February 20, 2013
We were going to
spend today discussing sequestration, a word springing from the lips of
politicians left and right and begging to be more clearly defined.
Then we read Time
columnist Joel Stein's explanation, upon which it's impossible to improve:
"The situation in which the federal budget will be different if something
doesn't something before something."
Exactly.
Which leaves us room
to discuss a word springing from the lips of actual people, much to the dismay
of other actual people.
The word is
"that." For all its banality, "that," has an impressive
ability to irk folks.
"My pet peeve is
'that,'" writes Words Work reader Gene Keefe. "'The judge felt that
it took too long.' 'The hearing officer ruled that it was too far away.' 'I
heard that you are too tall to shoot pool.'"
"Where you have
a verb and 'that' after it," Keefe contends, "it makes the sentence
longer without any change."
It's a complaint we
hear with some regularity, often from readers lamenting an undisciplined
wordiness creeping into much of our discourse.
But 'that' has its
share of vocal defenders.
Jay Heinrichs, author
of "Word Hero: A Fiendishly Clever Guide to Crafting the Lines that Get
Laughs, Go Viral, and Live Forever" (Three Rivers Press) and one of our
favorite language dudes, calls himself "a that guy."
"'That' does
make a sentence longer by an entire, often annoying, syllable," Heinrichs
says. "But it serves to pin down the object of a sentence.
"Our unraveling
grammar needs all the pins it can get."
Bonnie Trenga, author
of "The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier: How to Solve the Mysteries
of Weak Writing" (Writer's Digest Books), wrote a
grammar.quickanddirtytips.com blog post titled "When to leave out
'that.'"
Her conclusion?
Sometimes.
"Some people
think adding 'that' improves the flow of the sentence and makes it easier for
the reader to understand," Trenga writes. "Others believe they should
delete every seemingly unnecessary 'that' because they want to maintain an
economy of words.
"I'm all for
cutting unnecessary words," she writes. But I often like to keep my 'that'
if it helps the rhythm of the sentence. You'll have to judge whether using
'that' in your particular sentence improves or hurts its flow."
Trenga agitates for
'that' inclusion in the case of "garden path sentences," linguist
Steven Pinker's term for sentences that appear to be going in one direction but
wind up in another.
"Aardvark
maintains Squiggly's yard is too big," Trenga offers as an example.
"Without a
'that,' the reader is initially led to believe that Aardvark maintains, as in
mows, Squiggly's yard," she writes. "If you add in a 'that,' it's
clear from the beginning that Aardvark just has an opinion: Aardvark maintains
that Squiggly's yard is too big."
You could turn to the
grammar big guns on this one, but they hardly put the issue to rest.
The Elements of
Style, William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White's style guide by which many writers
swear, lists as its seventeenth principle of composition: Omit needless words.
In each of Mr.
Keefe's sentences, "that" does appear to be pretty needless.
The Associated Press
Style Book, on the other hand, argues for keeping the word in your toolbox:
"There are no
hard-and-fast rules, but in general:
•That usually may be
omitted when a dependent clause immediately follows a form of the verb to say:
The president said he had signed the bill.
•That should be used
when a time element intervenes between the verb and the dependent clause: The
president said Monday that he had signed the bill.
•That usually is
necessary after some verbs. They include: advocate, assert, contend, declare,
estimate, make clear, point out, propose and state.
•That is required
before subordinate clauses beginning with conjunctions such as after, although,
because, before, in addition to, until and while: Haldeman said that after he
learned of Nixon's intention to resign, he sought pardons for all connected
with Watergate.
"When in doubt,
include that," AP says. "Omission can hurt. Inclusion never
does."
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1 comment:
"I'm all for cutting unnecessary words," she writes. ^^^But I often like to keep..."
An interrupted quotation (often as dialogue) has a tendency to lose quotation marks. :-(
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