The virtue of hmm
Hmm. Jason Rosenhouse did a post a few weeks ago saying what things he hates in writing. It pains me to say that I do some of them, and not seldom.
In fact one of them is “hmm,” which I use a lot, as you can see from the beginning of this post. I honestly typed it before remembering that it was one of the items…This is a “hmm” post, so there it appeared, as if by its own volition.
Sadly that’s the very first thing he mentions.
Starting a sentence with “Uhm” or “Hmmmm,” for example. This is an especially common one among blog writers. It’s a silly and cliched way of suggesting that your opponent has not merely made a weak argument, but has actually said something unhinged and foolish. In the early days of blogs this might have been a clever way of achieving a conversational tone, but now it’s so overused it just makes the writer look ridiculous.
But…but…but that’s not always what it’s for. I use it that way sometimes – or rather, I use it sometimes to express mild skepticism, as opposed to full-throttle skepticism. But mostly I use it to mark thought; to mark uncertainty, and groping, and thinking things through as I go. I think that’s all right, if you don’t do it every other sentence.
Ending a sentence with “no,” (or, more rarely, ”yes.”) It’s a miserable excrescence the rhetorical world would be better off without. This is obvious, no?
I do that occasionally, I think. It’s just a variation, that’s all. It’s irritating if it’s all over the place, but in moderation? I keep wanting to umm or hmm so I’ll just stop, instead.
“To be sure” is another one I can live without. As in, “To be sure, everything I have said to this point is a ridiculous oversimplification with little basis in facts, logic or evidence.” It makes you look pompous and full of yourself, since considerable education is required before it feels natural to use such a vapid nonsense phrase.
Hey! Now that’s not fair. I use it as a kind of joke. It’s a bit 18th century, a bit Johnson or Austen (who was 18th century in many of her linguistic habits); I use it because I like the oddity of a whiff of the 18th century now and then. (I don’t mean I think about it that consciously. I include that phrase now and then, and that’s why – it has a faintly antiquated note that amuses me.)
That’s it; the others I have no problem with. I mean withal.
I don’t much care for people who start sentences in rants with “You know what I don’t like?” or even worse, “You know what else I don’t like?”. But I forgive you, Jason, cause I also don’t much care for people who start little rants with “I don’t much care for”. And people who say “cause” instead of “because”. Just because.
I use various “ummms” and ellipses and such to more accurately match the rhythm of actual speech.
My pet peeve is people making whole blog posts about there pet peeves. If I comment over there, do the two pet peeves cancel each other out, or reach critical mass and destroy the Internet?
Well I did a post once about pet peeves of this kind, and it got a lot of amusing/interesting comments, so I can’t apologize for it. It’s just amusing now and then.
One item I mentioned was the UK “in a day’s/year’s time,” which I think is ridiculous, because what else would it be in? A year’s sock? A year’s toothbrush? People tried to explain it to me – there’s some possible ambiguity that it eliminates. No there isn’t! I know this because we never say that in the US, and we don’t get confused. If we say “I’ll be there in an hour” there’s no ambiguity. It still drives me nuts. I listen to BBC news a lot, so I hear it a lot. sigh
For me, the best writing advice is that contained in George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language‘, where Orwell–great writer that he is–nonetheless concludes his essay with this:
Most people who purport to give writing advice these days lack Orwell’s modesty.
That’s a pretty cool post. I am absolutely with him on “Wow. Just, wow.” Whether or not I agree, in substance, with the writer using it, I automatically think asshole. I think he got this one wrong, though:
I don’t think the device is typically used this way. Rather, (there’s one I could cut down on) it’s used to ask the reader to question an assumption. So (probably OK) now the tea party is firmly in charge of the GOP. But (OK again), hey (maybe not OK), that’s what Republican voters asked for, no?
I actually don’t like Orwell’s essay all that much. I think some of its advice is bad, just as a lot of Strunk and White’s (pretend that’s one name with one apostrophe) advice is bad. It’s just nonsense to say avoid polysyllabic words and Latinate words. Both the Orwell essay and S&W are useful advice for bad writers and perhaps novices, but they’re partly terrible advice for good writers and most experienced ones.
I honed my style with Orwell as part of a deliberate decision to avoid the prolixity so common among lawyers. And I do like that last bit of advice. I break Orwell’s rules every day, but hope I only do so in order to avoid saying something barbarous.
I do agree that some of his advice is dated. His hatred for the now common transformation of verbs and adjectives into nouns no longer works. It has become so commonplace that attempts to hold back the tide are fruitless.
@6 & 7
I’m a big fan of the rules of grammar. I believe that before you get to paint outside the lines, you should have a good idea where the lines are. This is especially important in a world where most people are seemingly incapable of forming a simple string of cogent, coherent sentences on any topic whatsoever.
Maybe, just like with the feminism issue, it is useful for people to at least consider the subject even if there’s no consensus on the subject.
It’s easy for people to think of writing as a monolith, when instead it’s a medium that is used for approximately billions of different functions. Written discourse, of which blog writing is an example, has to operate as discourse that meets the expectations of its genre. Even if we are still working out what the expectations are. But blogs like B&W are conversational so they need to employ useful conversational strategies sometimes. Things like “hmmmm” are useful discourse markers in spoken English, and the fact that “hmmm” and other spoken discourse markers show up in a supposedly written genre is neither right or wrong. It doesn’t violate any rules on the face of it. It just tells us that the old written v spoken view of language was never the right analysis. Some blogs, even though they are written, are a lot more spoken-ish than written-ish. I don’t think there is anything wrong with a “hmmm” – it serves its function as a place holder very nicely.
I do think people’s pet peeves about writing are interesting. My own numerous pet peeves, for example, are simply riveting and provide hours of entertainment.
My comment about “Um” and “Hm” in that thread is pretty similar to yours.
Thanks for this post, Ophelia. I feel validated as I often “Hm” and “no?” and undermine my own points with “To be sures.” And…since Rosenhouse spends lots of time reading, as he says, he might have written something about the fact that there are lots of “reading amateurs,” too. (Something more worrisome perhaps? I mean–no?)
I think what Rosenhouse means by “uhm” is not the way you use it. I think he means starting a reply with something like: “Um, no” or “Um, actually”. I don’t think it’s as common among blog writers as it is among commenters. I don’t like it either because it’s there just to irritate the person replied to.
1. I enjoy reading blog posts about pet peeves. I do not enjoy blog posts about pet peeves dressed up as smug, superior dikta.
2. I love Orwell’s essay and Strunk/White while acknowledging that they are dated. In particular with Orwell, the essay in question is a long argument about the importance of clear writing to expose and counteract politicised misinformation — an approach that has become even more relevant today. (Orwell had to contend with many duplicitous politicians and ideologues, but he lived before the era of modern, research-tested marketing and opinion manipulation.)
It is barbaric to inquire for a reader’s agreement. Do you agree?
#3: I think “in a day’s time” can resolve an ambiguity. If I say “I will walk the Appalachian Trail in 3 months”, does that mean “I will do it 3 months from now”, or “I will do it at some future time, and when I do it will take me 3 months”?
On the other hand when Americans say (as they increasingly do) things like “It’s not that big of a deal”, what is the “of” doing there? It resolves nothing.
Ah, I see; that ambiguity. Hmm. (God, there it is again.) Maybe, but the ambiguity doesn’t seem to happen much, but the disambiguation device is always used.
@6 Ophelia:
Strunk & White is a reference book for all—and yes, it is dated. Style guides get dated fast. I think there’s some pretty basic stuff in there, though, that lots of ostensibly experienced writers should read. (I sometimes see some major bloggers on somewhat well-known sites who seem to have invented their own system of grammar and punctuation. Of course, at this point, they don’t have to go to S&W to get their act together. Google works fine too.) Orwell, I think, understood “Politics and the English Language” (also dated in many ways) as being for all writers. Experienced, inexperienced—good, bad. They all do certain things that he felt were just dreadful and, to his mind, corrosive to good written English. He mentions in the essay that he’s no doubt guilty of many of them. I actually think experienced writers get the most nourishment from the Orwell essay because they (as Rosenhouse clearly does) are more likely to put much thought and care into their prose, whereas inexperienced—“sucky” writers, as they say—don’t put much thought into their work anyway, so they end up yawning at Orwell’s essay—as they do with any stylistic advice. (I had to come to terms with that fact early on in my teaching days.) I do think Orwell’s “rules” in the essay (referenced in #4skepticallawyer) are good things for any writer to keep in mind. Can’t think of them as rules really—just somewhat useful things to bear in mind every once in a while.
I thought Jason’s post was fun. Any of us who write on the Internet are guilty of some of those things. It’s the nature of Internet writing: we get lazy; we slip into stylistic shortcuts and stuff that’s maybe a tad too cute. I know I do. Ophelia should keep saying “Hmmm.” I think it’s harmless, and I kind of like it. Hell, invent an emoticon for it.
The worst phrase ever is ‘of all time’ – as in ‘one of the greatest movies of all time’. I hate it. I scream abuse every time I hear it. I am sad that way.
The most useful thing in Strunk & White is the meta-rule “When in doubt, recast the sentence.” Give yourself permission to rewrite, don’t just make the minimal change necessary to avoid an identified error.
(OK, and rule one on apostrophes appeals to me.)
Re: Strunk and White. As always, there’s an XKCD for this…
http://xkcd.com/923/
Recasting the sentence is often the only way to save it. I’ve done a lot of editorial recasting of contorted sentences.
Ophelia’s idiom includes digraphs and trigraphs (like oy and heh), but she would never write a single syllable in more than three letters (like Jason wrote, Hmmmm). That would be like a 4chan n00b misspelling liek as leik. So keep on doing: hmm.
About Strunk & White, I leafed through the 2005 illustrated edition in a bookstore a few months ago, and I felt puzzled why it didn’t seem helpful, or even meaningful. So I did some research online, and I learned that Strunk & White doesn’t follow its own rules of grammar advice. After reading that takedown, it’s fair to call Strunk & White a hoax. Powerful trolling since 1959.
At least Clive and I can agree: “The worst phrase ever is of all time.” Because of all time is superfluous. No, wait…
[Clive, by the way, before I started college, I wanted to be a comedy writer, because I love to study how each line of comedy is constructed, but then I realized that thinking that way all the time was impacting my personal relationships, and if comedians are in that game because they want to be liked, then simply being nice would be more effective. So what I wrote was just a joke, like some origami with words. Must use this power for good, never evil.]
I think the author is being a bit too precious. Blogs aren’t formal, and blog posts are very rarely edited. I don’t mind “hmm” and I think it’s not as insulting as Rosenhouse makes out. I tend to use it as a shortcut for “well, i partially agree and I think you have a point but there’s something a bit wrong, too.” See? Much shorter – and brevity is the soul of wit, so that must be good.
Dave – Ha! (Though actually ‘ever’ is more complex than ‘of all time’. If I ask ‘have you ever been to France?’ although it implies ‘at any point since the Big Bang’, nobody thinks it means that. Whereas ‘of all time’ *does* mean that.)
Blog entries are not necessarily essays for cryin’ out loud. For the most part they tend to be more conversational. The are set ups for conversational responses and comments. This is not 1872 where the pony’s gotta stop for water every 50 miles of the 3000 mile journey, and you would have forgotten what you had so eloquently and properly written to Miss Daisy is the 2 months it took to get to her.
Oh yay I have a new filler! “the pony has to stop for water.”
:- D
Hang on. David Evans –
No. “Time” is 100% superfluous.
“I will walk the Appalachian Trail in 3 months.”
“I will walk the Appalachian Trail in 3 months’ time.”
You still have to ask for clarification.