Solutions for Wordy Phrasing

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Efforts to make your writing more concise are admirable, but although some words and phrases won’t be missed or fewer or shorter words can be substituted, others may serve a useful distinction. Note, in the following examples and annotations, the differences in the suitability of various phrases.

“What the organization aims to do is produce an economically sustainable model.”
When a sentence describes a series of actions, revise to expunge the weakest among them. Start the sentence with the subject by omitting what, then delete do, and the rest falls into place: “The organization aims to produce an economically sustainable model.”

“I appreciate the fact that we can discuss this reasonably.”
A fact does not need to be identified as such. When such self-referential labeling occurs, delete it: “I appreciate that we can discuss this reasonably.”

“Due to the fact that you arrived late, we missed our flight.”
What does “due to the fact that” mean? “Because.” So use because instead: “Because you arrived late, we missed our flight.”

“We arrived early in order to get good seats.”
“In order to” can easily be reduced to to: “We arrived early to get good seats.” However, sometimes — especially in sentences in which the phrase precedes know or a similar verb — including it seems an improvement on the more concise version.

Retaining the phrase in “She reread the essay in order to understand its argument more clearly,” for example, suggests a contemplation that “She reread the essay to understand its argument more clearly” does not, and “She reread the essay so that she understood its argument more clearly” is the same length as, and no more elegant than, the original wording. “So as to” is a similar construction, as in “We studied other cultures so as to appreciate traditional customs that persist in immigrant communities.”

Also, “in order” is best retained before a negative infinitive, as in “I tiptoed across the room in order not to wake her.”

“I left the papers on my desk in order that I would not forget them.”
“In order that” is equivalent to so and can be replaced by that word: “I left the papers on my desk so I would not forget them.” (That may be retained but is optional.)

5 Cases of “Which”/“That” Confusion

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Perhaps you are confused by grammatical discussions of restrictive and nonrestrictive — or essential or nonessential — clauses. (I know I can never keep those terms straight.)

Never mind the nomenclature; when you’re editing your own writing, or someone else’s, simply read the phrase that follows a which (or who) or a that and determine whether the phrase that follows is parenthetical (it can be removed with no change of meaning to the sentence) or it is integral to the sentence. Here are five sample sentences followed by explanation of the problem and a revision.

1. “The inventor of the Etch A Sketch toy that generations of children drew on, shook up, and started over, has died in France, the toy’s maker said.”
The use of that to serve as a grammatical bridge between the name of the product and the phrase describing how it was used implies that more than one type of product called the Etch A Sketch exists; the one that children used as described is, according to this sentence construction, one of two or more types.

When that is replaced with which, and which is preceded by a comma, the sentence structure makes clear that the existence of other Etch A Sketch products is not implied: “The inventor of the Etch A Sketch toy, which generations of children have drawn on and shaken up before starting over, has died in France, the toy’s maker said.” (Note, too, that I have altered the wording explaining how the toy is used and have changed the tense to indicate that the product is extant.)

2. “It was a time when tensions were growing between the black and Jewish communities that had previously been aligned in efforts to affect social change.”
The point of this sentence is not what had occurred between certain communities of black and Jewish people, but what the entire black and Jewish communities had experienced. The restrictive force of that must be replaced by the parenthetical purpose of a comma followed by which: “It was a time when tensions were growing between the black and Jewish communities, which had previously been aligned in efforts to affect social change.”

3. “Police are probing allegations of incidents involving the renowned astrophysicist who is paralyzed.”
The phrase “the renowned astrophysicist who is paralyzed” distractingly refers to the concept of astrophysicists who are not paralyzed. However, “who is paralyzed” is merely additional information appended to the factual statement, and should be attached with a comma followed by who (the equivalent of which): “Police are probing allegations of incidents involving the renowned astrophysicist, who is paralyzed.”

4. “The company’s incident-response team can quickly and reliably identify events, which threaten an organization’s security posture.”
Here and in the example below, the problem in the previous sentence is reversed: This statement implies that all events are threatening. Replacing the comma and which with that corrects that impression by restricting the meaning to refer specifically to threatening events: “The company’s incident-response team can quickly and reliably identify events that threaten an organization’s security posture.”

5. “The court ruled this week that a law passed last summer, which gave five top government-office holders immunity from prosecution, was illegal and must be revoked.”
This sentence construction suggests that the summer, rather than the law, granted immunity. Removal of the bracketing commas and replacement of which with that integrates the central point into the framing sentence: “The court ruled this week that a law passed last summer that gave five top government-office holders immunity from prosecution is illegal and must be revoked.”

How Do You Determine Whether to Use Who or Whom?

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Even the boldest, most confident writers can cower in fear and sob with frustration when confronted with the problem of whether to use who or whom in a sentence. Heck, I know it confuses me.

Here’s the distinction: Use who to refer to the subject of the sentence (“I am the person who you are looking for”) and whom to refer to the object of the sentence (“Whom have you invited?”)

If you’re still unsure about which form to use in a sentence, try this test: Restate the sentence with a personal pronoun, or, if it is a question, answer the question with one word. If the personal pronoun in the restatement or response is he or she, who is correct. If it’s him or her, whom is correct.

Statement: “I have a friend who can help.”
Restatement: “He can help.” (Who is correct.)

Question: “Whom have you invited?”
Response: “Him.” (Whom is correct.)

Note, however, that sometimes you can avoid the problem of determining which form to use by omitting a relative pronoun altogether, and the result is often an improvement. For example, the sentence “I am the person who you are looking for” is better rendered as “I am the person you are looking for.”

Also, beware of these pitfalls: “They’ll complain to whoever [not whomever] will listen” is correct, because whoever is the subject of “will listen.” However, “Whomever [not whoever] you hire is fine with me” is correct because whomever is the object of hire.

Furthermore, use of whom in a sentence such as “It was Smith and Jones whom we had to contend with” is a hypercorrection. (“It was Smith and Jones who we had to contend with” is correct, though the sentence is better with the pronoun omitted: “It was Smith and Jones we had to contend with.”) Append a phrase containing the same pronoun to realize how awkward this form is. (“It was Smith and Jones whom we had to contend with, whom some among us feared.”)

These complications, and others, make traditional rules regarding use of whom problematic; when even experienced writers have to repeatedly pore through a grammar text to remind themselves about the details, the distinction has ceased to be practical. The fusty who/whom distinction is fading in conversational usage, and it is my fervent hope that the use of whom except in unambiguous “to whom” constructions will likewise atrophy.

I’ll let legendary language maven William Safire have the last word: Of this issue, he said, in effect, when the question of whether to use whom or who arises, revise the sentence so that you don’t have to puzzle over which form is correct.

Five “Not This . . . But That” Parallelism Problems

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Just as “not only . . . but also” constructions often stymie writers , similar syntactical phrasing can be difficult to form correctly.

1. “The movie achieves its effects, not by threatening to show you something hideous, but by getting under your skin and into your head.”
This sentence constructs the comparative phrases (“not by [this] but by [that]”) correctly, but the internal punctuation is superfluous: “The movie achieves its effects not by threatening to show you something hideous but by getting under your skin and into your head.”

2. “I caution her not to rely so heavily on what she thinks others would do, but on her own intuition.”
Because the verb rely applies to both comparative phrases, as achieves does in the first example, both the phrase beginning with not and the one beginning with but should follow the verb; the phrase describing the recommended strategy should also be revised to more thoroughly parallel the description of the person’s original approach: “I caution her to rely not so heavily on what she thinks others would do but to depend, rather, on her intuition.”

3. “He films it in a way that doesn’t suggest good taste, but colossal presumption and delusion.”
This sentence has the same error of parallelism as the preceding one; the verb suggest should precede both the not phrase (here, its beginning is disguised as doesn’t) and the but phrase: “He films it in a way that suggests not good taste but colossal presumption and delusion.”

4. “But the story here is not one of privacy infringement so much as the way real estate is changing because of technology.”
The comparative phrasing here is incomplete; a repetition of is within a mirroring verb phrase must be inserted before the concluding phrase: “But the story here is not one of privacy infringement so much as it is the way real estate is changing because of technology.”

5. “They accomplished this task both by utilizing the built-in transformation tools and creating their own.”
Both is correctly positioned only if by is repeated before the verb in the second part of the compound phrase: “They accomplished this task both by utilizing the built-in transformation tools and by creating their own.” Otherwise, both should switch places with by: “They accomplished this task by both utilizing the built-in transformation tools and creating their own.”

Five Compound-Word Corrections

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1. “Eating McDonald’s food everyday for four weeks turned this filmmaker into a bloated, depressed wreck.”
Everyday is an adjective (“It’s not an everyday occurrence”). “Every day” is a phrase consisting of an adjective and a noun (“That’s not something you see every day”). In this sentence, the usage is adjective-plus-noun: “Eating McDonald’s food every day for four weeks turned this filmmaker into a bloated, depressed wreck.”

2. “Seen as both godsend and a major let down, it remains the city’s artistic center.”
“Let down,” consisting of a verb and an adverb, is employed in such sentences as “He was let down.” As a closed compound, it’s a noun: “That’s a real letdown.” In this sentence, it should be in noun form: “Seen as both godsend and a major letdown, it remains the city’s artistic center.”

3. “Resistance from the state legislature could doom the governor-elect’s promise to rollback the hike.”
A rollback is a thing (“The rollback proposal failed in committee”); to roll back is to perform an action (“The state will roll back the price hike”). This sentence refers to an action, not a thing, so the compound must be changed to a verb phrase: “Resistance from the state legislature could doom the governor-elect’s promise to roll back the hike.”

4. “California gave a record $100 million loan to bailout schools.”
As in the previous example, what is in context an action is styled as a noun. The sentence should read, “California gave a record $100 million loan to bail out schools.” Better yet, close the sentence with the preposition: “California gave a record $100 million loan to bail schools out.”

5. “International organizations continue their pull out as rebels attack a train.”
If the sentence read that the organizations continued to pull out, the two-word verb phrase would be correct. But pulling out is an action, so it’s a pullout: “International organizations continue their pullout as rebels attack a train.”

Plural But Singular in Construction

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In the dictionary, when you’re looking up a noun that ends in s, you’re apt to find a notation like this: “noun plural but singular in construction.” What does that mean?

This description refers to words like news that appear to be plural but take a singular verb (hence the word construction, meaning “sentence structure,” not “appearance”). One category of words plural in appearance but singular in use is that of intellectual pursuits and their associated academic disciplines: For mathematics, physics, and the like, we use a singular verb: “Mathematics is difficult for him”; “The physics is staggeringly complex.” However, similar terms may use singular or plural verbs depending on the sense: “Statistics is not my favorite subject”; “The statistics are valid.”

In other contexts, usage varies. Gymnastics is treated singularly (“Gymnastics is an Olympic sport”), but calisthenics takes a plural verb (“Calisthenics are boring”). Both words refer to a routine of physical activities, but noun-verb agreement is inconsistent.

Some words that are plural but refer to a unified pair of objects, such as (eye)glasses, pants, and scissors, are nevertheless associated with plural verbs: “My glasses are missing”; “These pants have gotten too tight”; “The scissors are dull.”

Words in several other categories are categorical exceptions: Proper names, composition titles, and words used as words are always singular, even if they are plural in form:

• Acme and Sons is a highly rated company.
• Spats is a downtown bar.
• Demons is a terrible movie.
• Shades is a best-selling novel.
• Hits is an informal word meaning “search returns.”
• Aussies is a nickname for Australians.

A few words appear to be plural but are in fact taken directly from other languages in which s at the end of a word does not denote a plural form. For example, biceps (from Latin) is singular, though many people refer to the muscle in the front of one upper arm as a bicep, and kudo (from Greek) is widely employed as the singular form of kudos — meaning “praise” or “prestige” — though the latter form is singular. (Bicep and kudo are back-formations — linguistic innovations of varying legitimacy — but are not advisable in formal writing.)

Rarely, you’ll see a word that is plural in both appearance and usage, though the literal meaning of the word is singular. For example, whereabouts means “location,” but one writes that a person’s whereabouts are unknown (even though a person can be in only one location at once).