When the Right Word is all Wrong
If you think that writing is simply a matter of a good vocabulary, correct grammar, and careful punctuation, think again. Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation are to good writing what three tubes of paint are to a painter – a starting point. Take vocabulary, for example. In schools, every grade has its own vocabulary list. Students who can use the whole list of words correctly are considered to have mastered that vocabulary. Unfortunately, mastery of the grade level vocabulary will not necessarily make you a great writer. It is quite possible to write a sentence that will stall the reader even though you may have used every word in the sentence “correctly.” Read the text sample below: “The League’s powerful chieftains, Henry, duke of Guise, and his brothers … gave much information in return. So … did some lesser personages who were coming reluctantly to prefer loyalty to their religion to loyalty to their king.” (Mattingly 1959) [Bolding mine] Notice the four bolded instances of the word to. According to the definition of the word to, every instance is correctly used. According to the English general usage of prepositions, the preposition “to” is correctly used. Yet this sentence does not roll off the tongue. Most readers will note that second instance of to with a flickering pause, and when the third and then a fourth example occurs almost immediately, it will feel like grit in the eye. Most readers will wonder if they missed a beat, and many will go back and read the sentence again. No writer wants readers to stall in the middle of a page, worried over the annoying frequency with which a tiny word like “to“ occurs in a sentence. This sentence serves its informational purpose, but it does not serve the reader well. What must a writer do about problems like this? The answer is rewrite and revision. It is the real difference between good writing and great writing. Perhaps Shakespeare simply poured out mellifluous phrases in the first drafts of his plays, but the rest of us are plagued with Michelangelo’s problem: there is a lot of unnecessary stone hiding a beautiful work of art. Michelangelo said that all he did was to chip away the unnecessary stone till he reached the magnificent statue hidden inside. Writers must chip away at unnecessary or clumsy or irritating words until they reach the magnificent essays or stories or poems or plays that are hiding inside their manuscripts. To be fair to this author, Garrett Mattingly is a highly skilled writer. His book The Armada was awarded a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee. His tiny problem with this tiny word did not prevent anyone from appreciating both the content and the craftsmanship of his book. Nevertheless, this tiny problem with this tiny world reminds writers that nobody is perfect, and no writer can ever stop growing as an artist. How could Mattingly have eliminated the problem without doing more harm than good? This is an important question, because not every possible solution to the existing problem can be implemented without injecting some different problem. One approach would be a complete rewrite of the sentence, perhaps breaking it into two sentences in order to get around this parade of tiny prepositions. To do so,
however, could easily break the rhythm and parallelism built into the surrounding paragraph. All sorts of macro efforts at restructuring this element of the book could be attempted. Happily, in this case, the replacement of one instance of the word to suffices to send the reader happily on his way with nary a pause in the action. Replace the third instance of the word “to” with the word “over” and the sentence almost magically recovers its pace and rhythm: So … did some lesser personages who were coming reluctantly to prefer loyalty to their religion to loyalty to their king. So … did some lesser personages who were coming reluctantly to prefer loyalty to their religion over loyalty to their king. The usage of the word pair “prefer … to …” is substantially equivalent to the word pair “prefer … over ….” That was easy. When did you last halt uncomfortably to reread a sentence, or even several sentences, over a poor word choice that annoyed you like a rock in your shoe? What could the writer have done to make things better?