I was sitting at the back of the room at a presentation at a local VATE conference. I had been introduced to the speaker, and had decided her session might be interesting. She was discussing style in Twain, and was using two passages to explain the effectiveness of his use of parallel clauses. Suddenly, she stopped, looked at me, and said, "I just realized that I'm teaching grammar!" She was, but unfortunately, the students would not have been learning it. She assumed that they understood what clauses are. They don't, at least they don't understand what they are well enough to make her presentation fruitful.

     Perhaps I can explain what I mean by an analogy. As I look at my computer, I realize what I can and cannot do with the insides of it. I can, for example, install various cards into what are called "card slots." That is because all the card slots look alike. I can recognize all of them. But I cannot install another drive. The cables that connect the drives have a lot of different openings on them, but I am not familiar enough with them to be able to plug things into them. Such is the case with students and grammatical constructions. Students may even be able to recognize two or three subordinate clauses, but faced with a text, most students (and many English teachers) cannot identify ALL the subordinate clauses, gerundives, etc. Telling them that Twain used parallel clauses is thus comparable to telling me that additional drives can be installed in my computer. It's nice to know, but I cannot do it. For instruction in style to be effective, students must be able to analyze the syntax of texts. Thus this chapter must follow, not precede, the chapters which came before.

     Style is perhaps the most difficult of all aspects of writing to discuss since the word has many different meanings. Some people think of style as something one either has or doesn’t have, but in one sense everyone has a style of writing. In this broad sense, "style" simply means characteristics patterns -- of vocabulary, spelling, and/or syntactic constructions. Thus, part of a writer’s style may consist of sentence fragments and abstract words. Most of us, however, would prefer to limit the term’s meaning to "good style," or "clear style," or "appropriate style," and it is in this sense that we will deal with style in this chapter. 

     The means for helping students achieve a basic, "correct" writing style were implicit  in Chapters Seven and Eight. Chapter Seven suggested numerous exercises for getting students to be able to use each of the syntactic constructions in their own writing correctly, and, in some cases, interchangeably (as with subordinate clauses and gerundives). Chapter Eight reviewed a number of syntactic "errors," from comma splices to inflated balloons, and suggested how the approach presented in this book should help students overcome them. In this chapter, therefore, we are concerned with the style of students whose writing is basically "correct," but either immature or lifeless.

     I have divided the following discussion into two parts, "normative stylistics" and "modeling," the difference being that in normative stylistics students can compare their own writing to that of group norms or to the logic of the language, whereas in modeling students study and then either imitate or reject the styles of particular published writers. If we list the stylistic problems of the "correct" writer, our list would probably include:

a.) their sentences are too short (or too long) 
b.) their sentences patterns are too regular -- in length, in type of construction, or in both 
c.) their sentence structure undercuts, rather than supports, their meaning. 

     Some teachers will immediately balk at the idea of teaching normative stylistics for they will perceive it as an attempt to bring all students into a common, average mold. In the context of traditional grammar, traditionally taught, such an objection would be valid, but in the context of the approach suggested in this book, the objection is too simplistic and invalid. Whether we like it or not, most readers evaluate most writers against preestablished norms or "molds." An average writer whose main clauses average eleven words will generally be judged by more mature readers as being immature. Our purpose in teaching normative stylistics should thus be to help students understand what the norms are, where they come from, and why. The students are then free to accept the norm, or reject it.

     An elderly gentleman, a retired government official, took my Advanced Essay course, claiming that he wanted to learn how to write. His writing was not elegant, but it was certainly acceptable and adequate for the book which he said he wanted to write about the oil crisis. Yet he regularly claimed that his writing was "poor." We discussed his "problem," a problem which I could not discover until he stated that one of his English teachers had told him that his sentences were "too long." The comment had stuck, and it led him to believe that his writing was "poor." We briefly discussed the statistical studies of Hunt and O’Donnell and examined his own writing. His main clauses, in some of his essays, averaged 22 or 23 words, a figure which is, in no serious sense, "too long." Freed from the mysterious burden of the "too long" sentence, he changed his whole attitude toward his ability to write. Unfortunately, many teachers who abhor statistics feel perfectly at ease telling students that their sentences are "too long," "too short," "choppy," or "mechanical," thereby inflicting self-doubt on the students without offering the students a means with which to evaluate the question for themselves.  Teaching grammar as a liberating art means providing students with the knowledge and skills with which they can confidently judge grammatical options for themselves.

The Statistical Approach 

     Statistical stylistics is still a very crude pedagogical tool since much statistical research needs to be done on students’ writing. How helpful and precise it may become thus depends upon further research, but there are several ways in which it can now be used. 

     I have already suggested, for example, that words/main clause can take the mystery out of "too long" and "too short," but the question involves more than simply counting words per clause. The studies of O’Donnell and Hunt quite literally suggest a grade-scale against which individual students can match their own figures:
 

Readers, of course, do not count words per main clause and are usually blissfully unaware of the statistical norms behind written texts. But as I suggested in the preceding chapter, the reading process involves chunking words into units and dumping the material in them into Long-Term Memory. The dumping occurs at the boundaries of main clauses. The average number of words per main clause thus establishes a rhythm to the reading process, and when we say that sentences are "too long" or "too short," what we probably mean is that the rhythm appears to us as either too fast or too slow. 

     Whereas the scale itself is more or less "objective," our reactions to it are subjective and largely conditioned by where we ourselves are located on it. For the average 3rd grader, the 9.99 word main clauses of  7th graders are "too long"; for twelfth graders, they may seem "too short." For the teacher of our retired gentleman, for example, his sentences may have seemed "too long" because she herself was accustomed to writing, and/or reading, 16-word main clauses. The normative scale, in other words, gives both teachers and students an "objective" guideline clearly distinct from either the teachers’ or the students’ individual biases. 

     It bears repeating that the norms are not molds into which students should be forced to cramp their writing. The audience to which she is writing, especially the age level of that audience, may require a writer to use shorter main clauses. Likewise, one’s tone and the ethos one wants to project (logical and complicated, short and sweet) may all affect main clause length, as may the mode (narrative, expository) in which one is writing. Finally, no "objections" should be made to the clause length of a student’s writing without some consideration of the student’s diction -- precise words may result in shorter main clauses. In the five passages I have analyzed from E.M. Forster, for example, he averages only 15.38 words, but few people would object that his clauses (or Hemingway’s) are "too short." On the other hand, when a college English major, a junior, handed in a paper that was both wordy and averaged 8.9 words per main clause, I felt fully justified in suggesting that she look at the statistical results of Hunt and O’Donnell. 

     Teachers should decide for themselves not only whether or not they want to use a statistical approach for assisting students with style, but also which constructions they want to deal with. An eighth grade teacher, for example, might want to discuss Hunt’s finding that the average eighth grader uses 42 subordinate clauses per 100 main clauses. As I noted in Chapter Four, the subordinate clause naturally blossoms between seventh and ninth grades, and my cursory examination of the writing of eighth graders suggests that this figure results from an inverted bell curve: some eighth graders use far more than 42 per 100, and many use far fewer. The statistical discussion could thus not only give some students a sense of satisfaction and pride ("I’m doing well."), but it could also give those students who are using few subordinate clauses a specific aspect of sentence structure to work on. 

     Almost any construction can be considered statistically, but teachers will find some much more productive than others. The number of prepositional phrases per main clause, for example, appears to be fairly constant for all writers, and if it does increase for the more mature writers, it does so as a result of increases in other constructions: an embedded subordinate clause or gerundive tends to bring prepositional phrases with it. Probably the most fruitful constructions for statistical modeling are compound main clauses, sentences beginning with coordinating conjunctions, subordinate clauses, second level embeddings, gerundives, and appositives. 

     If teachers become involved in statistical analysis, however, they may decide that they want to use such an approach as a way of focussing students’ attention on how their study of grammar is related to their writing. On average, for example, fourth grade students do a fairly good job of compounding finite verbs. My statistics indicate that professional writers use 107 finite verbs for every 100 clauses, i.e., approximately seven percent of their finite verbs are compounds. The fourth graders already average 105. But if we look at the fourth graders’ individual statistics, we find: 
 

In suggesting a sequence for syntactic instruction (Chapters Five and Six), I suggested that fourth graders might study subjects and verbs by identifying all the subjects and verbs in a selection from their own writing. But a teacher might well want them also to identify those that are compounds, such that each student could arrive at his own figure, comparable to those in the preceding chart. The students could then see for themselves how their own writing compares to that of the norm and the rest of their classmates. 

     As always, discussion should not stop with the statistics. Thus the teacher might want to select some of the sentences for discussion. The first student on the chart, I’ll call her Judy, wrote: 

Then we went on the swings, Scooby-Doo, Fairis Wheel, played a game, climbed a net and when we got to the top Tereasa and I went down the giant tube slide. 

Then we went on the swings, Scooby-Doo, and Fairis Wheel. We played a game. We climbed a net. And when ... 

     When students can compare a statistical analysis of their own writing against a set of norms, they gain knowledge, knowledge which enables freedom. Every individual is basically insecure, and students in English composition classes are even more so. What does the teacher want? What makes writing good? How do I, as a student, compare? Mary, a conscientious, returning student, was very worried about her writing. When she found that she averaged 20 words per main clause, she relaxed. John found that he had subordinate clauses embedded at level three: he realized that sentence-combining was not for him. Jim, who always had lots of red marks on his papers, found that he was averaging 25 words per main clause! Clearly his problem resulted from his attempts to make sentences longer and more complex (perhaps a result of uninformed sentence-combining exercises). As teachers working in classrooms, we give conflicting advice: "Keep it simple.""Make it longer and more complex." This advice, of course, is directed toward different students. But the students can't tell which advice is directed to them unless we enable the students themselves to judge their own writing in the context of other people's.

     Although teachers might prefer to bring statistical norms into the classroom, it seems to me that the norms would be more persuasive if students discover them for themselves. Thus, in the process of studying subjects and verbs (or whatever), students could be invited to select their own passages for analysis from newspapers, novels, magazines, etc. (As the preceding chapter suggests, avoid letting them select models from textbooks.) Working individually or in groups, the students could then not only identify the constructions they were studying, they could also calculate the statistical norms. Not only would this integrate the study of grammar with math, stylistics, statistics, and writing, it would also help students see that a "norm" is not a mold. 

     Edward P.J. Corbett has offered another interesting and helpful statistical tool. Although he speaks of "sentences" rather than "main clauses," Corbett asks if variety of length may not be as important as length itself. He suggests counting the number of sentences that are ten or more words longer than the average, and the number that are five or more shorter. These numbers can then be calculated as percentages of the total number of clauses. Here, for example, are the results from ten fourth graders: 
 

The advantage of the statistical approach is that it gives students a clearly defined target to aim for. Teachers frequently tell students to vary the length of their sentences, but how "varied" is "varied"? And how does an individual student decided whether or not this general advice applies to him? The statistics make this clear: the four students who have two zeroes should work for more varied length at either end. Student Number Three might consider using an occasional very short main clause; Student Four, an occasional very long one. 

     Before leaving the question of statistical norms, I would like to point out that such analysis, as the next chart indicates, will usually give a teacher something positive to say about almost every student’s writing.  I need to be clear about the purpose of this chart: I have suggested that fourth graders could themselves analyze their own writing and compare their use of compounded finite verbs, of compounded main clauses, of variety in clause length, and perhaps even of words per main clause to statistical norms. Most of the students can be proud of their achievement in at least one of these categories. But what about students six and nine? After such a comparison, they are likely to feel miserable. A sensitive teacher, however, could look at their writing and even without making a statistical analysis, praise their use of gerundives and appositives: "Don’t worry, Billy. You’re using a lot of gerundives and appositives, and those are constructions used by high school students. Since you can use those, I’m sure that you can learn to use more compound finite verbs." Billy, syntactically perhaps the weakest writer in the class, now has something to feel good about. He also has a specific syntactic goal and assurance that he can master it.
 

Positioning of Subordinate Clauses

      Francis Christensen, who developed a method of teaching sentence structure known as "sentence building," believed that sentences should be relatively short, well-textured (full of adjectives, prepositional phrases, etc.), and have few subordinate clauses. Moreover, he believed that subordinate clauses should be at the end, i.e., after the main clause. His texts and materials were developed to teach students to write this kind of sentence. But in Tough, Sweet, and Stuffy, an excellent book on style, Walker Gibson argues that subordinate clauses before the main clause indicate a well-organized mind. It is easy, observes Gibson, to write a main clause and then tack on something else and then something else. But in order to write a subordinate (or "dependent") clause first, the writer must know in advance what the clause will depend on. (129) The writer must, so to speak, have the whole idea clearly organized in his mind before he writes it down. 

     Who is right? Logically, Gibson’s argument is provocative, but as the following chart indicates, the question may not be as simple as he makes it seem:
 

These statistics suggest that fourth graders place the majority of their subordinate clauses (8 to 6) before the main clause, whereas the professionals, by a far wider margin (9 to 39), place them after. Normatively speaking, therefore, Christensen was correct. I balk, however, at designing materials that will force (or simply lead) students into placing their subordinate clauses at the ends of sentences. Students are not rats. Why can’t we give them the ideas of Christensen and Gibson and let the students decide for themselves? The question might provide some interesting discussion in some classrooms, and the discussion might lead some students (who put all of their clauses before, or all after) to vary their positionings. 
 
 

     Using models, passages of other people’s writing, to teach syntactic stylistics can have one of two major purposes, the first normative, the second what we might call semantic. Normative models might well be used to help students understand how the syntax of writing differs depending on the purpose of the writing and the intended audience. Teachers, for example, might wish to have students analyze passages from computer manuals, business reports, various magazines, books written for children, etc., to consider such things as average main-clause length and the types of constructions used. (As always, I hope that discussion of such passages goes beyond the syntax to vocabulary, tone, intended audience, etc.) Since such passages are easily found, I will not discuss them here. Rather, the rest of this chapter will be devoted to examples of what I have termed "semantic modeling."

     By "semantic modeling," I simply mean that the syntax of the sentence or passage emphasizes the ideas that the writer is attempting to express. The most obvious example of such emphasis is the parallel construction, but as I hope the following examples illustrate, there are numerous other ways in which syntax can support sense. Teachers will, of course, want to collect their own examples, and they might even get students into the action. 
 

Two Passages and the Parts of Speech 

     Two passages, one from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the other from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, illustrate how the use of parts of speech -- particularly adjectives and adverbs -- affects style. Both novels concern the attempts of a man to catch a large fish (or whale). Technically, neither man succeeds. The old man in Hemingway’s work catches a hugh swordfish, but sharks get all of the flesh before the old man can get it to shore. Captain Ahab in Moby Dick dies in his attempt to capture Moby. These basic similarities of plot are offset by major differences. The world Hemingway describes is harsh, but simple. The novel examines the dignity of man and man’s place in nature. Melville’s world is also harsh, but it is complex. It too examines the dignity of man and his place in nature, but further includes complicated religious, social, and psychological questions. The writers’ styles match their concepts of the world -- Hemingway’s is simple; Melville’s is complex. The two passages to be examined are parallel in that they are taken from the first descriptions of the old man and of Captain Ahab. 

     He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week . . . . 
     The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. 
     Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. 

 --Hemingway 

     He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a tender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. 

 --Melville 

A statistical analysis reveals something about the frequency with which parts of speech appear, as well as some differences in the two passages: 
 

Twenty-two percent of each passage is composed of nouns; fourteen percent, of prepositions. Hemingway uses more simple coordinate conjunctions, whereas Melville uses a greater percentage of complex subordinate conjunctions. These statistics suggest that Melville uses more adverbs (8.4% to 2.7%) and that adjectives comprise more than a third of each passage. Further analysis, however, indicates that Melville’s adjectives are more complicated than Hemingway’s. Hemingway uses only two adjectives formed from verbs--"deep-creased" and "undefeated," whereas Melville uses twelve--"cut," "compacted," "aged," "made," "shaped," "cast," "threading," "continuing," "scorched," "made," "leaving," and "branded." Whereas Hemingway’s verbal adjectives are unmodified, about half of Melville’s are modified or complemented. If, for example, one deletes the adjective "threading," one must also delete "its way out from among his grey hairs, and." By thus modifying his modifiers, Melville creates a complex sentence structure that reinforces his image of a complex world. 

     Melville also creates tension by his choice of adverbs. "Overrunning" would usually be associated with water rather than with fire, but Melville has the fire "overrunningly" waste all the limbs. The adverb doesn’t make sense: how can anything "overrunningly waste?" In effect, it cries out to be read as a verb--"the fire has overrun and wasted." The tension, which is increased by the metaphors of a burning-at-the-stake and of lightning hitting a tree, is reinforced by "lividly whitish" and "tearingly darts," to crescendo in "still greenly alive." Once again Melville has wrenched his parts of speech. "Alive" is not "greenly"; the tree is green. Since the word modified is almost always more important than the modifier, by writing "the tree still greenly alive" rather than "the tree still green and alive," Melville not only creates syntactic tension, but also emphasizes "alive," alive -- after the stake and the lightning. The sentence structure in Melville’s description clearly reinforces the reader’s impression of Captain Ahab as a strife-torn man living in a complex world. 

     By comparison, the Hemingway passage emphasizes an old man in a now peaceful, simple world. Whereas only about forty percent of Melville’s adjectives were what are called "determiners" ("an," "a," "the," "one," "these") or possessives ("his," "their," "its"), over half of Hemingway’s are. In terms of meaning, determiners and possessives are simpler than other adjectives. The best way to demonstrate this is to note that their use is almost automatic: no native speaker would say or write, "He was old man" or "Boy had gone at orders." The greater frequency of these words in the Hemingway passage adds to its simplicity. 

     Several aspects of Hemingway’s adjectives emphasize the old man’s age and lack of luck. Among the thirty adjectives that are not determiners, possessives, or verbals, the word "old" appears five times. Its opposite, "fresh," is specifically negated: "None . . . were fresh." "Old" is, moreover, a subjective, not an objective adjective -- what is old to one person is young to another. Hemingway plays up this subjective feeling of age not only by not revealing the man’s age, but also by emphasizing that he has not done so -- the presence of five numerical adjectives ("eighty-four," "first forty," "forty," "three," and "first") make conspicuous the absence of an adjective to denote the man’s age. Likewise, the old man’s unluckiness is presented through subjective adjectives. The use of the foreign salao emphasizes the subjective "worst" and "unlucky." As opposed to the old man, who doesn’t catch anything, the other boat gets "good" fish. "Alone," "thin," "gaunt," "deep," "deep-creased" and even "heavy" all subjectively contribute to the simple picture of an unlucky old man. The man’s eyes, however, are "cheerful and undefeated," mainly because he lives in the simple, kind world of nature. Even the cancer the sun brings is "benevolent." 

     Four of Hemingway’s five adverbs contribute to his theme. "Now" -- used twice -- emphasizes the man’s age: although he is old, he must live in the here and now. "Definitely and finally" underscore salao -- unlucky. If Hemingway had used more adverbs, he would only have diluted his concentration. Simplicity and economy can be effective. 

     Hemingway’s use of repetition goes beyond the adjective "old." The noun "fish" appears four times and is varied in the verb "fished" and the adjective "fishless." Repetition not only adds simplicity, but also suggests unity or identity, and the passage does indeed suggest and identity between the "old man and the sea." The sun’s "reflection" -- its image of itself -- has become a part of the old man by creating "brown blotches" on his cheeks. That his eyes are the "same color as the sea" again suggests that he and the sea are one and at peace. This unity is even more evident when seen against Melville’s description in which nature, represented by fire and lightning, attempts to "waste" Ahab. 

     More could be said about the style of these two passages, but the preceding discussion should suggest that a lot can be said about -- and done with -- adjectives and adverbs, and with abstract and concrete, subjective and objective nouns and verbs. 

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Impatience 
Expressed in Parallel Subordinate Clauses

     Rev. King was, of course, trained as a public speaker, and I have to wonder if the parallel construction may be more characteristic of formal oral discourse. When spoken, sentences with parallel constructions allow for rhythmic pauses while simultaneously giving the audience meaningful semantic units and raising their expectations for what follows. In the following sentence from "A Letter from Birmingham Jail," Rev. King precedes a very short main clause with ten adverbial clauses, each beginning with "when": 

     But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on the television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. 

     Yet the very structure of this sentence indicates that King -- and by association his fellow Blacks -- has controlled his frustration, has brought it into order. This is, after all, the kind of sentence that Gibson was talking about: the ten left-branching, parallel subordinate clauses, each of which details a reason for Black impatience, are clearly ordered in the writer’s mind. He knows that each of them not just depends on, but also leads toward that final "then you will understand." King’s syntax thus has a double "semantic" effect: it evokes frustration in the reader to parallel the frustration of the Blacks, and it reflects the calm control of King. 

Verbal Clutter in  Stegner’s "Town Dump" 

     The main idea in "The Town Dump," an essay by Wallace Stegner, is that the clutter in a dump reflects the history of men -- it tells us something about who we were and what we are. In the following sentence, Stegner uses ellipsis and gerundives to emphasize both the clutter and the sense of history: 

The bedsprings on which the town’s first child was begotten might be there; the skeleton of a boy’s pet colt; two or three volumes of Shakespeare bought in haste and error from a peddler, later loaned in carelessness, soaked with water and chemicals in a house fire, and finally thrown out to flap their stained eloquence in the prairie wind. 

 bedsprings might be there 
 skeleton *might be there*
 volumes *might be there* 

     In the third main clause Stegner uses gerundives to tell a story within a story. "Bought," "later loaned," "soaked," and "finally thrown" -- the four gerundives not only present a sequence of events related to "volumes," but also suggest that the same kind of story within a story could be supplied for "bedsprings" and "skeleton." The first three gerundives are modified by prepositional phrases that suggest that men are inattentive. The infinitive ("to flap") that modifies the final gerundive reinforces this idea. Technically, it is an adverb of purpose (It answers the question -- "Why were they thrown out?"), but the purpose is here inappropriate: volumes of Shakespeare were not intended "to flap their stained eloquence in the prairie wind." Finally, there is a play on the gerundive "stained." Logically, it is the volumes that are "stained" from the water and chemicals. Grammatically, however, "stained" modifies "eloquence," thereby implying, perhaps, that men are as inattentive to the mental world as they are to the physical. 

     Because of ellipsis and gerundives, Stegner can change the clutter of the dump into the wealth of men’s lives, and then comment on how we waste that wealth -- all in one rich sentence. Note what would have happened if he had not used ellipsis and had used clauses instead of gerundives: 

The bedsprings on which the town’s first child was begotten might be there; the skeleton of a boy’s pet colt might be there; two or three volumes of Shakespeare, which were bought in haste and error from a peddler, which were later loaned in carelessness, which were soaked with water and chemicals in a house fire, and which were finally thrown out to flap their eloquence, which was stained, in the prairie wind, might be there. 

Floating Down the Mississippi on Twain’s Absolutes 

     Complex constructions can suggest clutter, but they can also imply a calm simplicity. In the following passage, Mark Twain uses a string of noun absolutes to imply the rhythm of the gently flowing Mississippi River: 

     Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer’s morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the walls, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep -- with shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about the "levee"; a pile of "skids" on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the other side; the "point" above the town, and the "point" below, bounding the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote "points"; instantly a negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, "S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin’!" and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time. 

--from Life on the Mississippi. 1883. (As quoted by Corbett.)

Twain uses a 211-word main clause with eleven adverbial noun absolutes to suggest the continuous, calm, and wavy flowing of the Mississippi. He then shifts to a series of very short, rapid main clauses to suggest the hustle at the arrival of the boat. 

Charles’ Chaotic Comma-Splices? 

     Although numerous high school teachers admonish students not to use comma-splices, many of these same teachers have their students read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, which begins: 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

  (Heritage edition)

Two Passages  by Students 

     The preceding passages have all been selected from well-known, acknowledged stylists. Teachers may find, however, that they prefer to work with some of the writing of their previous students. Each year I give my students copies of the following two papers. The papers were written as in-class essays, in approximately twenty minutes, after the students had been asked to read about abstract and concrete words. I ask my students to read the two essays, and then to take out a small piece of paper and vote for the essay that they think is the better of the two.

     In order to communicate ideas or facts to one another, we must use language. Within our language, there are several thousand words that represent several thousand ideas and objects. The words that represent ideas, feelings, etc., we call "abstract." Those that represent facts or things are known as "concrete." 
     Abstract words are used to describe those things that we cannot fully understand. The nature of an abstraction is to never be completely describable or even to be thought of as the same by two people. Any emotion or belief is an abstraction: love, hate, God, time. Abstractions are not something that can be held in the hand or otherwise acknowledged with the senses. 
     That which is concrete can be seen, felt, smelt, hit, tasted, eaten, heard, combed, ridden, built, or walked on. It is something that can be touched or proven with data: dates of birth, the weight of a piano, the length of a chair leg, a birth, a piano, a chair leg. These are things that are easily understood by all to be the same (although with adjectives we can distinguish a human birth from a hippo’s and a Chippendale from a Heppler White.) 
     Some words serve a dual purpose as abstractions and concrete words. A man’s death can be observed and located in time and space. We do not yet know, however, what death is, what time is, what is truly a man, or whether we truly observe or just convince others that we observe. The mind of man is too limited and his lines of communication too poor to be able to tell for sure what is real and unreal, concrete and abstract. 

     Abstract and concrete words can be any form of a word; the word can be an adjective, verb, noun, etc. The difference in the words is not only the spelling, but also what they mean. All words fall under the category of abstract or concrete. 
     Abstract words are words that cannot be visualized mentally. A word such as "thinking": everyone knows what it is, but you can’t see it. Abstract words can be nouns, but with these kinds of nouns a person cannot have this thing in front of him and be able to reach out and touch it. 
     Concrete words are a bit different than abstract words. Concrete words can be visualized. A person may have a stereotype of what this looks like that he or she can mentally visualize. A word such as "chair" is a concrete word. If a chair was sitting in front of you, you could reach out and touch it, or a person may have a stereotype of a chair in his or her head. They may think "chair" and mentally visualize a wooden thing with four legs with an upright back that you sit on; then again they may think of a Lazyboy Recliner as a good stereotype. 
     The main difference in these words is whether it is something that you mentally visualize or reach out and touch it or if it is something that can’t be seen, touched, tasted, etc. The only thing that these two words really have in common is that they are both words. 

A statistical analysis reveals some interesting differences:
 

Statistically, the first passage is more "mature" in every way except one. I have to wonder, however, if the students may favor the syntax of the second writer because it is closer to their own. For many of my Freshmen, the first writer’s sentences are "too long," the style "too dense" (due, perhaps, to his use of appositives, infinitives, and gerundives). Most students do not appreciate his compounding of finite verbs. Oddly enough, from my point of view, students regularly criticize the sentence: "That which is concrete can be seen, felt, smelt, hit, tasted, eaten, heard, combed, ridden, built, or walked on." Not only do they not appreciate his revitalization of the traditional references to the five senses (I personally feel the strength of "combed."), but they also prefer the clichéd simplicity of the second writer’s "mentally visualize or reach out and touch it." Only after discussion brings out the fact that the concrete includes more than just the visual and tactile do they realize that the second writer’s cliché is inadequate. 

     The single exception to the statistical "superiority" of the first passage, the percent of subordinate clauses embedded at level two, likewise raises questions about what students consider "good" writing. Both writers embed two clauses at level two: the higher figure for the second writer results from the use of fewer subordinate clauses. Both of the second writer’s embeddings occur in the same sentence: 

The main difference in these words is whether it is something that you mentally visualize or reach out and touch it or if it is something that can’t be seen, touched, tasted, etc. 

     The first writer’s second level embeddings are more interesting because they truly reflect complexity. The second of these embeddings is in the last paragraph and is relatively simple: "whether we truly observe or just convince others that we observe." The other example is  a parenthetical expression at the end of the third paragraph: 

These are things that are easily understood by all to be the same (although with adjectives we can distinguish a human birth from a hippo and a Chippendale from a Heppler White.) 

[It would be interesting to see how various grammarians would explain this "although" clause. What does it modify? I consider it an interjection, but I would also accept calling it adverbial to an ellipsed "*I say* these are things...."]

     Having begun a class discussion with syntactic questions, I always lead or nudge students into a discussion of vocabulary and ideas. Writer number one constantly flows from abstract to concrete and back again. In the second paragraph, "emotion" and "belief" are specific examples of "abstract words," but this writer is not content to stop here -- using appositives, he moves still lower on the scale to "love, hate, God, time" as specific examples of "emotion" and "belief." This is good writing. The second writer keeps circling around, repeating himself at a very high level of abstraction. There are only two concrete examples -- "chair" and "Lazyboy Recliner," and the writer seems to view them as equivalent categories (i.e., as cats and dogs are equivalent categories of mammals) rather than as one (Lazyboy Recliner) being a more concrete example of the other (chair). If anything, in other words, the reference to "Lazyboy Recliner" suggests that "chair" is an abstract, not a concrete word, but this writer lives in a black-and-white world and cannot introduce the subtlety of the first writer’s "although." 

     Repetition is a major problem in the second paper: "reach out and touch" is used three times, "visualize" five times, in four of which it is accompanied by "mentally." I would speculate that such repetition is a result of exposure to textbook prose. My own analyses of textbooks has been confined to their syntax, but in reading numerous passages, I can feel the same words and phrases being repeated. Perhaps someone should study the use of repetition in textbooks more carefully, for if my impression is correct, not only would it suggest another reason for students’ preference of the second passage, it might also imply that we are training students to accept repetition in place of explanation and clarity. My own interests, however, are more in the line of "visualize mentally." Although a few students usually note that the phrase is repeated too much, not one has ever objected to the phrase itself. But a basic tenet of syntactic analysis is that every word should not only have a function in a sentence, but that it should have a meaningful function. What can "mentally" mean when it modifies "visualize"? Can anyone visualize non-mentally? Its inclusion, and its repetition, is simply another indication that the writer of the second paper was not thinking. 

     The preceding examples are obviously not exhaustive. More could be said about each passage, and there are millions of such passages from which teachers can select. My objective here has simply been to suggest some of the ways in which the students’ knowledge of syntax can be applied to discussions of style -- including vocabulary. Style, says Flaubert, is a matter of finding the right word, le mot juste. We might add that it is also a matter of putting it in the right syntactic context.

 1. How do you define "style"? How do you currently teach it?

2. Is the argument about statistical norms convincing? If not, why not?

3. Can style be taught effectively if students cannot recognize grammatical constructions in their own writing?

4. What other passages could be used for modeling?
 

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