It's time to play "What's Wrong Here?"
I realize that reporting the news requires moving very quickly to write, edit, and publish the stories that show up on my doorstep every day. But at times I wonder if they’ve left out the "edit" part of that process, especially when things like this show up, in an Associated Press story about Amelie Mauresmo winning her first Grand Slam title in the Australian Open:
Mauresmo then sat and hung her head, seemingly stunned and overwhelmed. She finally got up and rose her arms in triumph, choking back her own tears of emotion, as French flags fluttered in the stands, still looking less than triumphant as Henin-Hardenne continued to weep.
Anybody want to take a shot at identifying what’s wrong with that paragraph?
Roy Jacobsen
We have a winner! Ray Ward said:
I think it’s the verb, "rose." Shouldn’t that be "raised"? "Rose" is past tense of "rise," which is intransitive. "Raise" is transitive, and since she raised something (her arms), the writer needed a transitive verb.
That’s it exactly. And this is as good a time as any to talk about transitive and intransitive verbs.
An idea I’ll repeat frequently here is that good writing focusses on actors performing actions. The actors are the subjects of your sentences, and the actions are verbs. (We’re not going down this rabbit trail right now, but remember that not all verbs are action verbs.)
When you use an action verb—such as smell, gambol, trot, or learn—the action might be done to some object in the sentence, but it might simply be an action. For example, in the sentence "The dog chewed his squeaky toy," chewing is the action, and the object of the action is the squeaky toy. However, in "The dog slept all night," the action is slept, but the action isn’t done to anything; "all night" is not the object of the dog’s sleeping, because sleeping is not an action you do to something else.
Some action verbs require an object, and these verbs are called transitive. The verbs that don’t require an object are intransitive. (I’m not sure if this is the Official Grammar ExplanationTM, but it helps me to think of it this way: If a verb’s action transitions from the subject to an object, it’s a transitive verb. The important thing to remember is that a transitive verb has to have an object.)
Which brings us back (finally) to rise and raise, two verbs with very similar meanings involving going from a lower to a higher position. But rise is intransitive, and raise is transitive. I can’t rise my arms in the air, but I can raise my arms. Speaking in past tense, then, Amelie Mauresmo did not rose her arms, rather, she raised them.
Truth be told, when I read that sentence, I couldn’t immediately explain what was wrong with it using all the highfalutin grammar terms. But I could tell just be the feel of it that something was wrong. Trust your feelings on these things. If something you read or write sounds wrong, chances are good it is wrong, so take a hard look at it.
Roy Jacobsen
David points out that there’s another flaw here. I admit that I didn’t see it because rose was blinding me. Anyone else want to take a stab at it?
Roy Jacobsen
in Writing in its natural habitat, Grammar
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Reader Comments (7)
>seemingly stunned and overwhelmed.
>She finally got up and rose her arms
>in triumph, choking back her own tears
>of emotion, as French flags fluttered in
>the stands, still looking less than
>triumphant as Henin-Hardenne
>continued to weep.
Comments on this paragraph:
>Mauresmo then sat and hung her head,
>seemingly stunned and overwhelmed.
It's well-established by empirical research that readers tend to regard information at the end of a sentence (the "stress position") as the most important information. Since the writer is trying to convey a visual image of what is happening, the visual information is more important and belongs in the stress position:
>>[seemingly] Stunned and overwhelmed,
>>Mauresmo [then] sat and hung
>>her head. [lose the qualifiers]
In addition, it is often (though not always) helpful to the reader if things are kept in logical and chronological order. Here, "stunned and overwhelmed" describes a motive; "sat and hung her head" describes the action. In this case I would put the motive before the action.
>She finally got up and rose her arms
>in triumph, choking back her own tears
>of emotion, as French flags fluttered in
>the stands, still looking less than
>triumphant as Henin-Hardenne
>continued to weep.
As someone else noted, this sentence sucks for several reasons. I would cite these: "choking back her own tears of emotion..." As opposed to tears of what? Tears caused by the mace her opponent just sprayed in her face? The writer is trying to evoke an emotional response in the reader; and the surest indication that he is clueless about how to do that is his use of the word "emotion."
"as French flags fluttered in the stands" ... The alliteration seems strained to me. I'm not sure why the flags are mentioned, or why French is specified. Perhaps Muresmo is a native of France. But why bring the flags into this verbal picture? Maybe to give the reader an aural impression of the scene: "For several long moments, the only sound in the arena came from the flags of France snapping softly in the breeze."
"still looking less than triumphant" ... The logic is inscrutable to me. First, Mauresmo is so stunned, she sits and hangs her head. Then she stands and lifts her arms in triumph. BUT ... she looks less than triumphant. Why? Is it because Henin-Hardenne is still weeping? What is Henin-Hardenne blubbering about anyway?
Again, maybe what comes before makes all this clear, but I have my doubts. The writer is trying to show a conflict, or several conflicts, and invoke emotion in the reader, but I can't make sense of the conflict from this excerpt. I would bet that the writer couldn't either, which is why this is such a mess.
I don't know whether "dangling" is the right word, but it seems to me that the "still looking" phrase is misplaced; it reads as if the French flags looked less than triumphant.
However, if I wanted to give the impression that Ms Mauresmo (not the flags) looked less than triumphant I would probably rewrite that sentence.