Guide to Grammar and Style -- P

From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.
Comments are welcome.

Paragraphs.

There's no hard and fast rule for the length of a paragraph: it can be as short as a sentence or as long as it has to be. Just remember that each paragraph should contain only one developed idea. A paragraph often begins with a topic sentence which sets the tone of the paragraph; the rest amplifies, clarifies, or explores the topic sentence. When you change topics, start a new paragraph.

Be sure your paragraphs are organized to help your argument along. Each paragraph should build on what came before, and should lay the ground for whatever comes next. Mastering transitions can make a very big difference in your writing.

Parameter.

Use this nasty vogue word, and I'll forgive you only if you're a mathematician, a scientist, or a computer programmer. (Even then, I'll probably forgive you only grudgingly.) The rest of the world can safely do without. [Entry added 14 August 1999]

Parentheses.

Don't bury important ideas in parentheses. Dan White's example points out the danger of using parentheses for important thoughts:

The American and French Revolutions (which provided the inspiration for Blake's prophetic poetry) were very important to English writers of the 1780s and '90s.
Here the substantial part of the sentence is buried in a parenthesis, while the weaker part (note the word "important") is in the main clause. See also Emphasis.

Note that sentence-ending periods should go outside the parentheses if the parenthetical remark is part of a larger sentence, but inside the parentheses if it's not embedded in a larger sentence. This is an example of the first (notice the punctuation goes outside, because we're still part of that outer sentence). (This is an example of the second, because we're no longer inside any other sentence; the parenthesis is its own sentence.)

Participles.

See Dangling Participles.

Passive Voice.

The active voice takes the form of "A does B"; the passive takes the form of "B is done [by A]."

There are two problems with the passive voice. The first is that sentences often become dense and clumsy when they're filled with passive constructions. The more serious danger of the passive voice, though, is that it lets the writer shirk the responsibility of providing a subject for the verb. Dan White gives an example:

"I'm sorry that the paper was poorly written." If you're going to apologize, apologize: "I'm sorry I wrote a bad paper." The active voice forces one to be specific and confident, not wimpy.
And the stakes can be higher when you're talking about atrocities worse than bad papers. This is why nefarious government and corporate spokesmen are so fond of the passive voice: think of the notorious all-purpose excuse, "Mistakes were made." Then think about how much weaseling is going on in a sentence like "It has been found regrettable that the villagers' lives were terminated" -- notice especially how the agency has disappeared altogether. It should make you shudder.

In your own writing, therefore, try to prefer the active voice whenever you can. Instead of the passive "You will be given a guide," try the active "We will give you a guide" -- notice the agent ("We") is still there.

Don't go overboard, though. Some passives are necessary and useful. In scientific writing, for instance, sentences are routinely written in the passive voice; the authors are therefore given less importance, and the facts are made to speak for themselves. Even in non-scientific writing, not all passives can be avoided.

Don't confuse am, is, are, to be, and such with the passive voice, and don't confuse action verbs with the active voice. The real question is whether the subject of the sentence is doing anything, or having something done to it. I have been giving is active, while I have been given is passive.

Per.

Avoid the businessese habit of using per instead of according to, as in per manufacturers' guidelines. Ick.

Person.

See First Person.

Personalized.

Personalized means made personal, and suggests that something was not personal but now is. This isn't what you mean in phrases like personalized attention. Use personal. See Obfuscation.

Plus.

The use of the word plus where and or with would be better is a bad habit picked up from advertising copy. Try to limit plus to mathematics, and use and or with where they're appropriate.

Precision.

The guiding principle in all your word choices should be precision, the most important contributor to clarity.

Sometimes this means choosing words a little out of the ordinary: peripatetic might come closer to the mark than wandering, and recondite is sometimes more accurate than obscure. But while a large vocabulary will help you here, don't resort to long words or obfuscation. More often precision means choosing the right familiar word: paying attention to easily confused pairs like imply and infer, and making sure the words you choose have exactly the right meaning. For instance, "Hamlet's situation is extremely important in the play" means almost nothing. Try something that expresses a particular idea, like "Hamlet's indecision forces the catastrophe" or "The murder of Hamlet's father brings about the crisis."

Precision can also mean putting your words in just the right order, or using just the right grammatical construction to make your point. Always read your writing as closely as possible, paying attention to every word, and ask yourself whether every word says exactly what you want.

Prepositions.

Prepositions are usually little words that indicate direction, position, location, and so forth. Some examples: to, with, from, at, in, near, by, beside, and above.

A quick-and-dirty rule of thumb: you can usually recognize a preposition by putting it before the word he. If your ear tells you he should be him, the word might be a preposition. Thus to plus he becomes to him, so to is a preposition. (This doesn't help with verbs of action; show + he becomes show him. Still, it might help in some doubtful cases.)

Prepositions at the End.

Along with split infinitives, a favorite bugbear of the traditionalists. Whatever the merit of the rule -- and both historically and logically, there's not much -- there's a substantial body of opinion against end-of-sentence prepositions; if you want to keep the crusty old-timers happy, try to avoid ending written sentences (and clauses) with prepositions, such as to, with, from, at, and in. Instead of writing "The topics we want to write on," where the preposition on ends the clause, consider "The topics on which we want to write." Prepositions should usually go before (pre-position) the words they modify.

On the other hand -- and it's a big other hand -- old-timers shouldn't always dictate your writing, and you don't deserve your writing license if you elevate this rough guideline into a superstition. Don't let it make your writing clumsy or obscure; if a sentence is more graceful with a final preposition, let it stand. A sentence becomes unnecessarily obscure when it's filled with from whoms and with whiches. According to a widely circulated (and often mutated) story, Winston Churchill, reprimanded for ending a sentence with a preposition, put it best: "This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put."

Previous.

Overused. Earlier may be more to the point, and previous is often redundant, as in "Our previous discussion." Unless you mean to distinguish that discussion from another one (such as "the discussion before the one I just mentioned"), leave out previous, since you're not likely to mention discussions you haven't had yet.

Prior to.

For a less stuffy and bureaucratic tone, replace prior to or prior with before or earlier whenever possible.

Proofreading.

You should always read over your wrok carefully before handing it to someone esle, looking for typoos, mispelled words, problems with agreement, words that missing, and so on. There's nothing wrong with using a spelling checker, but they routinely miss so many things that you still have to read your work closely. (Don't depend on grammar checkers, which usually make your writing worse, not better.)

Remember, though, that proofreading is only one part of the revision process. [Entry revised 14 August 1999]

Pronoun.

A pronoun takes the place of a noun: it stands for (Latin pro-) a noun. Pronouns include he, it, her, me, and so forth. Instead of saying "Bob gave Terry a memo Bob wrote, and Terry read the memo," we'd use the nouns Bob, Terry, and memo only once, and let pronouns do the rest: "Bob gave Terry a memo he wrote, and she read it."

There are a few special sorts of pronouns: possessive pronouns, such as my, hers, and its, which mean of something or belonging to something; and relative pronouns, such as whose and which, that connect a relative clause to a sentence: "She read the memo, which mentioned the new system."

Punctuation and Quotation Marks.

In America, commas and periods go inside quotation marks, while semicolons and colons go outside, regardless of the punctuation in the original quotation. Question marks and exclamation points depend on whether the question or exclamation is part of the quotation, or part of the sentence containing the quotation. Some examples: In American usage, all quoted material goes in "double quotation marks"; if you need a quotation inside a quotation, use 'single quotation marks' (also called "inverted commas") inside: "This for quotations, 'this' for quotations inside quotations." Quotations inside quotations are the only place for single quotation marks -- don't use them to highlight individual words.

Punctuation and Spaces.

The traditional rule, and one especially suited to the monospaced fonts common in typescripts (as opposed to desktop publishing): put one space after a comma or semicolon; put two spaces after a (sentence-ending) period, exclamation point, or question mark. Colons have been known to go either way. For spaces after quotation marks, base your choice on the punctuation inside the quotation. Publishers often (but not always) use standard word spacing between sentences (it's a matter of house style), and it seems to be gaining ground among typists today, perhaps through the influence of desktop publishing. In any case, it's nothing to fret about.
I get a ridiculous amount of mail about this one point -- at least one (often heated) message a week, more than on all the other topics in this guide put together. I wish I understood this strange passion. My only advice to those who want to quarrel about it is that your time would be better spent worrying about other things.
See also Ellipses.