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  OH, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

  What’s the big deal as long as everyone knows what a sentence means? Not only can danglers and other faulty modifiers convey unambiguous meanings, but often they also seem most natural to the ear. Imagine a lawyer summing up his case before a jury: “Worried about her mother’s operation while driving to the hospital, the accident was something we can all understand.” In spite of its dangler, this sentence clearly posits the cause of the accident. The language seems so sincere that I’m going to vote “not guilty,” hoping that no one was injured. Yet, without a worrier present (i.e., a subject to do the worrying), there can be but one verdict in Grammar Court: guilty as charged.

  I may be an imperfect writer when I create danglers, but what happens when I use them in conversation? Am I in deep trouble with the language mavens? Am I a cross-eyed dunce if I say, “When crossing lanes, my eyes are always on traffic”?

  Hardly. Most grammarians preach tolerance of spoken danglers, which rarely create confusion about their meanings. Some authorities lament the very persecution of danglers. They argue that such constructions can be the most natural or literary way of expressing some things, and that “corrections” are often klunky. They point to differences in nuance between such statements as lying in my bed, everything seemed so still and as I was lying in my bed, everything seemed so still.

  As usual, the “rules” have been robustly violated by the masters, including Shakespeare (“sleeping in mine Orchard, a Serpent stung me”). But in fact no rule against dangling verbals existed until the late nineteenth century, when rhetoricians began to hunt for such phrases and cite outrageous examples. Among modern authorities the topic has provoked spirited discussion (more than four thousand words in Follett/Barzun’s Modern American Usage alone). All agree on a basic rule: that modifying phrases should be tethered to their intended posts; but most experts temper this rule with standard exceptions and cases calling for special judgment.

  BARRING EXCEPTIONS . . .

  Among the main exceptions are participles used in an impersonal sense, such as concerning, assuming, barring, and failing. Such verbals needn’t link to a specific subject when they seem to modify something more—that is, when they seem to modify an entire clause: Barring rain, the sacrifice will be held as scheduled. Such participles often appear with the subject there or it: Assuming you’ve read this far, there is no need to define participle; Concerning the future, it remains to be seen. These uses have become so idiomatic, say grammarians, that the verbals function more as prepositions and are excused from their verbal obligations.

  Other participles in this class include speaking, considering, supposing, looking, granting, recognizing, and regarding. Even in the case of terms from this ever-growing list, however, the most meticulous writers will apply further tests to justify using them without explicit subjects: For example, they will ask, “is the participle used without any suggestion of an agent performing the action?”

  But even these tests are imperfect, the grammarians confess, determined to leave us dangling. My advice: Unless you’re a copy editor, concentrate on the clear connections between modifiers and targets—and do the concentrating during revision, not while composing. Get the jacket on first; but then, if you care about impressions, match up the buttons.

  TWENTY-SIX

  MAGIC IN THE NAMES OF THINGS

  Every summer, to the chagrin of friends who sail, I decline invitations to come aboard and join in their revelry. Call me a word lubber, but I’m happier on dry land with my nose in a glossary of nautical terms. That way I can enjoy the salty names of all those boating objects, without having to clean or stow a single thing.

  Take me to any port of nomenclature—to listed names of tools, fungi, hats, or hairdos. Such specialized lists might be the closest a writer comes to undiscovered English. Drop your own anchor in some exotic category, and there they are: warehouses of terms barely known to the general reader; a treasury of words, many of them irresistible in their sound, inventiveness, or precision.

  Over there, for example, in that chest labeled “Weather and Natural Phenomena,” lie semiprecious terms like katabatic wind (the night wind down a mountain valley) and alpenglow (the light that bathes a peak at sunset). Poets will walk on clouds as they rummage around.

  Where exactly are these wares to be discovered? Mainly in a class of reference sources absent from the shelves of most writers. These remarkable works list the world’s things and their parts by categories and subcategories. They present the nomenclature of things, usually with brief definitions; or they key the names of objects to labeled pictures. The labels, in turn, name related things or parts—say, the gorget, pauldron, and cuish of a suit of armor.

  As a writer you will revel in these stores of fresh, metaphor-ready terms heretofore hogged by specialists; but such lists offer more than just pretty words. For here is where you will find the true name of that whatzit you’ve been trying to think of—the thingamajig you want to identify for your readers. When you must speak the language of unfamiliar worlds, these sources will serve as your phrase books.

  * * *

  NAMING THE STUFF OF DREAMS

  Often, as I listen to the droning account of someone’s protracted, inchoate dream, I wish that the speaker’s dreamscape had included labels. At least then I might enjoy some of the freshness, specificity, and lyricism that comes from authentic nomenclature.

  Below, a typical dream-teller struggles to describe the bizarre whatchamacallits he encountered among his A-waves. If only he had used one of the sources cited in this chapter. But with or without these types of aids, see if you can replace the italicized descriptions below with precise and sometimes lovely terms. (The numbers in parentheses correspond to my own suggestions for terms, which are listed after the passage.)

  “So I’m like floating through this city, and on top of a temple dome I see this (1) cap-like thing with windows and a weird dude standing inside it. Down below, this (2) architectural whatchmahoozie above the pillars says “Abandon All Hope.” I go in anyway and I see a guy with one of those (3) knotted-up-across-the-belly shirts and a big tattoo, you know, like a (4) cross with three-leaf clovers on the ends. He calls me in this (5) deep, all-esses-and-tees, high-class voice. He’s holding something over his eyes, sort of like a (6) pair of glasses on a handle sans side pieces. The dude has one of those (7) big bulby noses and a (8) tiny patch of beard right under his lip. And I’m like pouring sweat from that (9) little dent between my nose and mouth. Suddenly the dude (10) makes a whole bunch of quick running steps toward a light coming from this (11) humongous round hole in the dome. He turns to me and lowers the glasses-thing, and there’s his eyes sliding open, except they’re behind these (12) inside eyelids like cats have! Wow, I like scream so hard that—you know the little (13) hunk of flesh that dangles over your throat? Well, that little sucker is shaking like a (14) thing inside a bell.

  My suggestions: 1) lantern; 2) architrave; 3) calypso; 4) botonée; 5) plummy or plumy; 6) lorgnette; 7) cob-noses; 8) barbiche; 9) philtrum; 10) scuttles; 11) oculus; 12) nictitating membranes; 13) uvula; 14) clapper.

  * * *

  KNOWING THE THINGS OF WHICH YOU WRITE

  You cannot always write what you know, but it helps to know what you write. You might set out to write a sailing scene without knowing what to call the thingamabob that swings loose and knocks folks across the whatchamacallit; but in the act of writing, you’ll need such terms.

  In her novel The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx had to refer to many parts of a boat, including the trim, transom, tilt latch, and self-bailing drains. Had she not known these terms, she could have found them in the various nomenclature-reference tools that cough them up as needed, even as they fatten a writer’s general stash of descriptive and metaphorical terms (not to mention crossword puzzle answers).

  Name-listing sources include universal and specialized glossaries, picture dictionaries, and occasional lists within thesauruses and reverse (�
��flip”) dictionaries. The Web? Yes, one can also ride the search engines to online glossaries, while facing the usual challenge of extracting the well-edited and reliable from the thousands of worthless hits. Combine sailing and glossary in a search and you’ll eventually find such collectible terms as alee, burgee, luff, monkeyfist, vang, yawl, and scupper. You’ll also find spanker, whose assonance-rich definition is “a gaff-headed sail attached to the mizzenmast.” (www.pacificoffshorerigging.com)

  Specialized glossaries, however, tend to be most comprehensive and useable in their full-blown print versions. For the thousands of volumes that won’t fit on my shelves, I rely on libraries. But one multi-themed glossary will never be out of my reach: Stephen Glazier’s Random House Webster’s Word Menu, the paragon of omnibus name lists.

  Glazier’s story epitomizes the labor of love behind great word collections—a passion for language that is palpable to anyone who luxuriates in its results. A novelist and magazine writer, Glazier died at age forty-four, shortly before his three-thousand-page manuscript of Word Menu went to press in 1992. He spent some twenty years of his life gathering the names of things and hammering out brief but authoritative definitions for each. He developed a special system of classification to help modern writers and others find the things they knew or thought existed but couldn’t name. Although Glazier’s masterpiece sometimes seems to be a well-kept secret among language lovers, the determined seeker can find Word Menu (revised) in libraries and bookstores. The digital software version is also available online at www.word-menu.com.

  Glazier’s typical menu within a category is extensive, if not exhaustive, and shows his writer’s eye for choice terms. His “Ships and Boats” menu, for example, includes such pearls as bumboat, dink, felucca, gufa, vaporetto, xebec, rat line, cat’s paw, swabby, wigwag, buttock, and futtock. A typical concise definition looks like this:

  thole pin set vertically in gunwale as fulcrum for oar.

  Aye, a trace of blood on the thole—thar’s been mischief at sea, I’d wager.

  Under the volcano: More name sources

  With that, we will move on from things nautical, except to mention that nautical terms appear in other types of whaddyacallit sources, including these two worthy compilations:

  • Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary, by Marc McCutcheon; and

  • The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms and Literary Quotations, by David Grambs

  Like Glazier’s guide, these two sources differ from most thesauruses in that they list whole inventories—and not just synonyms— under a category, in addition to defining each term. In the “volcanoes” entry, for example, Descriptionary provides no synonyms for volcano itself. Instead, it offers the names and definitions of volcanic things—obsidian (volcanic glass) and lahar (hot ash flow), among other mellifluous-sounding items. The book’s index makes it easy to check a half-known term, as well as find a dozen more good ones. I followed crankshaft from the index to the “Automobiles” inventory, where I learned that creeper is the thing mechanics lie on to roll under a car.

  Lexicographer Grambs’s Describer’s Dictionary approaches the names of things by means of the qualities that define them—a reverse dictionary of sorts. For example:

  Rocky debris on a mountain slope: scree.

  Qualities are grouped within broad “common sense” categories, and sometimes it takes a little browsing to find the desired one. Browsing, however, is the delight of this work, for opposite each page of qualities and terms are choice literary passages using the same or similar terms: “They crossed a stone stile on to the moor . . . with the screes of the mountain rising steeply on the left.” (Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill) Of particular use to writers are sections listing physical and personality features of people. Here you can find the term for that bulbous nose, for example, that you want to pin on a character.

  * * *

  THINGS LITERARY

  When it comes to nomenclature of the world’s things, some names seem neutral or klunky while others have qualities that writers find irresistible. Such qualities include newness to the general reader (tombolo, for example, referring to a sand bar connecting an island and its mainland), appealing sound (sassafras), and concision (dew). But perhaps the most intriguing quality of certain names is aptness—an exact, right-seeming match between word and thing.

  In I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson has some fun with words that seem perfectly suited to the items they represent and those that seem all wrong. While granola sounds like it should refer to crunchy bits of cereal grain, he says, the word muesli conjures up a salve for cold sores, or even the cold sore itself. Among other perfect words—words so perfect that no one has to tell you what they mean—he cites globule, snooze, and dribble.

  What makes a word seem apt? Linguists theorize that humans create words for certain things by mimicking the things with their lips and other speech organs. The moon, for example, is mimicked by the shape of the lips as they form the “oo” sound of moon—or luna or lune. Naturally the words seem apt.

  Other words, like buzz or clang, aptly imitate the sound or feel of the things (see Chapter 11 for more on onomatopoeia). But how many words can be produced by mimicking? Perhaps the more a word reflects the dynamics of early language formation—whatever that might have been—the more apt it seems to us. Yet so many older words disappear, displaced by neologisms that seem equally apt.

  While linguists ponder such mysteries, writers can rely on instinct as they pore over the names of specialized things. They will know which apt ones to pounce on for literary use: exotic words like djellaba (North African hooded robe), used by novelist Nicholas Christopher in Franklin Flyer; or sturdy ones like testudo (a protective shell formed of shields in Roman battle), employed as a metaphor for a firm back in Seamus Heaney’s poem “A Shiver.”

  And because names bestow poetry on the ordinary, writers will raid even commonplace categories for such words as jalousie (slatted shade or door), petiole (stem of a leaf), and tang (knife end to which a handle is attached).

  Compiling That Book: . . . of Perfectly Useless Information, Mitchell Symons raided glossaries for a few “Names of Things You Didn’t Know Had Names.”Okay, some of them are arguably useless to writers—like the name for the armhole in a shirt or sweater (armsate). But when Symons offers names that sound just like what they are—rowel, which refers to the revolving star on a spur, or nittles, the punctuation marks denoting swear words in comics—my lips form little oos of satisfaction. And there’s nothing useless about that.

  * * *

  PLEASE READ THE LABELS

  Often a labeled picture is the shortest distance between the blank in a writer’s sentence and the name of a thing. If the thing can be represented graphically and is not specialized beyond the mid-geek level, there’s a good chance it appears in one of linguist Jean Claude Corbeil’s visual dictionaries (for example, the Macmillan Visual Dictionary).

  Corbeil’s editorial teams label tens of thousands of pictured objects and components with their most common names. Are you describing a crisis in a coal mine? You’ll find an illustration in one of Corbeil’s dictionaries, crisp and diagrammatic, showing the exact location of the stope, adit, and winze—places where miners could be trapped.

  Or perhaps you’re writing a backstage thriller. Your villain has positioned himself high on the thingamajisser from which heavy stage objects can be dropped. Turn to the appropriate line drawing in another visual reference—a book from the Oxford-Duden pictorial series—and there’s the term you’re looking for: fly floor, or fly gallery. Moreover, this Dutch series includes bilingual editions, so if your hero declaims in French, he can shout “la passer-relle de service!” as per the Oxford-Duden Pictorial French & English Dictionary.

  These or similar “pictionaries” are easy to find in library or bookstore language sections. Got a birthday coming up? Ask for a deluxe edition like Corbeil’s The Firefly Visual Dictionary, or The Ultimate Visual Dictionary
by Jo Evans, with color plates that will blast your sclera through your superciliary arch.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE EARNESTLY ENGAGING SENTENCE

  Like the protagonist of a moral tale, a sentence sets out in earnest pursuit of truth and beauty. But soon it finds itself set upon by corruptive elements, which must be vanquished before the glorious end punctuation is attained. Yea, many a foul flaw have I seen befall a virtuous sentence; and many pieces of writing (my own darlings among them) have I seen the worse for it.

  Yet it all seems so simple: A subject. A mighty verb. Perhaps an object that receives the action it deserves. A well-placed modifier for a bit of the old nuance. A pretty clause or two fluttering like silk ribbons. But step back to admire your creation, and—aargh!—the slithery thing is devouring its tail.

  Into every author’s life come bad sentences. By themselves they may not sabotage a masterly work—but they can surely get in the way of writing one. Unstable sentences can set off chain reactions, especially for unstable young writers. The sentence goes awry, the paragraph stalls, the work deflates; the writer is last seen playing marimbas at a subway stop.

  Not that every sentence has to promenade down a fashion runway; forced beauty creates its own monstrosities. A sentence has this job to do: Move the work one step forward without tiring, confusing, or sidetracking readers. If it needs to evoke feelings, it does so without a choir of mewling clauses. In tandem with other sentences it builds drama and creates rhythms and harmonies; it contributes to the flow and engagement of a passage and ultimately the work.