How to not write bad - Ben Yagoda 2013
The perils of ambiguity
How to not write bad
a. Crash Blossoms
In a New York Times Magazine “On Language” column in 2010, Ben Zimmer described how Mike O’Connell, an American editor based in Japan, was bemused by an article in a local newspaper about the successful musical career of a young musician whose father had died in a 1985 Japan Airlines plane crash. Specifically, he was bothered by the headline—VIOLINIST LINKED TO JAL CRASH BLOSSOMS—which made him wonder, “What’s a crash blossom?” O’Connell and another editor, Dan Bloom, thereupon coined Crash Blossoms as a term for such vexingly ambiguous headlines. Zimmer listed some prime examples:
[MCDONALD’S FRIES THE HOLY GRAIL FOR POTATO FARMERS]
[BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS]
[GATOR ATTACKS PUZZLE EXPERTS]
And two all-time greats, used by the Columbia Journalism Review for its collections of misleading headlines:
[SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM]
[RED TAPE HOLDS UP NEW BRIDGE]
The classic Crash Blossom is born out of the compression demanded by headlines, and the confusion can often be eliminated by adding missing words or changing the verb from present tense to something more appropriate:
MCDONALD’S FRIES ARE THE HOLY GRAIL…
THE BRITISH LEFT IS WAFFLING…
ALLIGATOR ATTACKS ARE PUZZLING EXPERTS
b. If Only English Were German
But Crash Blossoms are not limited to headlines. The English language has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and once a sentence gets beyond a “See Dick run” level of complexity, the ordering of the elements within it takes on a crucial strategic importance. As E. B. White observed, sometimes trying to cogently set down a thought requires “sheer luck, like getting across the street.” Certainly, ambiguity is a frequent problem in my students’ prose. Below, some of their sentences are grammatically correct but ambiguous if not misleading because of the way the elements of the sentence are ordered; snarky (mis)interpretations follow.
1. [I went back to visit the house I grew up in last week.]
Growing up in a week is a pretty neat trick.
2. [Ashley finished painting the new garage door that she put up yesterday this morning.]
Wait, did she put up the door yesterday or this morning?
3. [Gannett is sponsoring a panel about blogging in the Perkins Auditorium.]
What about blogging outside the Perkins Auditorium?
4. [Lincoln University has dropped its controversial three-year-old requirement that students must take an exercise class with a Body Mass Index greater than 30.]
Weird-sounding class.
5. [We saw the film that won the Oscar and went home.]
And where exactly does the film live?
6. [[Bert] Blyleven…a wily veteran with a wicked curveball who was finishing a twenty-two-year career with the California Angels.]
That’s some career for a curveball. (The above quote was taken from the New York Times).
7. [I smile to see my Christmas stocking still hanging on the fireplace, and smell a savory, homemade ravioli dinner escaping the kitchen stove.]
I hope you didn’t have cleanup duties that night. Ravioli can be messy.
8. [She has on authentic Native American moccasins made directly from Navajo women.]
Ouch.
9. [Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas.]
How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know. (The above quote and rejoinder were both uttered by Groucho Marx in the film Animal Crackers, written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind.)
As the Groucho quote indicates, verbal ambiguity is at the root of a lot of humor, some of it funny and some not very. But if you’re just trying to get your point across, this is a problem. Fortunately, in most cases, the problem can be addressed and resolved simply by reading aloud, or, more generally, mindfulness. If, every time you put down a sentence, you go over it unhurriedly, you’ll learn to pick up on any ambiguities or confusion. To fix them, just shuffle and reshuffle the elements of the sentence, as if you were putting together a bouquet of flowers. Eventually, you’ll come up with more than one reasonable and pleasing alternative, from which you can choose the one you like best.
Interestingly, the confusions in the above examples all stem from the same basic problem. A noun (A) is followed and modified by a relative clause or prepositional phrase (B) and then by another element (C). This appears to be a particular calamity in English, in which nouns are largely uninflected (that is, they take the same form whether they are subjects or objects) and modifying or descriptive phrases have to come after the noun. Friends who’re more knowledgeable than I tell me that in German and ancient Greek, you can create a construction along the lines of “about-blogging panel” or “wily, with-a-wicked-curveball veteran” or “in-my-pajamas I.”
In English, you have to move stuff. In the first three examples, the problem is the placement of the time (1 and 2) and place (3) elements. By shifting them around, I came up with:
Last week, I visited the house I grew up in.
Ashley put up a new garage door yesterday; she has to paint it by tonight.
Gannett is sponsoring a panel about blogging, to be held in the Perkins Auditorium.
In example 4, the trouble stems from breaking up a noun phrase, rarely a good idea:
Lincoln University has dropped a controversial three-year-old rule requiring students with a Body Mass Index of 30 or more to take an exercise class.
And in 5, the problem is confusion over which of two nouns—we or the film—belongs with the verb went.
We saw the Oscar-winning film, then went home.
Number 6 becomes a wily veteran, known for his wicked curveball, who was finishing a twenty-two-year career…Wait! I just found another misleading thing about the sentence! Blyleven played for five different teams, not just the Angels. So let’s make it…a wily veteran, known for his wicked curveball, who was pitching for the Angels, the last stop in his twenty-two-year career.
The last one I almost hate to fix, because it so brutally drains the humor out of a classic line, but that’s why they pay me the medium bucks. So apologies to Groucho, and here goes:
Last night, while I was wearing my pajamas, I shot an elephant.