Write a 150 word reflection in email format about what you learned in the attached files

IIIlDi:ImId BY CHRIS BIELASZKA-DUVERNAY

Is Following the Rules Tripping Up Your Message?

Some grammar rules you learned in school aren't rules at all. Here are the most troublesome.

WILL THE SKY FALL if you end asentence with a preposition? Will gravity fail if you split an infinitive? No, of course not.

In fact, your most sophisticated read- ers won't even bat an eye. And it's not because they've become so accus- tomed to the shortcuts and improvisa- tions of e-mail that they don't notice when someone breaks a rule. They still notice, all right. It's just that they know that some "rules" aren't rules at all-and never were.

These nonrules are known as "super- stitions" among the grammar and usage set, and they may be preventing your writing from being as strong, direct, and effective as it can be. Here are the four most common:

o Never end a sentence with a preposition. This is one of the most enduring of superstitions, despite cen- turies of commentary trying to dispel it.

The origins of this bugaboo lie in ety- mology and the origins of English grammar, explains Bryan A. Garner, widely respected language authority and author of the excellent A Dictio- nary of Modern American Usage.

In Latin, preposition means "stand before," and in Latin a preposition does indeed stand before other words; it's the one part of speech that can't end a Latin sentence.

But English is not Latin. Aliliough English grammar is modeled on Latin grammar, the languages are very dif- ferent and some rules just don't trans- late well.

Criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition, Winston Churchill is said to have quipped, "That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put." As this absurdly stilted sen- tence demonstrates, the syntactical contortions necessary to keep a sen- tence ending preposition-free result in awkward, turgid prose-not the best vehicle for your message.

@ Never split an infinitive. The fact is, some infinitives beg to be split. Consider this sentence: Our CEO expects to more than double revenues this year.

Try rewriting it so as to eliminate the split infinitive; there's no way to do it without losing the precise meaning of the original.

Here is another example: We are try- ing to immediately solve any cus- tomer-service problems that arise.

Transposing to and immediately con- fuses the meaning-immediately seems to modify are trying. Placing immediately after solve makes the sentence stilted. And moving immedi- ately to the end of the sentence is no good, because there it appears to mod- ifyarise.

With split infinitives, the best bet is to steer a middle course. If you can avoid a split infinitive without altering meaning, introducing ambiguity, or interrupting flow, you should do so, advises Gamer.

8 Never begin a sentence with and or but. Go ahead and do it- you'll be in good company. The

Copyright © 2002 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Oxford English Dictionary cites sen- tences beginning with and that date back to the 10th century.

A scholar in the 1960s, says Garner, studied the work of top-flight writ- ers-H.L. Mencken and Lionel Trilling among them-and found that nearly 9% of their sentences began with and or but. Garner's own research has turned up similar results.

Some writers substitute however for but at the beginning of a sentence, believing that by so doing they're hewing to the grammatical line. What they're doing is stalling the progress of their prose. But at the beginning of a sentence keeps things zipping nicely along, while however-followed by its obligatory comma-is a verbal speed bump, jarring the reader and slowing him down.

e Never write a one-sentence paragraph. Varied paragraph length, like varied sentence length, is a hall- mark of a skilled stylist. Writing a one-sentence paragraph is an excel- lent way to grab the reader's attention or emphasize an important point.

Just don't overdo it. 0

Chris Bielaszka-DuVernay can be reached at [email protected]

---« FURTHER READING )1---

A Dictionary of Modern American Usage

by Bryan A. Garner Oxford University Press' 1998

---1( WEB RESOURCES )1---- To access two modern usage guides, The

American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996) and The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993), as well as two classics, William

Strunk, Jr.s The Elements of Style (1918) and H.w. Fowler's The King's English (2nd ed.; 1908), go to

www.bartleby.com/usage/

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