partner, the one who embezzled, was holding court by the pool.

The capital letter at the start of the second sentence acknowledges that it's a sentence, while the colon acknowledges that the two sentences are meant to be read together.

When the second part after the colon isn't a full sentence, that capital letter would be distracting (indicating a full sentence when it's not), so we leave that lower-case, as with the definition sentence.

Bulleted and numbered lists, however, sometimes have capped first letters... for each item in the list. (No matter what you choose, the choice should be applied consistently for every item on the list.) This isn't really required, but often looks better. In the case above with the course list, those are all titles of courses, and so would probably be capitalized anyway. 

With your sentence, 

It's better than he thought: he can run all day now. 

I think the problem is "it's" as the subject. It's not informative enough to set up the "explanation," which is "He can run all day now."

That is, yes, the "He" should be capped after the colon, because what follows is the explanation (what's not as bad as he thought) and it's a full sentence. However, because "it's" is so uninformative, you're not really setting up the question in that first clause to be answered after the colon. Try this:

His condition is better than he thought: He can run all day now. 

or

His recovery has been better than he thought: He can run all day now. 

or

His leg is better than he thought: He can run all day now. 

or

His stamina is better than he thought: He can run all day now. 

So you were right-- colon is good, cap letter is good. However, your mind was telling you that something was missing or needed improvement... and that's the subject of the sentence. The first sentence or clause before a colon sets up what is to come, and so should probably be clearly informative.

What do you think? It's (as much as I use "it's" myself, as you can see!) always a good idea to check sentences with "it" and "this" and "that" as subject and see if a more precise term will sound better. The fact that I could come up with four plausible nouns there indicates that you might want to be more specific in what "it" is. :)

Good question! Punctuation has secret depths, huh?

Alicia

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 

Who is what? Confusing sentence alert

I think there's a term for this-- there's a term for everything-- something about "squinting" because it makes you "squint" and look back to figure it out. Anyway, confusing sentence in a news article (names changed to avoid getting all politicky):

He is a friend of John Doe, the son of spiritual leader Don Doe, who was killed Friday.

Who was killed? I think John Doe, but maybe it's his dad. I can't immediately anyway figure out a way to make that clear. Can you?
Appositives are interruptives, and presumably you can just withhold that, and have:
He is a friend of John Doe,  who was killed Friday.
So I'd probably go with two sentences--
He is a friend of John Doe, who was killed Friday. John Doe was the son of ...

or 
maybe getting rid of the comma ---

He is a friend of John Doe, the son of spiritual leader Don Doe who was killed Friday.

would make it clearly Don who was killed, so having the comma makes it John who was killed?



Well, I don't know. Don't put three people into a sentence as if they're all equally important, I guess. What's important? The friendship? The killing? The father-son relationship?

Sometimes I think the "need for a lede" misdirects journalistic writers. Everything doesn't actually have to be explained all in one sentence. That's why we have paragraphs. 

Alicia

It's a matter of emphasis.

 The word you end a paragraph on is the POWER word, and it'll pay off to find the type of word that affects readers of your type of book.

Not great example: Readers of mysteries are interested, natch, in mystery and puzzles and thought and deception. So instead of:
He was lying to her again.
What's the power word for mystery readers? Not "again." Not "her".
Lie. Deception.
He was doing it again. Telling her another lie.
===
Actually, I might try to make that last a bit longer so that the power word arrives on some momentum. Maybe:
He was doing it again. Once again, he was telling her a lie.
The emphasis is always going to be at the end, isn't it? The final thought.
I probably wouldn't do that with every paragraph. But at the end of a scene?

What would you say are the things that would interest readers of your type of book? What words might be associated with that (just samples)?
Alicia

More than ambiguity

More picky stuff.
A student wrote about an exercise sentence:
"Many office managers value high achievers more than risk takers.” I thought that this sentence should be left unchanged, but in the back of the book it was changed to “Many officers managers value high achievers over risk takers.” This correction was helpful for me. It made me look over the initial sentence multiple times to see what was wrong with it. Finally, I discovered the lack of clarity in the “more than” statement. Do office managers value high achievers more than risk takers value high achievers? Or do officer managers value high achievers more than they value risk takers? 

Good questions, and you can see how comparisons so often lead to ambiguity! Generally I change "over" to "more than" ("over" being a word of placement, not comparison). But in this case, you can pinpoint the problem, as "more than" makes who values and who is valued ambiguous. Another way to fix it in an edit would be to add something to "risk takers" to make its function clear-- is it a second subject (that is, doing the valuing) or an object (being valued)?
Let's see:
Risk takers as a second subject-- add a second predicate/verb (do-- that is "more than risk takers value high achievers").
Many office managers value high achievers more than risk takers do.
Or, as is more likely the meaning, risk takers are another object-- being valued.
Many office managers value high achievers more than they value risk takers.

But "they" (referring to managers) might be ambiguous itself! You can see what changing the connector word there to "over" is easier. :)
 
Alicia

Mixed emotions

Sometimes (often!) emotion can be mixed-- we hate what we love, we crave what will kill us, etc. I would suggest that we might want to generally stick to more pure emotion or all our characters will end up like Hamlet ("On the other hand...."), but at some especially intense moments, we might want to present the complexity of our characters' emotions. (This might be particularly dramatic in the Dark Moment, when the motivations, emotions, and conflicts collide.)

Here's a lovely example of mixed emotion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHI2uNHrvQ&list=FLjdoMGtEQY32cvxAASkQ02w&index=8

I don't really have any wisdom, but perhaps you can find some good examples in your favorite emotion books of powerfully mixed emotion. All I can assess is that in these intense, complex moments, you might try juxtaposing the two emotions in the same sentence to show the conflict and overlap.

From that Poison and Wine song, and notice that the conjunction isn't "but" but "and"-- so the juxtaposition shows the conflict, but the "and" indicates the reality that both are existing in the same person and the same moment:

I don't love you, and I always will.

Syntax (sentence construction) is the perfect way to illustrate complexity-- everything in a sentence belongs together, so any contradiction will be heightened.

How about a short passage of mixed emotion done well? Here's one I like which shows the complexity of the adult child's resentment of the parents:

The contents of the boxes (plates and bowls, cutlery, serving dishes, pans and pots, a few extras that David insisted on, including a set of bowls for the children with famous sports figures on them—they’re sports fiends, the grandchildren) have been purchased so that Noelle, Amram, and their four boys can eat in their house. Noelle won’t eat off nonkosher dishes, even if those dishes belong to her parents. Especially, Marilyn sometimes thinks, if those dishes belong to her parents.

The World Without You by Joshua Henkin

The complexity is shown in the juxtaposition of those last two lines, and the opposition/pairing of "even if/especially if". The similar order of those two last elements highlight the changes (even if to especially if). 

Other examples? What works to show the layering, the mixing, the conflict?

Alicia

More on restrictive clauses and commas

Just copying and pasting this from that old style guide I wrote. It might be useful to see some more examples, so here they are--

A nonessential (or nonrestrictive) subordinate clause is one which is not necessary to the meaning of the sentence but merely adds an additional idea. These clauses take commas.

If the essential meaning of the sentence changes, then the clause does not take commas. (Essential phrases and clauses do not take commas.)

Test by removing the clause to see if the meaning of the sentence changes.

Example: Jane Smith is the only cheerleader who didn’t get pregnant her senior year.

If you remove the clause, you get:

Jane Smith is the only cheerleader.

The meaning of the sentence is not the same. Therefore, the clause is essential and does not take commas.

Compare to: Jane Smith, who was the only cheerleader not to get pregnant her senior year, accepted a scholarship at Harvard.

If you remove the clause, you get:

Jane Smith accepted a scholarship at Harvard.

The meaning is the same. The extra clause merely adds new information. The clause is therefore nonessential and requires commas.

The same test and rules applies to essential and nonessential participial phrases.

Another example:

NONESSENTIAL: My sister, who works for the bank, drives a company car. (I have only one sister, and she happens to work for the bank.)

ESSENTIAL: My sister who works for the bank drives a company car. (I have more than one sister, and I am specifically referring to the one who works for the bank.)

Theresa

Restrictive clauses and commas

We were asked about this. It's really hard to explain and I never do it well-- ask my students. Basically, it's about whether a noun is "restricted" by the modifying clause that follows.

To start, a modifier is a word or phrase or clause which tells us more about a noun or verb. (The RED dress... he said VICIOUSLY). Those that modify a noun are called "adjectival".

A clause is a sentence element that includes a noun or pronoun and its verb. The most common adjectival clause (modifying a noun) is the relative clause, which usually, not always, starts with a "wh" pronoun, particularly who and which.

So:
The filmmaker Otto Filbenstein, who died in 1999, directed the remake of the French silent film C'est La Vie.
 The writers who went to Hollywood after the war often achieved financial success beyond their wildest dreams.

See the difference there? The first has commas around the modifying clause, and the second doesn't.

The first is "non-restrictive" because it is just additional information about the noun. It doesn't "restrict" the noun to a smaller group. You could take that "who" clause out and you'd still have the main point-- that Otto remade that French film.

The second is "restrictive." That is, this refers only to those writers who went to Hollywood after the war. The noun isn't really just "writers," but "writers who went to Hollywood after the war". It "restricts" the noun to this smaller group. You can't take out the "who" clause in this one, because it's necessary to say who achieved financial success. (The writers often achieved financial success.... It's a legitimate sentence, but it isn't what you mean-- all writers don't often achieve this success--  you're talking about only the ones who went to Hollywood before the war.)

(Everyone should learn to diagram sentences, because it's much clearer in a diagram that "The writers who went to Hollywood after the war" is the noun phrase.)

Point is, Non-Restrictive= comma before and after, because it's 'unnecessary information," useful, perhaps, interesting perhaps, but inessential. You can pull it out and the sentence still means what you want it to mean.

Restrictive= no commas, because the clause actually is part of the noun.
I'll give some examples, but you all supply some too, and that'll help!

My brother Phil, who is two years older, ran for Senate and won.  (NON, because his age is just additional information.)

Governors elected in the past two years often faced serious budgetary issues their first year in office. (RESTRICTIVE, because this refers only to those governors elected in the past two years. -- There's no "who" there, though it could be there--- Governors who were elected...)

N: Part-time students, who often have outside jobs, need to learn time management skills.
R: Students who haven't attended class the first week will be automatically dropped.
 
N.: The snow, which will be so grimy in a few days, is lovely tonight.
R: Coaches who choose to go for it rather than punt show trust in their offense.

N: A first-class upgrade, which allows the passenger more legroom, takes 60,000 points.
R: Bronco fans who move out of Denver can keep in touch through this Facebook page.

How about you all supplying some examples?
Alicia

That Again

Okay, this is where "that" things get a little more complicated. We're going to talk about culling "that" when used as a conjunction, but before we do that, we have to talk about conjunctions.

A conjunction is a word used to conjoin (get it? conjoin - conjunction) pieces of a sentence. And we know that the specific conjunction used usually indicates something about the nature of that conjoining. That is, and creates unity, but creates an exception, and so on. Usually, we think of a limited list of words when we think of conjunctions (FANBOYS = For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So), but sometimes that can be used as a conjunction to join two independent clauses.

He promised that he would be back in an hour.
She dreamed all night that he held her while she slept.

If you look at the parts on either side of that, you see complete clauses. And normally, if you drop a conjunction from between two independent clauses, you get a run-on sentence.

He promised he would be back in an hour.
She dreamed all night he held her while she slept.

In this case, though, the first one doesn't read like a run-on. The second one does, and it's awkward to my eyes, but the first one is just fine. So what is the difference? Because if you understand this key difference, you'll understand how to drop that from this kind of construction -- and when to leave it in place.

If you look closely at the first clause of the first sentence, He promised, and think about what it resembles, you might hit on the right answer. It reads like a simple two-word tag.

He said, "I will be back in an hour."

With that sentence, our mind absorbs the dialogue tag (He said) and the dialogue with no trouble at all. It would be the same with a thought tag.

He thought he would be back in an hour.

In this case, He thought is the tag. Notice the ellipsis? "That" has been dropped from this sentence, same as in our first example sentence, and it's perfectly readable. So if you have a clause that's functioning like a tag, you can safely drop it (in most cases) without damaging the meaning or grace of your prose. This is one elliptical sentence form that readers will absorb seamlessly.


Now let's revisit the sentence that read like a run-on when that was dropped.

She dreamed all night that he held her while she slept.

I chose this example to illustrate a point about tags. You might think that "dreamed" here is a thought tag, but it's not. It's an active verb. You know how we sometimes joke about active verbs used as dialogue tags with disastrous results?

She snorted, "Guess who called today." 

What would it sound like to snort those words? Maybe this is the way a cartoon pig speaks? Or maybe it's completely impossible to snort words. This is an active verb, not a speech tag, and using it as a speech tag throws off the sentence.

Ditto with using this kind of verb as a thought tag, and heaven spare us from writers who think adding "silently" cures the problem.

She silently snorted, guess who called today.

Yeah, that's laughably bad. Our original example sentence isn't this blatantly awful, but it allows me to make this important point: When you're debating whether to cull "that" from a sentence that looks like it might describe thoughts (dreams could be described as thoughts, right?), you still have to watch out for this active verb issue. The less the clause resembles a pure thought or dialogue tag, the less chance you can get away with cutting the conjunction that.

There is one final detail to discuss. In the dream example, we have words intervening between the two clauses.

She dreamed all night that he held her while she slept.

Intervening  words can also contribute to awkwardness if "that" is dropped. If we moved those words, we get something marginally better with the dropped conjunction.

All night she dreamed he held her while she slept.

It's not great, but it makes it a little easier for a reader to interpret that clause "she dreamed" like a tag. It makes the ellipsis a bit easier to read. Even though it still has a small degree of awkwardness, I might leave this alone in a manuscript, depending on the clarity and grace of the context.

I think that takes care of the "that" as a conjunction. Next up, we'll talk about "that" as a relative pronoun and when we can cut it.

Theresa

Double doubt in a triple negative

Here's another double negative sentence that could be "yes" or "no"-- why leave the reader in doubt?

So who among you doubts that football isn’t the absolute xenith of sports evolution?

The answer is supposed to be "yes!" You know, yes, we agree football rules. That's what the rest of the article develops. But--

Who among you? indicates that few among you-- so no?

Doubts-- indicates no.

Isn't -- again, no.
And putting it as a question is that false collegiality that makes my teeth hurt. 

I'm no mathematician, but I think three negative numbers multiply to a negative number:
-2 X -2 X -2 = -8, right?

Anyway, let us restate that in some way that is clear if not as clever:

Surely you realize that football is the absolute xenith of sports evolution.

Or....?

You can't doubt this: football is the absolute xenith of sports evolution.

Or?  How would you revise that so that the meaning is clear and accurate?

Alicia 

Multiple adjectives

Help! What's your suggestion here?


The research topic has to allow you to find academic, scholarly, and professional source.

Okay, what I mean is-- academic sources. Scholarly sources. Professional sources. 

I don't mean every source has to be all of those, but rather each source has to be one of those. 

How would you make it clear?

Alicia