Past or Present Perfect?

Here is favorite trick question I like to ask people in my writing classes: 

If you were writing to your manager about completing an assigned task, which is sentence correct: I completed the task or I have completed the task? 

The answer: Both are correct. It depends on the impression you want to give your manager. Let me explain why I prefer I have completed the task. 

The first sentence, I completed the task, is in the simple past tense, indicating a past action; the second sentence, I have completed the task, is in the present perfect, indicating an action started in the past and just completed. I would want my manager to know that I haven't wasted a moment from the time of completing the task to the time of alerting her about it. That's the value of the present perfect: its immediacy. 

Think of the importance of reporting to management in the present perfect tense in these cases:

• I have started the investigation.
• You have used an expired password.
• The client has contacted me about her concern.

In all three cases, you do not want management to think you're wasting time in updating them about the issue at hand. So use the present perfect to express that urgency.

Two Negatives Equal a Positive━Really?

I used  to teach the idea that English has characteristics just like mathematics, but I do not any longer because, as you might suspect, every English rule, unlike mathematics, has exceptions. While 1 + 1  always did, always does, and always will = 2,  honest writing teachers must admit to their students that language is far more subjective, all too often laden with uneducated opinion and fraught with majority- or authority-rule tastes. 

Take the rule claiming two negatives make a positive, just like math. Saying "I am not unaware" means I am aware, saying "I cannot make a mistake" asserts I want to do something correctly, and saying "I will not hurt you" implies you will be safe with me. 

But you can't count on two negatives making a positive. For example, you can imagine an astronomy professor facetiously saying, "Galileo did not err when he distanced himself from heliocentrism during the Inquisition." In fact, you can't even depend on two positives making a positive. If you asked whether I was willing to freefall from the roof of a 14-story building, you can picture me ironically replying, "Sure I would do that."

Too much depends on context for insisting on right-wrong rulings for English usage. Ain't that right?

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 19: Connotation

Do not be surprised when you hear a manager or peer advise you to avoid using a particular word because of what it connotes, meaning the feeling that the word may suggest beyond its dictionary definition, or what the word denotes. 

Three situations come to mind. I one did a consulting job for a major financial advisory firm. When I requested a red marker to highlight a key point on a flipchart, the client told me that red was a banned ink color because it implies "being in the red," a frightening prospect for portfolio managers. Really? Another time I accepted as a compliment an elder telling me I was special to her, yet even an apparently innocent word like special could turn pejorative, as in "He is a special case," which might mean an exception to the preferred standard, or a simply a problem. And sometimes the connotation depends on who is in the communication. The now-dated expression "You go, girl" is always better said by one woman to another than by a man to a woman, as the man may seem sexist or demeaning.

If you're thinking that this is the be-all and end-all of political correctness, remember that we all have language threshold and that language has always been political. For sure, certain choice words directed toward anyone at the wrong time could cause a major meltdown. 

Nevertheless, connotation can add humor, spice, or drama to a written or spoken message, as long as we steer clear of people's age, sex, race, religion, national origin, abilities or disabilities, sexual orientation or identification, economic status, or political persuasion. (Did I cover them all?) 

There's still plenty of room for connotation if you consider how words can take on both positive and negative shades. The word meticulous (denotation: careful, precise), can mean to show due attention to detail, or to judge in a picayune manner. We need to think about the reason and the object of our connation for appropriateness, and then think twice for potential unintended interpretations. 

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 18: Periphrasis

I am a big fan of using one word to replace two or more. I would rather write, "Call me to get a parking permit" (7 words) than "Call me in order to get a parking permit" (9 words), or "You have passed the manager's test" (6 words) than "We are informing you that you have passed the manager's test" (11 words), or "I request your help" (4 words) than "I am writing to request your help" (7 words).

At times, however, an extra word can add emphasis to writing. Take the case of periphrasis, the use of multiple words to convey the meaning of a single word, usually in place of a prefix (a meeting before the conference instead of a pre-conference meeting) or a suffix (he is more wise than I thought instead of he is wiser than I thought). 

Here are some examples of when periphrasis might have greater impact than its more concise version:

• Ana did attend all workshop sessions, so she should get a completion certificate. (The words did attend give more emphasis than attended.)
• Beatriz won't admit it, but she did go to Mardi Gras during the pandemic. (In using did go rather than went, the writer applies greater contrast between the claim and the denial.)
• Corazón is the most kind person I met during that difficult time. (Most kind seems even more superlative than kindest because of the otherwise difficult time the writer was having.) 

Needless to say, avoid periphrasis when the extra words are meaningless: Let's meet is better than Let's have a meeting; We need to agree is better than We need to arrive at an agreement; and You must decide is better than You must make a decision.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 17: Idiom

Using idioms is a popular way to put color into your writing. An idiom is an expression that breaks logic semantically (meaning) or syntactically (grammar). Here are examples of each:

Semantic Idioms

If we choose the wrong path, we could get into hot water. (get into trouble)

He always submits his work at the eleventh hour. (at the last minute) 

When it comes to paying the bill, she always says she's broke. (lacking money) 

You need to learn to go with the flow. (be agreeable)

Syntactic Idioms

Not on your life would I run for president. (for no reason)

No way will I donate to such a radical cause! (definitely not) 

What's up, Charlie? (what's new?) 

I have been living from hand to mouth during the pandemic. (survive with hardly the basics) 

Occasionally, nonnative English speakers tell me that they want to master idioms because they will appear more conversant with the language. They are spot on, to use an idiom.

Improving Your Style Through Diction Part 16: Asyndeton

When dropping a conjunction from a phrase or sentence, we are using asyndeton. This literary device comes close to the way we often express ourselves in common speech.

Notice how the semicolon replaces and in the sentence I'll write the report; you'll present it to the team. 

Writing in comma splices, a technical error to grammatical purists, seems to be the fashion. Here are examples of how comma splices are the result of using asyndeton: 

• Dana worked hard on the project, she needs a vacation.
• He writes reports for the regulator, slide presentations for the department, proposals for the Board. 
• Please reach me email, Leslie by text.

Asyndeton can create elements of surprise or power when used sparingly. Abraham Lincoln used asyndeton in his Gettysburg Address ("government of the people by the people, for the people") so we should look for opportunities to use it, to captivate our readers (I just used asyndeton). 

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 15: Hyperbole

Hyperbole is so overused it's taken over our lives. I know: I'm being hyperbolic. Hyperbole, exaggerations we do not mean to be taken literally, is a literary device most teachers at school and managers in the office would tell us to avoid. I say not so fast. 

Hyperboles appear in everyday speech and writing, especially on social media. Some hyperboles we use seem harmless enough: Ana is loaded with money, Billy has tons of projects, Carlee walks faster than a cheetah runs, Danny reviewed the accuracy of the protocol a million times. 

So how might we use hyperbole appropriately at work? Here are some examples I've come across that affected me positively with zero offense factor:

• Evelyn's support during the project saved the team.
• Franco's slide presentation spellbound his audience.
• Gayle will get back to you in a flash.
• Hank is an Einstein when it comes to analytics.

So sure, use hyperbole, but be mindful of your teachers' and managers' admonitions to keep them as real as you can for the intended effect.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 14: Anthropomorphism

While personification renders human qualities to nonhuman things, especially natural forces like wind, fire, and ocean, anthropomorphism attributes human qualities to animals. I use this literary device when I say, as I have, the rabbits conspire to reap the harvest of my vegetable garden; or the male cardinal, knowing how I await the sight of his beauty, sashays along my fence before flying off to entertain my neighbor; or her dog, realizing his complaining is pointless, chooses the more practical path of stretching out on the living room floor.

Those who think anthropomorphism in business writing is foolish haven't considered that companies and brands like Jaguar, Puma, and Red Bull named themselves after animals. Of course, sports teams are notorious for doing the same: Chicago Bulls, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Minnesota Lynx, to name only a few.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 13: Personification

Plant and vehicle lovers tend to use personification when speaking of the object of their affection. I heard a friend say her plants say thank you when they blossom in response to her watering them, and another tell me about how his motorcycle understands all kinds of road conditions. Personification, the attributing of human qualities to nonhuman things, challenges readers as well as listeners to use their imagination. 

We use personification when we say those meatballs and sausages were mean to us, or the sun caresses our flesh, or a hard rain smacks our windshield. We personify computers all the time when we say they know a lot, work fast, and die suddenly.

Sometimes, writers can get carried away with personification, as does Ernest Hemingway in translating Spanish speakers to English in For Whom the Bell Tolls, when the mountain rebels make their machine guns "speak" or Eugene O'Neill, whose Christopher Christopherson in Anna Christie says, "dat ole davil, sea—she knows!" But thoughtful personification adds excitement to our writing and even brings clarity to it.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 12: Simile

Simile is a figure of speech similar to a metaphor, but one we are more likely to use in everyday speech. For example, we often hear a beautiful child is as cute a kitten, or a clumsy person is like a bull in a china shop, or a mighty one is as strong as an ox. 

Instead of using metaphor to show someone or something directly applies to someone or something else, we use simile to show someone or something is like someone or something else. The key word in using simile is like or as:

• The proud janitor moves her mop like a queen brandishing her staff.
• She entered the meeting like a general.
• The singer hits those high notes like an angel. 

As with metaphor, we can use simile in writing at work. In fact, we do when we write, "Our office gets as hectic as rush hour in Times Square," or "Business in the personal protective equipment industry during the pandemic has soared like a meteor."

Using simile paints pictures for our readers like no other literary device, so invent some.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 11: Metaphor

To describe our world, we often use metaphor, which is a figure of speech directly applied to someone or something to show resemblance, although the association cannot be literal. We use metaphors in multiple ways:

• people with other people (My sister is the queen during our family's multi-city Zoom meetings.)
• people with animals (The boxer became a bull terrier as he slashed through the ring.) 
• people with things (Mother was the glue of our family.)
• things with other things (San Sebastian is the heaven of food.)
• places with other places (The platoon waded through hell in the rat-infested swamp.) 

Metaphors enliven not only fiction writing but our business correspondence. Instead of writing "Our company is at the top of the IT field," we might write "Our company stands atop the Everest of IT."  

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 10: Consonance

As with assonance, consonance is the repetition of sounds within the same phrase or sentence, the difference being that assonance uses vowel sounds and consonance consonant sounds. Notice the repetition of w and wh sounds in this example from one of my poems, "Do You See These Buildings?":

They wondered whether this was what

they signed up for, if all the awful waiting

through the waste was worth their while.

In this next example, the r sound repeats:

The rabbits running across garden wreaked destruction, tearing through the mesh barrier and devouring the carrots, parsnip, and radish.

Consonance brings simple pleasures to the reading experience. 

  

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 9: Assonance

By repeating the same vowel sounds within words in the same phrase or sentence, assonance creates musicality to a passage. Here are some examples:

• When the fans deem the Dream Team has run out of steam, it seems they scream louder.
• All of us were awed by Paula's thoughtful offer.
• The man who owns the apple stand on Samson Way passed away yesterday, I'm sad to say.

Using assonance at strategic points of a story or essay adds a dash of poetry. 

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 8: Alliteration

Alliteration, the use of identical initial consonant sounds on a string of words, can realize a desired mood. Alliteration is usually taught as a poetic device, but it also works well in prose. Here are four examples:

She pressed her palms together in prayer promising piety to Providence.

The water felt like waves of sweat as I swam swiftly in the sweltering swamp.

He thunderously thrust his way through the thorny thicket.  

Woe to those wastrels for their wanton ways! 

Exaggerations? I suppose. When using alliteration, the idea is not to hatch a tongue twister but to create an effect that complements your point. Used sparingly and strategically, it can enliven your story line.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 7: Neologism

Another rhetorical device for adding color to writing is the neologism, which is a relatively new word (e.g., frenemy, a friend with whom one frequently quarrels) or a standard word that has taken a new meaning (e.g., friend, now used as a verb meaning to add someone to a personal social media platform). As you might imagine, technological and cultural changes are the source of most neologisms. 

We do not have a set time for when a neologism stops being one. Some people would still consider vaping (2014) and staycation (2005) neologisms but not selfie (2006) and photobomb (2008). I think this is mostly dependent on the beholder's age and the word's pervasiveness.

Some of us might create a neologism of our own among our select circles. For instance, if one of a group of your friends, Terry, is perpetually late for get-togethers, you might say to everyone in that group, "Show up on time. Don't Terry it." 

I was surprised and, to say the least, deeply disappointed, to find online suckbomb defined as a word coined in 2009 to describe weak opponents in fantasy leagues. Absolutely not true! I coined it 43 years earlier, in 1966, in the James Monroe Housing Projects of the Bronx, to mean someone who is truly, indisputably, and unalterably useless or annoying. Don't tell me people don't rewrite history! If I could get my hands on the suckbomb who took credit for suckbomb.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 6: Synecdoche

The figure of speech synecdoche, the use of a term to refer to something more specific or more general, is a useful device for adding creative spice to your writing. Synecdoche falls into two categories, microcosm and macrocosm. 

We employ microcosm synecdoche when referring to someone or something specific to mean what it represents in general, as in "They're no Einsteins" as a stand-in for geniuses, or "The houses in that neighborhood are Hearst Castles" to mean mansions. 

Alternatively, we use macrocosm synecdoche when referring to someone or something in general to mean what it represents specifically, as in "New Yorkers run in Central Park year round" to mean just that select group of people who run in Central Park no matter where they're from, or "the United States declared war" to mean only the United States Congress declared war. 

You probably use synecdoche in everyday conversation more than you think, but once you do begin to think about it, you'll get more creative with this valuable literary device.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 5: Onomatopoeia

Words are never the thing they describe, but that does not stop them from trying. Take onomatopoeia, a word that sounds like the word it describes. Just by their sounds, can't you just picture the head getting a crew cut upon hearing buzz, the bodies that splash when hitting the water, or the floor being cleared with a broom that sweeps?

Literary Devices does a good job of explaining onomatopoeia and providing examples, in case you want to use this tool to enliven your writing.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 4: Loanwords

The next time you hear people speaking a foreign language when suddenly an English word pops into their conversation, consider two points about word choice. First, they are using a loanword, a word adopted from one language by speakers of another language, more than likely to compensate for lack of a better word in their native tongue. Second, loanwords enrich language like few other linguistic conventions.

English has borrowed from too many languages to mention in a brief blog post: 80 percent of English words come from 350 languages, according to Dictionary.com. Most of us don't even realize how many of loanwords we commonly use, to name a few, amen from Hebrew, agriculture from Latin, beef from French, chess from Persian, cruise from Spanish, democracy from Greek, icon from Russian, zenith from Arabic, and zero from Japanese.

Why borrow words? (Steal is more like it, because we do not return loanwords.) Among many reasons, sometimes a language just cannot come up with a single word to mean what its users want to express. One of my favorite examples is the German zeitgeist, meaning the spirit of the time. The word trend falls short to capture this spirit, if you know what I mean.

You do not have to be an etymologist to appreciate the strange routes some loanwords morph into English. This is one of the delights of learning new words. How did they get here? 

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 3: Watch Those Homographs, Homophones, and Homonyms!

Reviewing our writing for errors with homographs, homophones, and homonyms is helpful since our inattention to them is the cause of many miscues.

Homographs are words that look the same but have different meanings. Knowing that a sewer is a drain as well as a person who sews will prevent you from writing sower, a person who plants, when you mean sewer.

Homophones are words that sound the same but can be spelled differently and have different meanings, such as affect, a verb meaning to influence, and effect, a noun meaning result. My trick to remembering these two is recall the a in affect because it is an action, while the e in effect is the end, or result. 

Homonyms are words that have the same spelling but different meanings, such as lie, the verb meaning to recline, and lie, the verb meaning to tell a falsehood. Not knowing the difference has made most people write, "Let's lay in the grass" when they mean "Let's lie in the grass."

Due yew sea watt eye mien?

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 2: I Ain't Buying Ain't Ain't a Word

What is the fascination with ain't? Why ain't ain't a standard English word? Let me tell you, whoever made up ain't was on to something sensible.

Let's back up a minute. You might have noticed that we can contract common personal pronouns with the being verb in the present tense (I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're) and in the future tense (I'll, we'll, you'll, he'll, she'll, it'll, they'll), but not in the past tense. While our standard language does allow for contracting negatives with being verbs in the past tense (wouldn't) and future tense (won't), it does not completely allow for it in the present tense (yes to we, you, or they aren't and to he, she, or it isn't, but no to I amn't). There just ain't a word for that one, if you follow my meaning. What a headache this causes for speakers and writers craving consistency in their language. No wonder some linguistic genius made up ain't.  

But language ain't, I mean isn't, logical. Of course, I'm used to this inconsistency, so I avoid it in professional speech and writing, but I still use it to be playful (e.g., It ain't gonna happen) or to replicate common speech (e.g., She said, "It ain't my job"). But I still ain't using ain't in formal communication.