Many of you use Ken Rand’s excellent book about cutting and tightening your prose; The 10% Solution, available from Fairwood Press.  Fairwood Press website   Writer and editor, Ken was a delightful guest on the website in early March Ken's Interview  and we all learned a lot.  Here is a pointed little commentary on some of our… uh…literary tropes.

 

Enjoy!

 

                        --Mary Rosenblum, LR Web Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Say "I Say," I Say; Not "Say I"

by

Ken Rand

 

            I had a vigorous debate recently with a friend and colleague over attribution. 

            "There's nothing wrong with 'said he,'" said he, for so he had written, a lot, in a manuscript being critiqued by our writing group at the time. 

            "Is there yes," said I.  "Backwards is it."

            Stubborn, my friend was.  Onward continued our discussion and arrived at a conclusion--i.e., agreement with my point of view--did we not. 

            That's because I didn't have references from more authoritative sources than my own beliefs, experience, and ego at my fingertips then, but I went home and looked it up in my vast (half-vast, my wife says) reference library.           

            Attributor should most often precede attribution, I say, and so do many of my authorities’ sources.     

            As Herbert Spencer writes in Philosophy of Style, "...in every sentence, the sequence of words should be that which suggests the constituents of the thought in the order most convenient for the building up of that thought."  Why?  "A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available," thus, "the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will the idea be conceived."

            Form trumps content every time.  Bad form distracts from content.  Reversed attribution is bad form.  Say I.

            Require readers to focus on your words, which is what happens in reversed attribution, and they have less time to focus on your message.  "In bad or unsatisfying fiction," John Gardner writes in The Art of Fiction, "this fictional dream is interrupted from time to time by some mistake or conscious ploy on the art of the artist.  We are abruptly snapped out of the dream, forced to think of the writer or the writing."

            Sure it's only a quick mental flicker for readers to put your text back in proper order but, like a Chinese water torture, it adds up.  If it happens too often in the same text, readers may consciously (although more often unconsciously--not all know why they're uncomfortable with your writing) give up and find other uses for their preciously little leisure time.

            They'll blame you.  After all, you're the writer and clarity is your responsibility (unless you're writing insurance forms or a book contract and obfuscation is your goal).

            The principle applies equally to fiction and nonfiction.  "Generally," John Walsh (Washington Post copy editor) writes in Lapsing Into a Comma, "it's more straightforward and less pretentious to put said after the name of the speaker than to put it before--Smith said, not said Smith." 

            Marvin Block doesn't equivocate in Writing Broadcast News: "Put attribution before assertion."  (Block understands Twain's admonition to "Eschew surplusage.")

            Horse-before-the-cart attribution is important in speech where listeners can't read the sentence over again, but also important in print, where they shouldn't have to.  Reporters strive for accuracy, for clarity.  So should fiction writers.

            Listen today to people speaking around you and count how many times you hear reversed attribution.  Never is my guess.  You'll be all, like, "duh."  Even teenyboppers get it right.

            More:

            -- Reversed attribution is a form of passive voice.  "The ball was hit by the boy," and "said John," have the same consequence of focusing our attention backwards.

            -- We never reverse other noun-verb constructions in modern usage, speech or text.  The writer who uses "said he," never uses forms like "sat he down," or "ran he," or "fired he the missile." 

            -- Many contemporary writers do reverse attribution, but commercial publishing success doesn't always equal authority in things editorial.  Unless you're already publishing and making a cozy living at it, imitate popular error at your own peril.  Good writers aren't always good editors.

            -- Reverse attribution occurs in juvenile prose, "said Peter Rabbit," but do you want your adult story to sound as if it were aimed at six-year-olds?  Not on purpose.  "After all," Browne and King write in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, "'said he' fell out of favor sometime during the Taft administration."         

            -- You'll see reverse attribution even in Strunk and White's Elements of Style, but that "writer's Bible" first appeared in 1935 (twenty-five years after the Taft administration)--and (more important) Strunk and White understand when to reverse attribution and when not to do so.

            There are valid exceptions, as even curmudgeonly John Walsh asserts in his book, precisely and at greater length than space allows here.  Look it up.  Good book.

             But consider, for example, that any element of style repeated too often, however otherwise proper, including monotonous repetitions of "he said, she said," draws attention to itself--and away from content.  Form trumps content.  A writer may want to use reverse attribution now and then for variety in rhythm, or emphasis, or focus; more user-friendly concepts than knee-jerk adherence to any proper "rule."

            Thus in all cases, context, intent, style, and audience dictate preferred use.  And remember, above all, English is flexible, and innovation is allowed.  Generally.

            Say I.