D-Day Minus 2

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That's D as in "drop," the music-industry slang term for a record's release. I am determined to use it whenever possible in reference to the publication on Tuesday of my new book, How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Errors and the Best Ways to Avoid Them. If you are so inclined, please go ahead an pre-order the book here. (Or, if you're coming to this post after 2/2, you can go ahead and order it.) No salesman will come to your door.

The book has already gotten some nice attention, in large part thanks to the efforts of Fiona Brown, crack publicist at Riverhead Books. A few days ago, Katy Steinmetz of Time Magazine did a nice Q and A interview with me under the title "The Secrets to Not Being a Terrible Writer." Explaining to her that I'm a writer, not a talker, I asked her to be kind with my halting stammering, and at a couple of points she made me appear witty, as in this exchange:

Is the widespread usage of exclamation points a problem?

There’s exclamation point inflation, so that one isn’t enough. You don’t want to get to the point where it’s like the boy who cried wolf, where you have to have multiple exclamation points just to indicate that you really mean it. So is it a problem? It’s not a problem like global warming.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a short essay I wrote based on the book: "In Writing, First Do No Harm" (their title, not mine--but I like it). Of course, nowadays when you publish something online, it's not the end of the process. I'm talking about comments, of course. There are four up on the WSJ's site so far. One praises the piece, and one's author thinks it's badly written and hence ironic, given the subject. Fair enough. Here are the other two: 

  1. In the phrase ". . . and the majority of my (bright) students put me in mind . . ." the word "put" should be "puts" to agree with the subject "majority."
  2. "... the road to not writing badly ..." Rule #1 ? Do not split infinitives...

One of Facebook friends commented (comments are everywhere!) that these two folks were suggesting that my article was following Muphry's Law. This is an axiom defined in 1992 by an Australian editor named John Bansgund as "the editorial application of the better-known "Murphy's Law." The main principle is: "if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written."

Make no mistake: I have been a victim of Muphry's law in the past, and have witnessed on many occasions the actions of its iron hand on all sorts of critiques of writing, editing, and usage. I believe in it so strongly that I'm sure there's an error or three in my Wall Street Journal piece (as well as in this very post). But I propose a corollary, Yagoda's Law, which states: "If you write anything about writing or usage, people will nitpick you." Both WSJ commentators gleefully pounce on "errors" the dubiousness of which is matched only by the commenters' confidence in their own rightness. Both "rules" may have prevailed in high schools and middle schools half a century ago, but aren't endorsed by Bryan Garner's Modern American Usage or any other contemporary authority.

Bottom line, the changes they propose--"the majority of my (bright) students puts me in mind..." and "the road to writing in a not-bad manner"--are stilted and harrumphing. Muphry's Law, anyone?

 

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How to Not Write Bad

Comments

Daniel Leffell's picture

Sun, 02/03/2013 - 19:32 — Daniel Leffell (not verified)

Putting aside whether the rule against splittng infitives remains valid, the commenter who invoked this rule is mistaken for a more basic reason.  "The road to not writing badly" does not contain an infiniitve at all.  Rather, "to not writing badly" is a prepositional phrase.  "To write" is an infintive; "to writing" is not.

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