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  The art of conclusion is as old as rhetoric, but always amenable to new twists. Many journalists have moved away from the traditional “inverted pyramid” of news writing, in which the most cuttable material appears at the end of a piece (in case it runs long). The New Journalism, with its personal, featurish approach to reporting, encouraged artful closings that editors were expected to spare. Endings now range from the literary to the pontifical, while flip closings à la Time magazine find a thousand imitators. (A Time original: “Ken and Ric Burns have managed to sing America. If only they wouldn’t sing it to sleep.”)

  Better such flippancy, however, than the soporific endings favored in corporate and professional literature. In one recent article, the author could have pulled at least two living, breathing endings from the text’s middle mass, but instead concluded with this: “Vision, creativity, and initiative are the main ingredients of a successful partnership, leading professionals along innovative paths to collective development.” Can you stand the excitement? No resonance, no concretion, no twist. The writer seems to have followed the classic “tell-’em” formula popular among luncheon speakers: “Tell ’em what you’re gonna say, then say it, then tell ’em what you just said.” The formula encourages summation endings, often the most abstracted and least interesting type. In writing, the more creative (if demanding) formula would be: “Promise to stimulate ’em, stimulate ’em, and leave ’em stimulated.” Not that we want to overstimulate a bunch of ’ems wolfing their lunch; but for our readers, the best digestif might be a concluding poke in the labonza.

  THE HEN THAT LAYS THE GOLDEN ENDINGS

  A writer can arrive at the closing point of a story with all the space and commitment necessary for a brilliant ending, but feeling like a sucked-out egg when it comes to ideas. Sometimes the quickest remedy is to reach into the basket of conventional closings, choosing one of several models. Because such models are patterned on familiar usages, they can easily steer one toward cliché; but they can also inspire imaginative and even unconventional variations. It’s all in the execution, as they say.

  Writers’ guides often treat types of endings, but tend to quote long and tedious passages to illustrate them in context. Here, in the interest of brevity, I’ve composed eight contemporary endings to an already well-known business story—that of a young entrepreneur named Jack who trades the family cow for a few magic beans, climbs a beanstalk, and winds up a billionaire.

  SOME CONVENTIONAL MODELS FOR ENDINGS

  Closed circle, or “bookend.” A model in which the ending echoes or completes the opening: Yes, “once upon a time there was a poor widow with an only son named Jack.” Now it’s poor Jack who faces time—for theft and tax fraud—in a kingdom where beans don’t count.

  Judgment. In this model, used mainly in opinion pieces, an explicit closing pronouncement should add something—if only in style—to judgments made earlier in the text: Jack’s wealth was dirty from the start, his fowl ill-gotten; but the cry of ‘foul!’ was nowhere to be heard.”

  Implication. Implicit judgments characterize such endings. Often they contain rhetorical questions: True, the giant made some bad choices. He ate Englishmen. He abused his wife. But Jack made choices, too. Should he not have to live with them?

  Legacy. These closings offer advice to the reader: Jack had it all: golden eggs, bags of treasure, talking harp. But he forgot one thing: The higher you climb up a beanstalk, the more the world sees your worst end. Maybe some of us should just stay grounded.

  Anecdote or vignette. The little closing stories used in this model are on-message or take an ironic twist: Recently I ran across the very peddler who traded the magic beans to Jack. Now struggling in the commodities market, he bears rueful memories of the big one that got away. “And here’s the worst part,” he laments. “That cow was a lemon!”

  Call to action. Such endings often work better in a sidebar than in the main text of a piece: With his derring-do, Jack has given untold pleasure to generations of story-lovers. Today he asks only one thing: Help in achieving justice. Contributions to the Beanstalk Legal Defense Fund may be sent to . . .

  Here, one provides telling details that have been (reasonably) withheld. An author comment may be added: As it turns Revelation. out, Jack’s mother was anything but poor; tax records reveal vacation properties in the Swiss Alps. Would her telling Jack have made a difference? Probably not. When magic rules, we are all captives of its spell.

  Quotation. Endings of this type are sometimes dramatized—for example: The giant’s widow paused in her herb garden to reflect on the one-time thief who slew her husband. “As far as Jack goes—no hard feelings. Look, I was married to a monster, now I’m free.” She bent to pinch off a basil leaf, then looked up. “I don’t care about the hen. Jack gave me my life back. He deserves a break.”

  TOP CLICHÉS

  You can see how the above models flirt with some of the most clichéd endings in popular media—broadcast news in particular. One has to be inventive with them, but avoiding such models altogether may be impossible and even unwise; some are simply apt forms of punctuation for ongoing news. Even a touch of pumped-up rhetoric is acceptable in closings, so time-honored is the big finish. But when endings yield to some of the punchless clichés that follow (in italics), a rest and a rewrite might be in order:

  • With a team of lawyers, young Jack may yet beat the charges. But one thing is certain: There’ll be no more giant-killing in this lad’s future.

  • Are the beanstalk seeds a hoax, or will USDA studies turn genetic secrets into a supercrop? Stay tuned.

  • The case could turn on whether the Poor Widow masterminded Jack’s capitalization schemes. But for now, the jury is still out.

  • Although Jack Enterprises, Ltd., has experienced fiduciary issues, aggressive refocusing assures that the company is well positioned for the future.

  Specialized forms of media have their own clichéd closings, such as this persistent one in the popular health media: Before trying any new therapy, be sure to discuss it first with your physician. (As if!) One way to beat such clichés is with well-chosen quotations, which are unique and personal and relieve the monotony of the author’s voice. For example, a recent report on ten newly discovered planets closed with this quotation from an astronomer: “Gosh, when you look at the next sun out, it’s got planets, too . . . suggesting that planets are as common as cheap hotels.”

  LANDING BY THE RULES

  The usual rules of forceful writing apply to endings, too. Make them fresh, concrete, and sincere. Use evocative language. Less can be more. Show, don’t tell—and so on. Here’s a few more “do’s” and “do not’s” culled from several sources, including Leads and Conclusions by Marshall J. Cook, and On Writing Well by William Zinsser:

  Do Not

  • change an article’s tone at the end;

  • add a gratuitous tag such as “indeed” to a quote;

  • suddenly introduce new or irrelevant ideas;

  • drag endings out unnecessarily;

  • make early concluding sounds (“Finally, let us review . . . ,”etc.); or

  • take the last word away from interviewees.

  Do

  • put ringing quotes aside for endings;

  • stop when it feels right to stop;

  • create a clear sense of completion;

  • leave room for reader reflection;

  • offer surprises that, in retrospect, make sense;

  • get personal, as in “I want you to remember this one thing . . .”;

  • leave readers with a feeling of uplift or insight—of gain.

  Now how do I bring this baby down? For that purpose, I have sneakily set aside a piece of advice from my readings. Not only is it an inspirational quote, but it implies that writers can blame someone else for lousy endings. And what could be more satisfying than that?

  [Make] your conclusions so good, so integral to their stories, [that] even the most insensitive scissor-w
ielding, delete-punching editor should know enough to leave them alone.”

  (—Marshall J. Cook)

  Form

  LIFE BETWEEN THE MARKS

  NINETEEN

  THE JOYS OF HYPER-HYPHENATION

  The oh-my-God-the-pain poetry. The everyone-lets-you-down-in-the-end novellas. . . . From my student days in the Iowa Writers Workshop I can still recall the extended, hyphenated modifiers we used in critiquing each other’s literary attempts. We didn’t know the device’s name back then, only that it helped us mock writers of those so-great-because-it-happened-to-me short stories.

  It seemed we could lasso any idea, including our own high concepts, with such hyphenated strings as A love-conquers-all dreamer in a cesspool-of-the-cosmos trailer park. Of course as our writing matured (ahem), we came to use such modifiers with discretion, realizing how quickly they can grow tedious.

  Among rhetoricians the hyper-modified form has come to be known as a “Teutonicism,” or the easier-to-say “Germanism,” from the Germanic pattern of stacking modifiers in front of the thing modified. In front-loaded German syntax, an English phrase like turkey stuffed with breading and savory spices becomes with breading and savory spices stuffed turkey. Front-loading a compound modifier in English and stringing it together with hyphens does more than change word order: It can make for quirky, whimsical expression, as well as jargon (mission-critical implementation ) and campy excess. How excessive is the excess? In a recent send-up of reality shows, a National Public Radio commentator referred to an “oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that-especially-in-light-of-what-you-said-at-the-beach-house-yesterday cringe.”

  ANTI-GERMANISM-TYPE GUYS

  Energetic, farcical Germanisms are so embedded in contemporary style that we might be hard-put to do without them. But not so long ago among America’s language authorities, they were about as welcome as bedbugs. Writing in the 1920s, H. W. Fowler had no use for the form, which he said reflected “the compression characteristic of journalese.” In the 1960s, Wilson Follett blamed American advertisers for burdening our nouns with these mixed parts of speech agglutinated by hyphens. Such Germanisms, he charged, substituted contrived adjectives for articulate expression. His bugbears included “easy-to-read books” and “ready-to-bake food.”

  Rudolph Flesch hailed the creativity of certain hyphenated modifiers. He liked “barefoot-boy-born-in-a-cabin credentials” and “come-as-the-person-you-like-best-or-least parties.” But like Fowler, he considered a Germanism such as “the Kennedy-sought tax cut” an ugly device for stuffing extra information into a sentence. The New Fowler’s, too, suggests restraint when hyphenating becomes “burdensome,” as in the phrase “a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

  Restraint, however, is hardly the hallmark of American writing. In 1965, Tom Wolfe’s The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby helped elevate both journalese and Germanisms into high art. And by 1996, Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age was smiling upon “over-the-top writing that relies on a string of hyphenated words.”

  * * *

  HYPHEN-HAPPY LOCUTIONS

  Contemporary writers are having fun with stacked-up, hyphenated modifiers (Germanisms)—but are their readers? Here are a dozen samples of mixed artistry for you to judge. Perhaps the best ones will inspire your own bold agglutinations. But remember: Overdo it and you may sound like some I’m-just-sitting-here-shooting-out-hyphens-until-an-adjective-comes-to-mind airhead.

  “. . . a Grow-Your-Own-Warts kit.” (—J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

  “[Fidelity in marriage is] a storybook device, it’s some retro Knights-of-the-Round-Table Camelot-and-chivalry deal.” (—Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet)

  “I’m not a food person in the let’s-go-to-Spruce-I-hear-they-have-anew-chef way.” (—Martha Bayne, Chicago Reader)

  “[His] teeth-baring Iowa finale was so Ross-Perot-scare-off-the-women-and-horses crazy . . .” (—Maureen Dowd, The New York Times)

  “. . . and not the Nebraska-Ghost-of-Tom-Joad Springsteen, but the Born-to-Run-Two-Hearts-Are-Better-Than-One-Rosalita-(Won’t-You-Come-Out-Tonight) Bruce.” (—Dennis Lehane, Mystic River)

  “. . . hands-in-flannel-trouser-pockets pose.” (—Will Self, How the Dead Live)

  “. . . white-person-with-dreadlocks-at-a-liberal-arts-college-thing.” (—Jamie Schweser, The Zine Yearbook)

  “There was ‘the drats,’ a fists-clenching, double-forearm-drop gesture that Lucille [Ball]’s alter ego, Lucy . . . would make. . . . Just as reliable was . . . that curl-the-upper-lip, swivel-the-head ‘Eyeeeoooough!’ exclamation.” (—Steve Daly, Entertainment Weekly)

  “. . . pledge-drive-friendly aesthetic.” (—James Poniewozik, Time)

  “. . . electrons—organized into do-with-me-what-you-will currents and let-me-tell-you-what-I’m-thinking pulses. . . . alligators-in-the-sewers myth. . . . the crate-broken-open-at-Kennedy theory of the origin of feral parakeets.” (—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker)

  * * *

  SEDUCTIVE CHARMS

  The charms of Germanisms seduce writers and readers alike. First of all, they save words and simplify sentence structure. For example, why is a “school of thought” so often preceded by a Germanism, as in the people-can-bloody-well-decide-for-themselves school of thought? Answer: Because school would be out by the time one said, “the school of thought in which people are considered to be able to decide bloody well for themselves.” Reading an in-flight magazine, I admired how one writer derided, with a single jet-speed Germanism, the “[Stephen] King-is-trashy-fun-but-not-real- literature school of thought.” The same derision would later require speech-length efforts at an award ceremony for King.

  Also seductive is the sarcastic tone of Germanisms, which often read as if to be spoken with exaggerated finger quotes. The form borrows the cachet of new or existing phrases—idioms, catchphrases, titles—when it turns them into compound adjectives: A Time reporter, for example, recently sniped at “overbearing I-am-woman-hear-me-roar vibes.” Because any word can appear in a Germanism, a writer’s stock of modifiers suddenly encompasses every utterance in the universe—a daunting if empowering notion.

  As a form of shorthand with attitude, front-loaded modifiers are naturals for use in conversation, especially among youth. Germanisms lend authenticity to juvenile speech in fiction: Is this the why-don’t-you-grow-up part, Dad?; Did you hear about my so-incredibly-embarrassing-I-wanted-to-die-on-the-spot thing at the dance? A parent might prefer that the child build a vocabulary and say something like, Did you hear about my contretemps? rather than rely on relatively mindless and often sloppy Germanisms. But would it ring true as dialogue? Not in my neighborhood.

  Adults, too—including writers—sometimes use the form in a lazy way, avoiding the struggle for precision. One could say, “He has that boy-do-I-love-it-when-my-enemies-get-shafted way of thinking,” or, alternatively, “he feels schadenfreude.” But sometimes a Germanism, with its theatricality, can be livelier or even more nuanced than a single term.

  Little wonder that, with their appealing energy, Germanisms turn up in literature and journalism at all levels. Appearing in dialogue as well as narrative, they flourish in X-rated expression, where stacked-up adjectives lend themselves to name-calling. Hyphens used to fly like bullets in the old American westerns: “Why you dad-blamed, no-good, yellow-bellied tub-o-guts!” And in quoting some modern writers (in genteel company), one needs one bandoleer of hyphens and one of bleeps: “You’re a skinny-bleep snake motherbleeper nobody-to-nothing piece of street bleep.” (Richard Price, Clockers) (bleeps mine)

  The fun of strung-out Germanisms lies partly in their frenzy—the rapid-fire fusillade of words and images aimed at one noun, pronoun, or adjective: “I’m just the cream-soda-swilling . . . overalls- over-candy-colored-latex-mini-kimono . . . don’t-bother-me-till- halftime kind of guy that society has made me.” (Mark Leyner, Et Tu, Babe) But two-or-three-word Germanisms can have their o
wn charms, including offbeat juxtapositions and plays on meanings: male-simpatico feminists; click-and-mortar retailers; content-free reflections. Today such Germanisms are almost de rigueur in American expression, even if awkward new formations such as faith-based charities cause initial wincing.

  THE RULES

  Rule Number One of using Germanisms is to consider the intended mood of your work. Playful? Sober? A touch of the wacky or whimsical may be just the ticket—or a big sore thumb. Germanisms created for effect can be out of place in high-minded prose, while those used for precision or economy seem natural.

  When, in The Human Stain, Philip Roth writes, “a full-to-the-brimming ready-made East Orange world,” it is mainly for economy. Most of his Germanisms are of the “conventional” or “standard” type, meaning they are made up of familiar word combinations (e.g., ready-made, high-minded, cut-and-dried ). The other type of Germanism is called “nonce” or “improvised” (tangerine-flake, don’t-bother-me-till-halftime); these Germanisms are invented for specific occasions. The line between the two types may blur, but invented, nonce Germanisms are clearly the more affecting—or obtrusive, depending on the writer’s skill and timing.