American College Grammar_Chapter 10-Roumen Dinneff

CHAPTER TEN

Confusing Shifts

To keep your sentences clear and harmonious, you must be consistent in your use of verbs and nouns. You should avoid jarring shifts in point of view and sudden outbursts of emotion.

                a             Be consistent in your verb tenses.

Inconsistent: Every day the parking lot fills up by eight in the morning, and commuting students arriving after that could not find parking places.

[The verb “fills” is in the present tense; the verb “could” is in the past tense.]

Consistent: The parking lot fills up by eight in the morning, and commuting students arriving after that cannot find parking places.

                [Both verbs are now in the present tense.]

                When you write about the content of any piece of literature, you usually use the present tense. Be careful not to shift out of the present tense when you have decided to use it for such a purpose. Take this care not only within sentences but also from one sentence to another. Be especially careful when you quote a passage that is in the past tense. Do not shift your description of the passage into the past tense if you have been using the present. Here is an example:

David Copperfield observes other people with a fine and sympathetic eye. He describes villains such as Mr. Murdstone and improbable heroes such as Mr. Micawber with unforgettable sharpness of detail. But David Copperfield was not himself an especially interesting person.

[The unexpected shift from present to past tense in the third sentence will jar readers.]

                Avoid the temptation to fall into inconsistent tenses when you are telling an exciting story. Sometimes the events you are relating become vividly present to you as you speak or write, and you slip into the present tense. Such an inconsistency may be acceptable in conversation, but it confuses readers.

Inconsistent: The wind was howling and blowing a hundred miles an hour when suddenly there is a big crash, and a tree falls into Rocky’s living room.

[The writer begins with the past progressive tense (was howling . . . blowing) and in the excitement of describing a falling tree shifts the tense to the present (is and falls).]

Consistent: The wind was howling and blowing a hundred miles an hour when suddenly there was a big crash, and a tree fell into Rocky’s living room.

                Inconsistency may creep into your writing when you combine present perfect and past perfect tenses with present and past tenses of verbs.

Inconsistent: She has admired many strange buildings at the university, but she thought that the Science Center looked completely out of place.

Consistent: She has admired many strange buildings at the university, but she thinks that the Science Center looks completely out of place.

[The present perfect tense “has admired” leads readers from a point in the past to the present and assumes that the activity described still goes on. So in making successive clauses you must be sure that you take into account the continuing action of the first clause. The thought expressed in the consistent sentence is like this: She has admired and still admires in the present many strange buildings at the university, but she thinks now in the present that the Science Center looks completely out of place.]

Consistent: She admired many strange buildings at the university, but she thought that the Science Center looked completely out of place.

[The simple past in the first clause names an action considered finished at some point in the past. The second clause can also use a simple past verb for an action which, like the action in the first verb, is considered past.]

                Verbs in successive clauses do not have to be in the same tense, but they should follow each other in tenses that make good grammatical sense and say what the writer wants them to say.

The present tense may be followed by another present tense:

Dogs bark to show that they are interested in something, or to show that they are afraid, or to announce that someone—perhaps another dog—is invading their territory.

The present tense may be followed by a past tense:

Michaelson says that transistors made stereo systems cheaper but reduced the fidelity of sound created by vacuum tubes.

The present can be used with the present perfect:

Quality control in the American automobile industry is a long-standing problem that has made millions of Americans think that Japanese cars are better.

The present can be used with the future tense:

We predict that word processors will replace electric typewriters in most offices by the end of this century.

                The present tense should not be used with the past perfect tense unless a suitable tense follows the past perfect.

Inconsistent: She swears that she had registered her car properly.

Consistent: She swears that she had registered her car properly before she received a ticket for having an improper license plate.

[In the consistent version, the past perfect comes before a clause that uses the simple past tense in its verb. The past perfect reports action that was finished in the past before some other action occurred.]

                If you are not going to follow the past perfect with a clause using a verb in the past tense, change the past perfect tense to a more suitable form.

                Consistent: She swears that she registered her car properly.

The simple past can be followed by another simple past:

College football was so violent early in this century that President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to abolish it.

The simple past can be used with the past progressive:

Everyone was eager to know if she was going to enter the fifty-mile road race.

The simple past can be used with the future:

                They told me that the tire shipment will arrive next week.

                The simple past should not be used with the present perfect, although in informal speech we sometimes do use the two tenses together.

Informal: She reported that she has been running nine miles every morning.

                Formal: She reports that she runs nine miles every morning.

                or

                Formal: She reported that she had been running nine miles every morning.

                b             Be consistent in the mood of your verbs.

Mood is a change in a verb that shows the way in which an assertion is made in a sentence. The indicative mood makes simple statements or asks simple questions. The conditional mood makes statements that would be true if something else were true. The subjunctive mood is now used rarely in English, but when it is used, it often makes conditional statements known to be contrary to fact. (If I were in Rome on Easter morning, I would hear thousands of church bells. I am not in Rome on Easter morning, and I may not be there when Easter comes; so I use the subjunctive mood in the clause “if I were.”)

                Inconsistent shifts from the indicative to the conditional or from the conditional to the indicative often cause trouble.

Inconsistent: He will go to night school and would take a course in hotel management.

[The indicative “will go” seems to be about to make a statement, a simple report that someone is going to night school. But the conditional “would take” makes us think that this is not a simple report at all but that some uncertainty is involved. Maybe he is not going to night school. The conditional makes us expect a clause beginning with “if.”]

Consistent: If he could go to night school, he would take a course in hotel management.

[Now the conditional verb “could go” in the if-clause makes us expect another conditional verb, would take, in the result-clause. We have the uncertainty of his going to night school clearly stated.]

Inconsistent: If he goes to night school, he would take a course in hotel management.

[Here the inconsistency arises because the indicative verb “goes” seems to start the sentence by making a simple statement to answer the question “What will he do if he goes to night school?” But the change in mood with the conditional verb “would take” in the result-clause brings in an unnecessary confusion. We know that it is not certain that he will go to night school. The “if” tells us that. But if he does go to night school, is there any uncertainty about what he will take? The conditional mood in the verb “would take” indicates that there is, but we are not told why.]

Consistent: He would go to night school, and he would take a course in hotel management, if he could get out of jail.

[Here the conditional mood used throughout in the verbs makes everything about this sentence seem uncertain. The use of the conditional implies that none of these acts is likely to happen. He is probably not going to get out of jail, and he is probably not going to go to night school and take a course in hotel management.]

Consistent: He will go to night school and will take a course in hotel management if he gets out of jail.

[The mood throughout is indicative—and more optimistic. The sentence makes a simple statement of fact, telling what he will do if he gets out of jail. No uncertainty is involved in the verbs preceding the if-clause, albeit the conjunction “if” does imply that he may not get out of jail. Yet the indicative mood shows that he has a good chance of getting out of jail, since it implies much less uncertainty than the conditional mood.]

Inconsistent: If he were absent, he will fail the course.

[The subjunctive “were” indicates a statement contrary to fact. He is not absent, but if he were, something would happen. But then the indicative “will fail” indicates a simple report of fact. The mood is inconsistent with the subjunctive that comes before it.]

Consistent: If he is absent, he will fail the course.

[Now we have a simple statement. We do not know if he is absent or not. But if he is absent, he will fail the course. The indicative is used in both verbs.]

Consistent: If he were absent, he would fail the course.

[The subjunctive “were” indicates a conditional statement contrary to fact. He is not absent. It is followed by a conditional verb in the result-clause, would fail. The conditional makes the sentence mean that if he were absent, he would fail the course, but he is not absent, and he will not fail the course.]

Exercise 1. Correct the confusing shifts in the following sentences. If a sentence is correct as it stands, put a check by the number.

1.             Hamlet has been in school in Wittenberg, and he came home to find his father dead and his mother married to his father’s brother.

2.             Mercutio has to die in Romeo and Juliet, or else he would have carried the play off from the two young lovers, who are not nearly as interesting as he was.

3.             The band hit a sour note, and the drum major gets sore at the tuba section.

4.             Parents who often get drunk embarrassed their children.

5.             King James I, who died in 1625, had never taken a bath in his adult life, and those who prepared him for burial have to scour his underwear off his body.

6.             If you travel abroad this summer, we would have enjoyed going with you.

7.             She would design the building if she knows calculus.

8.             If I were in Paris right now, I can hear the sounds of the streets.

9.             If the queen will stop wearing those big, round hats, her people would think better of her taste.

10.          She has been to automobile-mechanics school before she set up her business.

c              Use the same voice for verbs in closely related clauses and sentences.

The voice of a transitive verb is either active or passive. In clauses with active verbs, the subject does the acting; in clauses with passive verbs, the subject is acted upon. Inconsistency in voice sometimes arises from a writer’s desire to use variety in sentence forms. But when the actor remains the same in successive clauses, you should not change voice.

Inconsistent: The Impressionist painters hated black. Violet, green, blue, pink, and red were favored by them.

[The actor in the successive sentences is the same—the Impressionist painters. But the voices of the verbs are inconsistent because “hated” is active and “were favored” is passive. The writer has bought variety at the expense of reader confusion.]

Consistent: The Impressionist painters hated black. They favored violet, green, blue, pink, and red.

[Now both verbs in the successive sentences are in the active voice.]

                Note that it is easy to go from a linking verb of simple description in the active voice to a verb in the passive voice in the next clause:

Today American Indians are often poor, uneducated, and unhealthy. They have been isolated from the rest of the country, deprived of the benefits of the land which was taken away from them by force, and forgotten by the people who robbed them.

[The passive verbs—have been isolated, deprived, and forgotten—follow naturally after the simple descriptive sentence “Today American Indians are often poor, uneducated, and unhealthy,” which has a simple linking verb, is. The shift in voice is unobtrusive.]

                You should avoid a sudden shift in voice from clause to clause or sentence to sentence when you are writing about the same actor or agent. Your readers may expect a shift if you move from one agent to another. They will not expect a shift when you are telling of the actions of the same agent in successive clauses.

Inconsistent: The bulldozer clanked into the woods and bit into the ground. The trees and the earth were ripped up.

Consistent: The bulldozer clanked into the woods, bit into the ground, and ripped up the trees and the earth.

Consistent: McNabb rode his motorcycle through the window and was taken to the hospital as soon as the ambulance could get there.

[Here you could say, “McNabb rode his motorcycle through the window, and the ambulance driver took him to the hospital as soon as possible.” But by changing to the passive voice with the verb “was taken,” the writer keeps attention on McNabb, the most important person in the action here reported.]

d              Be consistent in the person and number of your nouns and pronouns and in the way you address your reader.

In speaking and writing in an informal tone, we often use the pronoun “you” instead of the more formal pronoun “one.”

                If you smoke cigarettes, you run a high risk of getting lung cancer.

                Problems arise when you mix the informal “you” with the formal “one”:

                If one smokes cigarettes, you run a high risk of getting lung cancer.

                Here the pronoun “one” is inconsistent with the pronoun “you,” and the sentence must be revised. A more formal statement is this:

                If one smokes cigarettes, one runs a high risk of getting lung cancer.

                or

                Anyone who smokes cigarettes runs a high risk of getting lung cancer.

                or

                People who smoke cigarettes run a high risk of getting lung cancer.

                If you address your reader directly as “you,” you may write in the third person from time to time. But you cannot shift from the third person to the second person or from the second person to the third person in the same sentence.

Consistent: You will always find good writing to be hard work. Good writers never think that their craft is easy.

[“You,” in the first sentence, addresses the reader directly. “Good writers,” the third-person subject in the second sentence, begins a statement consistent with the direct address in the first sentence. In effect, the reader is being addressed in both sentences and feels no discomfort with the shift from the second person to the third person.]

Inconsistent: People flying across the country nowadays discover that you can get many different fares to the same destination.

[The shift in the same sentence from the third-person “people” to the second-person “you” is confusing.]

                Make your pronouns agree with their antecedents, but try to avoid sexist language.

Inconsistent: Anyone who rides a bicycle every day will discover that they develop some muscles not developed in jogging.

[“Anyone” is an indefinite singular pronoun; the pronoun “they” is plural. Although in informal usage the pronoun “they” is used for the antecedent “anyone,” the usage is still not accepted by many editors, who hold that a pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number.]

Consistent: People who ride a bicycle every day will discover that they develop some muscles not developed in jogging.

                or

Consistent: Anyone who rides a bicycle every day will discover that she develops some muscles not developed in jogging.

                or

Consistent: Anyone who rides a bicycle every day will discover that he develops some muscles not developed in jogging.

                or

Consistent: Anyone who rides a bicycle every day will discover that he or she develops some muscles not developed in jogging.

You can make a much more sweeping revision:

Bike riders do not exercise some of the muscles used in jogging and usually discover that they get sore quickly when they try to run around the neighborhood at night.

                e              Avoid jarring shifts in point of view.

Inconsistent

He sat idly in his seat and looked down at the land pouring beneath the low-flying plane like some immense sea whose waters reached the sky. The green of the forest enchanted him. Everything was primitive and nearly unspoiled. Here and there a house stood in a solitary clearing that, from above, looked like a raft afloat on the great ocean of green. He saw it for a moment, and then it was whisked away behind him. In the houses, people were sitting down to supper, unfolding napkins, looking expectantly at the head of the table where the father gravely bowed his head to say grace.

[The point of view, quickly established, is of someone in an airplane looking down on the land passing underneath. But in the last sentence we shift to a scene that such a traveler cannot see. A reader must go back to look for what is missing because the shift is jarring. The last sentence can be easily fixed to match the point of view established in the rest of the passage.]

He could imagine that in the houses people were sitting down to supper, unfolding napkins, looking expectantly at the head of the table where the father gravely bowed his head to say grace.

Exercise 2. Rewrite the following sentences to eliminate confusing shifts. If a sentence is correct as it stands, put a check beside it.

1.             American landscape painters of the nineteenth century viewed the American wilderness as the handiwork of God; signs of God’s work were seen by them in lakes, mountains, and prairies.

2.             Government paperwork costs forty billion dollars a year, and government accountants are working to trim those costs—and making more paperwork as they do so; you can see the problem.

3.             If anyone carries a pack on your back while they ride a bicycle up a mountain in the summer, be prepared to be hot and tired.

4.             People who take a lot of pictures sometimes find that you get tired carrying a camera, and they often stop taking pictures all at once, the way some people stop smoking.

5.             Anyone who writes a long letter of complaint is frustrated when they get a form letter in return.

6.             Everybody who uses the library has to be responsible for the damage they may do to books.

7.             Some of the new sun-screening lotions offer relief to people who sunburn easily—unless you happen to be allergic to the chemical agent in such lotions.

8.             My Uncle Charley always brought his queen out on the third move when he played chess—sometimes you’ll have to admit was pretty stupid.

9.             Ralph Waldo Emerson shocked people in the nineteenth century because he seemed so radical. You could be sure that a conservative school like Yale would not let him speak there.

10.          Captain Ahab in Moby Dick was a figure for all those people so obsessed with the wrongs that they had suffered that they finally destroyed themselves in their quest for vengeance.

Exercise 3. Rewrite the following paragraph to correct the confusing shift.

               In Thomas More’s book Utopia, which is the name for an island supposedly located off the coast of the new world, the people of his commonwealth wear unbleached wool, eat together in great halls, punish adultery with death when one is convicted twice of the offense, and allow husbands and wives to inspect each other naked before they are married so one will not be deceived by the other. The Utopians had no individuality. They tried as hard as they could to eliminate passion. More made no mention of any artist among them.

                f              Avoid sudden outbursts of emotion in your writing.

You may have strong feelings about a subject, and having discussed some of the issues in an essay, you may be tempted to conclude with a highly emotional ending so readers will know where you stand. Excessive emotionalism in writing is almost always a mistake. Most readers dismiss the opinions of a ranter, and if you rant in your writing, few people will take your thoughts seriously. You may embarrass even those people who agree with you because you present their opinions in such an irrational way. Sarcasm is one of the most objectionable devices in writing because it implies that the writer is a hateful person. Readers want to like the writer of the prose they read; otherwise they will not enjoy spending time in his or her company. Few readers like to spend time with an angry or overwrought or sarcastic person. They will almost inevitably dislike the prose that comes from such a person—or that seems to come from such a person.

                Consider these two paragraphs on the military draft:

               The armed forces of the United States need brave men and women who stand ready to save this precious country from all the bloodthirsty rats ready to gnaw us to bloody pieces if we let our guard down for a minute. The President has brought back the military draft, and wouldn’t you know it? All the long-haired, dirty, cowardly college punks are protesting their feeble brains out. They don’t want to go to the army! Not those vermin! They’re too good to go to the army and die for their country! All they’re good for is sitting around smoking dope and shacking up with each other and putting fertilizer on their hair so it will grow longer. Once in a while they crack a book so they can seem intellectual and better than anybody else. They want to live in the country like worms in a pig, and they want somebody else to do their fighting and their dying for them. Well, let me tell you something: Red-blooded true Americans aren’t going to resist the draft.

[For the overwhelming majority of readers—even those who support the military draft—the frantic and ugly tone of this paragraph would be repulsive. It could please only those people already in support of the draft and unreasonably angry with those who do not believe in conscription. It could not convince anybody who does not already believe the writer’s point of view.]

               The military draft has raised protests among America’s young people, especially among college students. They do not remember the Vietnamese war, but they are convinced that the war was useless and that many Americans died uselessly in it. They think that the draft opens the way for similar wars, and they do not want to fight in them. But even among college students, few believe that the country could long survive without military force. Not many people like to be in the army, and although more Americans are killed on the highways every year than died in the entire war in Vietnam, most of us would rather be at home dodging cars than in the jungle dodging bullets. But it can be argued that the best way to avoid war is to be strong, and the draft is not the same as a declaration of war. It is rather a statement that we will defend our vital interests, and it does not push aside the fervent hope of Americans, both in and out of the army, that we never have to fight. The volunteer army has put the burden of military service on the poor and the ignorant. The American tradition of fair play makes many leaders think that military burdens should be borne by all who receive the benefits of safety that the military provides. And the desire for an able and efficient army makes these same leaders believe that sophisticated military technology cannot be left in the hands of the most poorly educated people in our society. The solution to these problems is the military draft.

[By making his point rationally and calmly, the writer wins readers to his point of view and forces even opponents to think of arguments to counter the arguments here. They cannot merely dismiss his thoughts as the ravings of a lunatic. They must argue with him if they are to maintain their position.]

Exercise 4. The following passage is excessively overwrought. Rewrite it, using understatement, to convey the sense of the text:

                Lord Crenshaw strode mightily into the room, his bushy eyebrows looking like forests waving in the mightiest of all God’s storms, his cold blue eyes flashing like bolts of lightning as he looked around at the assembled guests. Philippa felt her heart go bang in her chest with a wild emotion, wilder than anything she had ever felt before, wild as the incandescent lava that bursts from a volcano and pours down the mountainside, burning up all the reserve and all the hesitation that she might have felt. This was the famous Lord Crenshaw, dauntless leader of Wellington’s right at Waterloo, the bold, brave man who flung his great arms skyward and shouted at his troops to hold fast while all around his gallant head the bullets whizzed and whirled, the thunderhead of a hero whose voice sounded like ten thousand organs booming through ten thousand cathedrals. People nodded gravely to him, knowing his reputation for sudden anger, for the outburst that could lead to the duel at sunrise that had more than once snuffed out the tender flower of a young life before it could grow and flourish and become a mighty tree. As he entered the room, a silence like that of Judgment Day itself fell over everyone, and it seemed that the world held its breath while he walked to the buffet and thundered a command to the trembling waiter there. “Give me a sandwich,” he said. “And hold the pickles.”