Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar

These are terms I learned in a linguistics class in grad school. If you’re not familiar, here are the quick-and-dirty definitions.

Prescriptive grammar is grammar according to the super-official grammar books.

Descriptive grammar is how people actually talk.

Of course, language is always evolving, and often the changes come because something in the realm of descriptive grammar becomes so common and pervasive, it overwrites the prior rule in the prescriptive grammar books.

In certain arenas, it’s appropriate to follow prescriptive grammar rules to the letter. When writing fiction, it’s not so clear-cut. There’s also voice to consider. Dialogue in particular gets a little more leeway when it comes to grammar.

Once in a while, though, something comes along that can’t be explained away by voice, and yet I can’t bring myself to write it the “proper” way because my gut says we’re on the verge of overwriting the rule. (Or at the least, my gut says people who talk that way in real life are a critically endangered species.)

For example, in my current project, I have a character say, “It is her.” (The sense is, “She is the one we’re looking for.”)

Gerty Grammarian says it should be, “It is she.” In the particular situation, it makes sense that the character would be fairly educated and would probably speak in a proper manner.

But I can’t bring myself to write it that way. It just feels too wrong.

In a situation later in the story, a similar line came up, and in that case I did change it. I wanted that particular character to be over-the-top formal, so it made sense to me. It felt right.

How about you? Do you have any little gems of grammar that you know are “correct” one way, but you just can’t bring yourself to write it that way?

Earth: By the Numbers

Yesterday was Earth Day, and today is Mathematical Monday, so I figured I’d put the two together with some stats on this planet of ours.

• The diameter of Earth is about 7,920 miles. That’s nearly 140,000 football fields. If it were possible to drive at highway speeds (say, 75 mph) through the planet, it would take nearly 4.5 days to reach the other side.
• The mass of Earth is about 6 septillion kilograms. (That’s 6 followed by 24 zeroes. I’m going by the U.S. definition of the word—apparently it’s different in the U.K.) That’s about the same as 165 quintillion empty 18-wheelers. Or the Empire State Building 16,000,000,000,000,000,000 times over.
• The volume of water on Earth is about 1.5 billion cubic kilometers. That’s about 600 trillion Olympic swimming pools. (I think. I don’t have my preferred calculators handy.) 97% of that is saltwater in the oceans.
• So, Earth is pretty big. But if our sun were empty, it could fit over 1,000,000 Earths inside.

Now, while you ponder that massiveness, check out this very cool view of the planet from orbit.

The Undefinable, Undeniable Teen

What are teenagers like?

Don’t answer that. No matter what you say, you’re wrong. Unless you say something like, “Depends on the teen,” or, “As varied as adults, toddlers, senior citizens, or anything else.” Those are cop-outs anyway.

Teens (like so many other groups) get a lot of generalizations applied to them. Like every other generalization or stereotype, you can point to textbook cases where they’re true, and often just as many where they’re utterly false.

Example: Teens are irresponsible.

If we’re judging based on how some of them drive, then absolutely. On the other hand, I know teens who budget their money, make sure to take their car in for regular oil changes, and warn me two weeks in advance that they’ll be missing school and need their homework.

The whole essence of “teenager” is that it’s this amorphous time between childhood and adulthood where they have several traits of both stages at the same time … and those traits are often in flux from one moment to the next.

This is on my mind today because of a particular pet peeve of mine—talking to teens like they’re little kids.

I can’t fathom how common this is in schools. Not like all teachers do it, or even most, but enough to puzzle me. I’ve often wondered—but have never had the guts to ask one of the perpetrators—why they talk to students as they do. They’re not rude or anything. It’s just this tone and approach to interacting with students that I know would drive me bonkers if I were a teen.

Do they really regard teenagers as roughly the same as elementary students? I don’t know.

I can’t say I treat students exactly the same as I treat adults, or even talk to them exactly the same way. But it’s close. I try to acknowledge that they’re in that transition, which means they’re partway adult, but still in flux.

Maybe this attitude in teaching has informed my writing, because I try really hard to never talk down (write down?) to my audience.

And maybe that consciousness is why that “I’m talking like you’re nine years old” tone drives me nuts.

An Undeserved Rant, Perhaps

Lots of people have been getting good news lately—yay, good news! But in the congratulations, I’ve seen the following phrase come up a lot:

You deserve it.

This kept standing out to me, and it got me thinking. What does it mean to “deserve” something?

Okay, I know what it means. Somehow by our character or actions, we qualify to receive whatever we’ve gotten. But it kept bugging me.

In ASL, we generally use the same sign for “deserve” and “earn,” and in a lot of cases, they feel pretty interchangeable. So why does something tell me they’re not the same thing this situation? Maybe it’s this:

What does not getting it mean?

If some particular good-thing hasn’t happened for me, does that mean I don’t deserve it? (And of course, this doesn’t just go for me, but anyone who hasn’t gotten whatever that good-thing is.) Please don’t say that’s true, because I’m plenty good at beating up on myself already. 😉

Or then there’s this:

What if someone doesn’t deserve it but gets it anyway?

Clearly if there’s any real meaning to “deserving” anything, it’s possible to be undeserving. So if there are people who deserve but don’t get, there are likely people who get but don’t deserve.

But what does any of that mean? And how does anyone decide? What is it based on?

What’s the point of saying it? Maybe everyone deserves everything, or no one deserves anything. Either way, the statement feels empty to me.

Personally, I’m going to stick to the following:

Congratulations.

Or something along those lines. Because maybe they deserve it, maybe they don’t, but it doesn’t matter. They got it.

Whatever “it” is. 🙂

From the Department of Made-Up Statistics

I admit it—I’m a data geek. (Shocking, right?) Give me some data, and I can’t help but analyze it at least a little. I’ve even made graphs to analyze my writing.

I’ve often heard people claim you can make statistics say anything you want. That’s not entirely true, but you can usually frame them in a way that leans in a certain direction, even if that direction is misleading. Some easy ways to do this are asking your question in a particular way, choosing a biased sample, and setting up a graph with an inappropriate axis. (All of these will get you labeled a bad statistician, though.)

Sometimes, it’s easier just to skip all the technical steps and just make up results. So here are some claims that are entirely made up based only on my gut instinct. If anyone finds hard data on any of them, feel free to let me know.

• 47% of cancer survivors will (attempt to) write a memoir on the topic.
• 72% of drivers don’t know how to merge properly.
• 96% of literate Americans don’t know how to use a semicolon.
• 83% of teenagers declare something boring a minimum of twice every school day.
• Chocolate makes everything better 99.9% of the time.
• I remember 74% of the useless minutiae I come across, but only 51% of the information I actually need.
• 2% of the people who protest that a given book should be banned have actually read the book.

Go ahead and make up some of your own statistics, or let me know if you think my percentages are off on any of the above. It’s fun and makes you sound knowledgeable. 😉

Dream Casting: Hiddles for Giggles

My sister is slightly (just a little) obsessed with the actor Tom Hiddleston, and if you don’t recognize him in his headshot, visualize him with darker, longer, straighter hair (Loki in Thor and The Avengers) or wearing an English WWI military uniform (a brief but memorable role in War Horse), or you might have seen him in a few other places.

This blog post is largely for her, and just having a little fun.

I know a lot of writers do it—come up with their dream cast for “if they made my novel a movie.” Or at least digging up photos of celebrities (or athletes, or models, or whatever else they can find online) who are a decent fit for their mental picture of various characters.

In this case, instead of casting a full novel, I’m going to find spots for Mr. Hiddleston in each of my completed manuscripts. It’ll be a little tricky, because he’s 31 years old, and I write YA. I refuse to ‘90210’ him and cast him as a teenager, so no lead roles for him. (Sorry, sis.) But let’s see what I can come up with.

Crossing the Helix trilogy (Fingerprints, Echoes, & Catalysts)
I have too many options for this one. Mr. Z, the very cool physics teacher in the regular world, or Wreiden, one of the Flecks in the alternate world. Either way, he’d be super-smart.

Or, if I want to make my sister really happy … Tayn, the twins’ father. He could pull off the flashbacks as he is now, and a little minor makeup work could age him up 5-10 years for later.

Fireweaver
Let’s just jump straight to him being at least in his late thirties by this point. Is he more Reagan (my MC’s uncle who raised her) or more Dexter (the teacher of her favorite subject)? I’m thinking more Reagan. (Hmm … now I’m wondering, who out there is more Dexter?)

Significantly Other
Ooh, this is a tough one. There aren’t a lot of options. I think he’d probably be best as the colonel who pulls my MC back into the military role she was created for.

Matters of Life and Deaf
How ambitious are you, Mr. Hiddleston? Ambitious enough to learn sign language and play a deaf person? Yes? Then Vince, the ASL specialist. No? Then I’ll change the name of the jerk pre-calculus teacher.

Stitching Snow
Again, we’ll say he’s a touch older, late thirties or early forties. Definitely Kip. But I can’t say anything about who that character is to the story just now. (Or wait, maybe Thad, at the age he is now! But I can’t say anything much about him, either.)

Like I said, all of this is just fun. But it also made me think about my characters, which of their attributes (ethnicity, age, etc.) are truly integral to the character, and which are less important and could easily be adjusted if I wanted to.

‘Fess up. Have you ever dream-cast the movie of your novel? What does the exercise do for you?