In the comments to last week’s Mangled Monday about the structure of a letter, Melissa asked: “What do you think about emails that don’t have a salutation? I always try to start mine with a greeting unless I get into a really fast-paced conversation with short emails flying back and forth at a rapid rate. Then it’s more like an IM discussion. I notice many people forgo salutations on emails, especially after the first pass.”

So, let’s explore that.

As I mentioned last week, letters have dates, addresses, salutations, bodies, and closings.

Memos, on the other hand, are much simpler, and laid out in a very different format. They have:

To:
From:
Date:
Subject:
…followed by the text of the memo.

Call me crazy, but that pretty much looks like every email I’ve ever sent. Different programs have different options, of course, but there’s almost always a field to put your To address, and one for a Subject, and there’s always a Date and a From (which may or may not be determined by the person sending the email).

That said, emails seems to be right at the cusp between “letter” and “memo.” There’s no defined, formal format to them (that I’m aware of), and so people kind of feel their way. I have sent and received emails that have salutations and signatures and that basically felt like a letter, but I’ve also gotten emails that were exactly like a memo–short, direct, to the point.

So, let’s open this one up to discussion. What do you folks think? Do you put a salutation at the top of your emails? Do you sign them? Always? Never? Some of the time? Do you treat personal emails differently than business emails?

As we said last time, many of the The Rules that we (supposedly) live by, grammatically speaking, were arbitrarily created by literary men of the past who were trying to organize the English language. Then, as time passed, the rules became venerated. Never use a preposition at the end of a sentence! Never split an infinitive! Never begin a sentence with a conjunction!

I’ve passed some of these  rules on to you in the past, because they’re not bad rules to know, but … why? It’s an intriguing question. If The Rules are arbitrary, why should you follow them?

Well, again, some really are required–just like knowing how to steer and stop your car, you need to know what to do with your nouns and verbs. I think we can all agree that knowing how verb tenses work is pretty important, but that naming the difference between a “past participle” and “present past perfect” is less important. But some rules are more or less arbitrary, like that split infinitive rule.

The thing is–if you are NOT a linguist (and certainly I am not), how can you tell the difference? And why should you care?

This is why The Rules are helpful. Because, even if you really can end a sentence with a preposition, avoiding it is not not going to do you any harm. You can’t actually go wrong by following all those lovely grammatical rules. You might end up sounding formal or stilted, if you take them to extremes, but you’re going to be correct–just as if you wore a suit and tie to a picnic. You might be a little uncomfortable, but you’re not hurting anyone.

And, the other reason to follow The Rules? It’s tradition. There are lots of antiquated traditions that we still follow. Shaking hands stems from the medieval habit of showing that you were not holding your sword, but even though swords have been out of style for quite some time, we still shake hands. We salute as if raising imaginary visors on our imaginary helmets. We bless each others’ souls when we sneeze, even though we don’t really believe the soul is escaping the body. These are traditions, and people like traditions.

It doesn’t hurt to keep the traditions even though they’re obsolete, but neither does it hurt to examine some of the more far-fetched ones. I don’t expect every man I see to open doors for me, though I appreciate it when my hands are full.  I believe that children can, in fact, have things to contribute to conversations with adults. I’m just as glad I don’t need to curtsey when I meet a new person. (”Curtsey,” a word which comes from “courtesy,” but who is that courteous here in the 21st century?)

Then, when you expand the analogy further into “non-traditional” gender/race/religion roles, well, there are definitely times when you shake tradition from your shoes and march bravely into the future.

Another post inspired by that excellent book of David Crystal’s, where he mentions that–in an ideal world–we would raise our children to be linguists rather than grammarians–so that they would know the reasons the language works, not just the rules.

Personally, I think that’s a wonderful idea. I’ve always been a fan of knowing the reasons behind things, rather than being told “Do this.” (Really, ask my mother. I was a stubborn little girl, but if she said something like, “Carry an umbrella so that you can keep your books dry,” I was a lot more likely to bring it along than if she just said, “Bring an umbrella.” I can be reasoned with, but hate being told what to do. But I digress.)

The problem is that most people don’t have the time or inclination to study the history of the language, learning when this structure came into being or that rule started being enforced. Nor do they strictly need it. A 4-year old can get his point across without being able to define exactly what a verb does. What those pesky, somewhat arbitrary grammar rules do is work as short-cuts.

To give you an analogy–you can drive a car without knowing how the engine works. There are things you need to know (gas, brakes, steering), and things you really should know (turn signals, speed limits), and things which are relatively unimportant (the inner workings of an ignition-engine).

That doesn’t mean you don’t need a good mechanic who DOES know how the engine works and who can keep everything tuned up and working properly. You need someone you can go to when you have potential problems, so that when you hear a weird clunking sound, you get it looked at by an expert. But you don’t need to be an expert to tool around town.

Which brings us back to language. I like linguists keeping an eye on things and alerting me to problems. I LIKE knowing the way the word “its” is supposed to work and understanding why our first inclination for a possessive-”its” is to put that apostrophe-S in there. (Because, of course, we all grew up being drilled with “apostrophe-s shows possession.”) It would be nice if some of my English teachers in school had taught me some of the history in addition to The Rules.

Because, of course, the point is that many of the The Rules are not, in fact, set in stone. They were arbitrarily created by well-meaning literary men of the past who were trying to make the English language tidy (good luck). And as generation passed to generation, the rules became venerated, as if Moses had brought them down off Mt. Sinai. Never use a preposition at the end of a sentence! Never split an infinitive! Never begin a sentence with a conjunction!

I’ve passed some of these on to you in the past, and really, they’re not bad rules to know, but … why, if they’re not absolute, do we still follow them? The answer to that is coming in up the next post.

People don’t write letters as often as they used to–emails, yes; text messages, yes; the occasional hand-written note, even, yes … but actual letters? Not so much. Especially outside of normal business hours.

So, let’s review the essential elements of a basic letter, shall we?

• Return Address: On both personal and business letters, the very top of the page should be the address of the letter’s sender. It can be on the left or the right margin, it just needs to be at the top. Naturally, if you’re using some kind of letterhead paper, this is already covered (even if it’s just a logo at the top, with the address in the footer).
• Recipient’s Address: This is more for business letters, but in formal letters, it’s usually a good idea to put the address of where the letter is going, as well. This is particularly important if you’re using a window-envelope to mail it in (grin), but also helpful for future reference. You can skim through your old letters and see exactly where they went, without consulting your address book.
• Date: The date of the letter–definitely important. My personal feeling is that this is essential, even on personal notes where I might skip the addresses at the top. The bare minimum for the header, is the date.
• Salutation: “Dear _____,” This is where the real action of the letter starts–addressing the recipient by name. The word “Dear” is almost always included, but for personal notes, can be left out and just the name be used (”Dave,”). I honestly can’t think of a substitute for “Dear,” although there certainly might be one, but it IS the standard. As to the punctuation, personal letters usually end the salutation with a comma; business letters with a colon. At least, that’s the traditional format, though those rules have gotten “squishy” and these days it seems like either is acceptible.
• Body: The actual text of the letter.
• Closing: This is your chance to say, “Sincerely,” “With love,” “Cordially,” “Yours truly,” “Waiting with bells on,” or any other phrase you choose, but the one thing to remember is that only the first word of the Closing should be capitalized. Never write “With Love,” it should always be “With love,”. And, of course, the closing’s closing punctuation is the comma.
• Signature: In a handwritten letter, this literally is just your signature, but in a formal, or typed letter, there is space left (traditionally 3 carriage returns) for the actual signature, followed by the written name, and titles if any. (”John Smith, Lead Adventurer”)

That’s essentially it. Granted, there can be other pieces–things like “cc” annotations for carbon copies, or whatever–but this is just about everything you need.

Again, a personal note to a friend isn’t going to be as formal as a business letter, and so might not need all these pieces. You can scrawl a note with just three pieces: “Dave, Got your note. Looking forward to seeing you on the 12th. John.” It certainly gets the job done, but then, it’s a note, not an actual letter. What’s the difference? Length, maybe? Structure, perhaps? Something like that (grin).

Incidentally, I did this post out of my memory of “Writing Classes Past”–did I miss anything??

So, we talked last time about the idea of casual and formal writing, as filtered through a wardrobe analogy. (A good image that I can only say I wish I’d thought of myself.) I want people’s writing style to be neat and clean, not all tattered and ragged around the edges. I’m happy with people wearing the verbal equivalent of blue jeans, as long as they’re neat blue jeans. I’m not going about my day wearing gowns and white gloves–nor do I speak as if I were–but I still want to present myself as a person who cares about the impression she makes.

So–assuming that you want your daily verbal skills to be of the neat, presentable, blue jeans variety–how do you figure out which grammar rules you need to follow? The ones that will keep your wardrobe in neat shape?

• Reading. As always, one of the very best ways to learn the correct usage of words, and how they are best strung together, is to READ. Unless you spend your free time doing historical re-enactments, you probably don’t want to speak like a character out of Charles Dickens on a regular basis, but the man knew how to put a sentence together. Read as much, and as widely, as you possibly can. Just like seeing a girl walk by in a tacky outfit, you will quickly come to appreciate the good writing from the bad.
• Television/Media. Hearing how your peers speak is also important–and by “peers,” I mean “other people on the planet.” Clearly there’s a huge variety of different speech patterns all over television and radio–but the more you listen to the variety out there, the more your ear will pick up the flexibility of the language. You know, just like when you were absorbing all the basic rules when you were a toddler listening to the grown-ups talk.
• Speeches. Clearly a politician delivering a speech is going to speak differently than a clergyman delivering sermon–or the kid delivering your pizza–but listening to words formally put together is like watching Fred Astaire dance in a tuxedo. It might not be something you’re ever called on to do yourself, but, well, you have to have something to aspire to. (And who wouldn’t like to be able to dance like Fred Astaire?
• Conversation. The real crux of language–basic communication at its best. Or, at least, its most common. Our high-speed era doesn’t allow the care with conversation as earlier centuries did, but being able to explain what you are thinking to another person is really the whole point of a language, and yet it allows for more flexibility than any more formal form. Teenage girls giggling over a cute boy, teenage boys grunting over a video game, doting mothers raving over their children, excited men going over the latest game scores … straight, one-on-one verbal communication is where the action is, if you’re looking for variety.
• Email and Letters. Written personal communication is almost a hybrid between conversation and published matter–it’s not as immediate as talking face-to-face, but it allows for more casual usage of the rules than writing for the general public. This is one of the reasons reading other peoples’ letters can be so much fun–not only do they talk about things they wouldn’t mention in public, but there isn’t the same pressure to write to exacting standards, either.

Ultimately, the best way to learn to use any language is to USE it. Studying grammar books and usage guides might help, but they can only teach the language if you want to sound like a text book. If you want to be able to speak to people in anything other than a 3-piece suit kind of way, you need to be comfortable with all the variations. Or at least, acknowledge that they’re there. I’m certainly not spending any of my time trying to learn whatever jargon teenagers are using these days, but at least I’m aware that they’re stretching the ways English is used–just like they’re stretching the limits of basic wardrobe pieces.

And, um, no, I don’t really want to dress like them, either (grin).

Two famous, latin abbreviations that so many people seem to get wrong.

i.e. is short for “id est” and should be used for “that is.”

• I strongly recommend the driver of the automobile cease their forward movement at this time, i.e, STOP!
• This weekend, I played with my kids, ran errands, baked bread, cleaned the house, washed the dog, updated my blog, balanced my checkbook, and painted the garage; i.e., I’m tired.
• My child is a natural at sports (i.e., baseball, football, and tennis).
• When the little hand and the big hand are both pointing to 12 (i.e., straight up), it will be noon.

e.g. is short for “exempli gratia” and should be used for “for example.”

• I carry a lot of things in my purse, e.g., my cell phone, wallet, MP3 player, and my glasses.
• A prime number is one that can only be evenly divided by itself and the number one, e.g., one, two, three, five, seven…

The trick is that they often seem interchangeable, as in the following sentences.

• I love vegetables, i.e., things like carrots and celery.
• I love vegetables, e.g., carrots, celery, corn, and so on.

The difference is that the first one (with the “i.e.”) is clarifying exactly what is meant by “vegetables,” whereas the second one is giving actual examples of the loved vegetables.

Still having trouble remembering? Here’s a handy mnemonic device I saw over at Grammar Girl’s:

A few listeners have also written in to say that they remember the difference between i.e. and e.g. by imagining that i.e. means “in essence,” and e.g. sounds like “egg sample,” and those are good memory tricks too.

As to punctuation, the correct way to write these is with a period after both letters (”i.e.” and “e.g.”), followed by a comma.

There’s nothing more aggravating than having your writing flow interrupted by bad equipment. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a blog post, a letter, an article, or your doctoral thesis. Interruptions by people are bad enough, but having your equipment let you down is just one, long frustration.

So, what can you do to make sure that mental “flow” that can be so hard to get going, continues to move?

• Make sure your pencils are sharp, and that your pens have ink.
• Make sure you have a pencil sharpener, refills for mechanical pencil lead, and extra ink and refills for your pens.
• Make sure you have an eraser (or more than one).
• Make sure you have plenty of paper.
• Make sure your printer has plenty of paper. And ink.
• Make sure your computer is working reliably.
• Make sure your computer files are backed up in case it’s not.
• Make sure your chair is comfortable and your light is good.
• Make sure your door is closed and your phone turned off.
• Make sure your notes are in order.
• Make sure your notes are also backed up or safe from harm, if that’s at all possible.
• Make sure your computer keyboard and mouse are working smoothly.

I can hear you wondering, “Gee, Deb, these are excellent points, but what brought this up?”

I’m so glad you asked, because I have had the hardest time getting any writing done at all this week because the D and S keys on my laptop are sticking, or not making contact, or something which prevents them from working reliably. Which means I’ll just get a sentence going and I’ve got to stop to pound on one or the other of these keys to get the letter to “take,” and it’s just a little bit annoying.

(Please, read in as much sarcasm as you like into that last sentence. It would be hard to underestimate the level of frustration.)

How bad is it? Here, I’ll type the next paragraph without all the extra tapping to get the letters to work…

This laptop keyboard really is driving me nuts. The D an* the S just don’t want to work reliably an* it’s wreaking havoc on my writing an* typing kills…. *o very aggravating. (I’ll ju*t leave you to in*ert the mis*ing letter* on your own for thi* paragraph. I figured I woul* ju*t let the letters fill in or not a* they chose so you coul* see how often those two letters are really mis*ing when I type. Canne* air just doesn’t cut it, an* there’* no way I’m going to try to OPEN my laptop to clean it out from the inside. Argh!

I don’t have a separate keyboard, you see, and am pretty much stuck with what’s ON the laptop because I don’t have a desk to work at. When I’m at home, I sit on the floor with my laptop on a bedtray so that I can slide it out of the way when I’m not using it, so there is nowhere to put an extra keyboard. Even if I wanted to prop it in my lap, where would I keep it when I wasn’t using it? (Hey, I never told you that I had a fancy office, huh? I used to use my quaint, little, writing desk, but started sitting on the floor when I got my puppy so that I was in reach, and somehow, that little desk now holds stuff rather than being clear for writing. So I sit on the floor. And, anyway, it’s so small there’s not room for an extra keyboard up there, either. Go figure.)

I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think of a punctuation mark we haven’t discussed yet. We’ve covered periods, commas, exclamation points, quotation marks, colons, semi-colons, and hyphens, not to mention parentheses, ellipses, and dashes. What else is there?

Then the light dawned. The answer was right there in front of me.

The question mark.

This one is pretty straight-forward, though. A question mark (?) is used in place of the period at the end of an interogatory sentence. In other words, at the end of a question.

Obviously, this is easy to remember, what with it being part of the name of the punction mark, after all. Some of the extra niceties:

• It should only be used after a direct question (”Are you done reading that newspaper?”), not after indirect ones (”I asked him what time the movie started.”).
• Rhetorical questions do merit a question mark. (”So, class, we can see that inventing the guillotine had a lot of unforeseen repercussions, didn’t it?”)
• A polite request–since it’s not really a question–does not merit a question mark. (”Would you please step this way.”)
• If your question ends with an abbreviation, finish the abbreviation–that is, you should use a period followed by a question mark. (”You think you’ll become a movie star just by moving to L.A.?”)
• Generally speaking, though, you should not mix question marks with other punctuation. (”He said what!?” with both an exclamation point and a question mark is incorrect. Using multiple question marks is also frowned upon.)

I’m in the middle of reading a book called The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left by David Crystal, about language and the way we use, need, and apply rules. His premise is that grammar pundits who insist on rules are not acting in the best interests of the language. He says in the introduction, “How should we deal with the disturbing note that is creeping into contemporary debate on the subject? … Zero tolerance? That is the language of crime prevention and political extremism. Are we really comfortable with the recommendation that we should all become linguistic fundamentalists?” Now, I’m only halfway through the book, and so can’t tell you exactly in what way they (and I?) are harming the language, but the chapter I just read over lunch got me thinking….

The crux of this particular chapter is that you need as many different dialects and variations on a language as you do clothes in your wardrobe. If you only have one outfit to wear, so that you use it for everything from jogging to work to dinner out on the town (not to mention state dinners, mucking out stalls, sky-diving, and every other event in your life), you are going to have problems. No single outfit in this day and age can possibly cover all the possibilities. Similarly, you are going to speak differently to your five year-old than you do to your chums at the local bar … or to your boss, clients, or the President of the United States.

It’s certainly true. I can’t quite imagine somebody being introduced to George Bush and saying, “Hey, buddy. How ya’ doing?” Nor did I ever lean toward my niece when she was small and say, “Inserting that silicate plaything into your oral orifice is a short-sighted plan detrimental to your well-being.” There is no one writing (or speaking) style that works for every occasion. As Mr. Crystal puts it, “If children have only one variety of language to use, it is like having a single-item wardrobe. On the other hand, if they have been made aware of all the varieties in a language–by degrees, of course, during a language syllabus of several years–then they leave school linguistically fully dressed.”

The thought that keeps flitting through my head, though, is that–while this is true, and having variations available is healthy (not to mention stylish)–you should still know the “correct” rules to begin with. There’s an old saying that, “You need to know the rules to break them,” which is sheer nonsense. It’s easier to break rules when you don’t know they exist, you just don’t realize you’ve broken them. Any lawyer can tell you that ignorance is no defense.

The difference, though, is that if all you want to write at the the lowest common denominator level of English, you can write the same way your five-year old does. You’ll get your point across, more or less, without any fancy bells and whistles like complex sentences or parallel construction in a bullet list. But just like clothing, you get noticed for the way you present yourself, and if you can write in an intelligent way, you’ll make a better impression than if you don’t.  Just ask Eliza Doolittle if her lessons in speech, deportment and dress didn’t make a difference when she headed back to Convent Station to visit her old cronies. First impressions are key.
If varied language use is analogous to having a well-rounded wardrobe, I submit that the more serious and formal you want to be, the more rules you need to know. You can hang out with friends in jeans, t-shirts, and your most comfortable, worn-in phrases of speech. Any schmuck can put on a sweat suit, scratch himself, and grunt for a beer, but you’re not going to be able to take him to a white-tie affair without a little sprucing up. You need to wear a suit and tie at a funeral, untorn jeans on a date, and a tuxedo, gloves and a cravat at a state dinner–and none of those come without some set of rules. How do you match a shirt with the suit? What kind of shoes do you need to wear? And how do you actually put on that stiff-fronted shirt and collar studs? And, also, while wearing it, stand up straight, brush your hair, and remember to use your napkin during dinner.

The more formal you want to be, the more rules you need to know. You can’t write an academic paper in the same informal tone that you use in a letter to a friend. You’re not going to write to that friend in the same way you wrote the life-changing job proposal you just submitted at work, and there’s apparently some kind of rule against writing an instruction manual with any clarity whatsoever. If you can’t construct the sentences with correct grammar and vocabulary, you’re going to look just as out-of-place as that beer-drinking schmuck being introduced to President Bush. You’ll be able to communicate beautifully with your buddies, but you’re less likely to be invited to speak about serious matters of state over in the West Wing–no matter how intelligent you are.

Is this the point that Mr. Crystal is going to make in upcoming chapters? I have no idea, but I loved his wardrobe analogy.

Now, I just need to go change my clothes….

The primary use of a semi-colon is to link two sentences together.

Now, obviously, sentences are usually kept separate and distinct. Sometimes, however, they are very involved with each other, and like to keep close. Like twins, or mirror images, they’re more connected to each other than to the sentences next door. Usher in the semi-colon.

• My mother was a terrible cook; we ate out a lot.
• Cable television is expensive; renting movies is cheap.

It is important to remember, however, that the sentences connected by the semi-colon be complete sentences, and if you’re using a conjunction (and, but, or), you don’t need the semi-colon. Like, for example, that last sentence. I could have stopped after “complete sentences,” added a period, and then started up the next sentence with “If you’re using.” I could also have put a semi-colon there and dropped the “and.” It’s your choice. As a writer, you have options, but like at certain restaurants, no substitutions are allowed.

Semi-colons can also be used to break apart the items in a series, when a comma isn’t quite enough to do the job.

Usually, when writing a list, you use commas to keep items separate. (”My favorite ice cream flavors are vanilla, peppermint, and pistachio.”) When the items start getting more complicated, though, commas can become unclear. (”I have travelled to Boston, Massachusetts, Madison, Wisconsin, and San Franciso, California.”) This is where the semi-colon comes into its own.

• I have travelled to Boston, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; and San Francisco, California.
• My dogs’ ages are Katy, 9; Chappy, 7.

And, that’s it. Clear? Unclear? Anything I left confused? Further questions?