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Craft and Draft: Resumptives and Summatives and Appositives, oh my!

March 4, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Bust out those style guides, argue over those serial commas, and question the legitimacy of those split infinitives, because it’s National Grammar Day!

After Halloween, my birthday, National Hat Day, National Homebrewing Day, National Wizard Day, and National Drink Beer and Play Video Games All Day Day, National Grammar Day is my favorite. To celebrate the wonders of this syntactically accurate 24-hours, I’ve decided to talk about three of my favorite grammatical tools:

Appositives and resumptive and summative modifiers.

I normally don’t go for such low-hanging Oz-born fruit in my post titles, but for once, comparing these three constructs to lions, tigers, and bears is actually appropriate. I mean, not directly appropriate, as they’re not technically dangerous apex megafauna, but pretty indirectly appropriate as they are powerful and should be treated with respect.

These three are some of the best spells in the grammar-wizard’s tome of arcane writing knowledge. They are also three of the most challenging to master and use correctly. They help embroider and embolden your prose with more eloquent definition of your subjects, and can add lyricism and emphasis to your writing that phrasing and branching may not.

Much like parallelism, modifiers can transform stumbling, unnatural writing into flowing, organic writing with a few flicks of the predicate and shakes of the subordinate clause.

In Apposition to

Outside of our little grammar bubble, the word “appose” (similar in definition to, but not to be confused with “oppose”) means “to place in juxtaposition or proximity.” When inside said grammar bubble, apposition is the idea of placing one noun next to another to “rename” the first noun.

In practice an appositive is like a fancy adjective, with which you describe specific qualities of your noun, using another noun. For example:

“Oliver, a guy obsessed with wizards, wrote a book about ancient magicks.”

The appositive in the sentence above provides additional, specific knowledge about the main subject and has another noun (or nominative clause) that could theoretically replace the original noun.

An appositive cannot rename a noun that is somewhere else in the sentence:

“Oliver wrote a book, a guy obsessed with wizards, about ancient magicks.”

In this case, my appositive follows the noun in the direct object position (“a book”) which makes it sound like it is renaming the book. This sentence doesn’t really make any sense (unless the book is alive and sentient and really into wizards and wizard culture and HOLY CRAP awesome short story idea).

An appositive always renames the noun that precedes it and is always another noun or noun clause.

In addition to basic renaming or specification, appositives can put on some fancy-ass pants, and rename a subject more than once to create a very rhythmic effect:

“Oliver wrote a book, a treatise on men of mystery, a tome that would bridge a gap between science and spirit, a collection of words woven with the sinew of sorcery.“

Appositives are like grammar-guitar solos in the middle of your sentence-songs. They’re in the same key, but give the main melody a little variation and a lot of vivification.

Resuming Resumptives

I think, in all the untamed wilds of the grammatical jungle, that resumptive modifiers are my favorite tool. Don’t tell the adjectival clauses though, it’d break their little nonrestrictive hearts.

The resumptive modifier is exactly what it sounds like; it “resumes” a sentence where it left off, creating an echo-like effect for the end of your original sentence. It shifts the emphasis of a sentence from the main verb of the subject, usually to whatever information is found in the object position:

“And so she wept for his soul, a soul forever doomed to read about, talk about, and be in the company of wizards.”

Where the original sentence would have been focused on her weeping, the resumptive modifier makes the sentence more about his soul. This is a great tool for opening, transitioning, or closing a section where you really want to leave the reader with a clearly defined point of focus.

You can also chain resumptive modifiers together, or repeat an idea to branch into another, tangentially similar idea:

“And so she wept for his soul, a soul turned malignant by years of abuse, abuse of dark magic that should have been left interred.” (Chained resumptive modifiers can make a sentence pretty dense, but pack an amazing syntactic wallop and carry a ton of information in not a lot of words.)

“And so she wept for his soul, a soul entwined in distant lore, a soul that wandered a shadow world of near-forgotten ideas, a soul that had little hope of ever finding the light of tangible reality ever again.” (the resumptive is repeated to add to the idea of this weird guy’s soul)

While resumptives are awesome, they still have rules. To create a resumptive modifier, your original sentence must end with a noun or an adjective, and the section that follows must include (or be) a subordinate clause. The modifier would be incomplete or not make sense otherwise:

“And so she wept quietly, quietly as to not disturb her brother.” (Resumptives with an adverb are redundant as you could just take one out and have the exact same sentence)

“And so she wept for his soul, a tired soul.” (No subordinate clause is also redundant, as you could just include the adjectival information in the original sentence)

For effect, it is still possible to use these forms, but know that if you do you are breaking a grammatical rule and some readers may find this wording garish or silly or just plain pointless.

Summarizing Summatives

If resumptives resume, then summatives…?

Summarize. You win one million SAT/GRE vocabulary points.

Unlike a resumptive, which only modifies the previous noun, a summative modifier sums up the entire independent clause of a sentence with a single noun (or nominative clause). A summative modifier is a perfect tool to nudge your reader into believing something about your sentence without beating them over the head with, “HI THERE READER PERSON, THIS IS WHAT THIS SENTENCE MEANS AND WHAT YOU SHOULD TAKE AWAY FROM THE STORY.” It’s more subtle and sneaky, and when pens are down, better writing.

For example:

“The wizard lost the battle, a defeat that would mark the beginning of his end.”

You’re very slyly giving your reader supplemental information without having to break it into a separate sentence. This improves the flow and let’s the reader draw the conclusion you want by providing literary breadcrumbs. This has the added effect of naturally “rounding out” an idea, making it a perfect way to end a chapter or section.

Just for fun…

…let’s use all three tools in one sentence:

“Hadrax, a red robed silhouette on the horizon, began to wave his hands, a signal to those below that meant incoming fury, fury that came from a wizard pushed too far for too long.

I’ll include my usual grammatical tools disclaimer: these are great, amazing, wonderful, lovely, super effective constructions, but be judicious. They are very fun to write, and very easy to get carried away with. An entire paragraph of resumptive modifiers is going to be dense and confusing. An entire section of summative modifiers may make your reader feel like you’re spoon-feeding them too much information. Too many appositives and your reader won’t know which descriptor is most important.

Use sparingly, parental guidance recommended, caveat emptor, et cetera, et cetera.

I wasn’t kidding. The first step is admitting you have a problem and then writing about it.

Craft and Draft: Branching Out

February 18, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Have you ever been reading a book when, without warning or reason, your brain wanders off onto some random idea (like tacos!)? Have you ever looked back over the pages you just “read” and realized that you didn’t actually read them at all, they just kind of passed by your eyes like a slow moving cloud?

The culprit, for once, may not be your underdeveloped attention span or lack of sleep.

The problem might be in the syntax of the writing.

Despite our contemporary attempts at universal equality, not all sentences are created equal. Some are stronger than others, or are innately more interesting to read. In standard prose there are three types of sentences:

Right-branching (or “loose” sentences)
Left-branching (or “periodic” sentences)
Middle-branching (also called “periodic” sentences, I don’t know why)

These sentences determine how subordinate information is provided to the main clause of the sentence, and determines the syntactic variety of our writing. If you want your writing to dance on the page, put on that tutu and really nail that Tchaikovsky, you have to understand what each type of sentence does, and why.

Right Branching (aka Boring, Mr. Traditional Pants)

The right-branching sentence is a writer’s comfort sentence. It’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes. It’s that favorite pair of jeans that you refuse to wash because you know when you do, they won’t fit the same. It’s our default syntactic form, and the one you’re most likely to encounter in everyday reading.

It’s also the first kind of sentence that English speakers learn to write. A typical right-branching sentence looks like this: “He ran to get to the sword on the other side of the room, hoping to reach it before the swashbuckling goat-man.”

The basic sentence is just subject + transitive verb + direct object, “He ran to get the sword.” The other “stuff” (call it whatever you want: subordinate information, embroidery, a fancy tie for your sentence-suit) comes after – or to the right of – the subject of the sentence.

This is the journalist’s preferred style, as it gives all of the information in a clear, often chronologically appropriate order, without the reader having to figure much out.

The right-branching sentence is great for delivering information quickly and cleanly.

It’s also pretty boring (sorry journalist-type people).

Imagine reading a long-form piece that was written with all right-branching sentences: “He ran to the store to get milk his sister desperately needed. He had no money, but that wouldn’t stop him. The milk was in the back of the store, so he had to pass the clerk to get to it. The clerk watched him closely, hoping he wouldn’t steal anything. He picked up the milk and ran out the door before the clerk could even yell in protest.”

Not terrible, but it sounds pretty choppy. All of that adjectival and adverbial supplementation dangles off the end of the predicate like a poorly attached fishing lure on some thin, cheap line. One big fish (or good reader) and that tackle is lost forever, claimed by the briny depths (of your recycling bin).

Fortunately, most writers recognize that writing like a third-grader isn’t the best way to get an idea across, and use (even if they’re not aware of it) another type of sentence to vary the patterns and cadence of their writing.

Left-Branching (aka Sir Rambles-A-Lot)

If the right branching sentence is your comfort sentence, the left branching sentence is that tumultuous but exciting relationship you had in your early twenties. Mysterious and fascinating, packed with new experiences, something you couldn’t help but be attracted to, even if only for the novelty of something different. But with excitement comes risk. The left-branching sentence can leave you pretty burned and bitter when it dumps you for a guy named Steve who totally isn’t as smart or successful or as good looking as you.

To prevent predictable, chunky prose, a writer must vary sentence patterns. I just wrote a left-branching sentence to explain why you should write left-branching sentences. Such writing, unexpected, even sometimes confusing, keeps the reader engaged. I just did it again.

A left branching is exactly what it sounds like: the embroidery of your sentence comes before – or to the left of – your main subject and predicate. It is very good at building tension, or front-loading a sentence with information that you as the writer feels the reader needs before he gets to the action of the sentence.

This is a great for for dramatic moments, where you want to drag out some emotional scene, or build-up to a specific, powerful realization.

It’s also great for pissing your reader off.

There’s little worse than a sentence that just won’t get to the point, and that’s the risk you run every time you write a left branching sentence: “In the fading light, under the mossy ruins of a fallen willow, hoping against hope that she would show up dressed in that red sundress that hugged her curves, praying he wouldn’t fumble as he reached for the ring in his pocket, Jason sat.”

Shit man, Oscar Wilde called, and even he’s bored. Get on with it. Building tension is one thing. Rambling for five adverbial phrases is another.

The left-brancher can be a great cog in the steam-powered mechanization of your writing, but writer beware. It should be used sparingly and with purpose. If not, it may alienate writers and muddle up your voice, leaving you sad and alone on your birthday even though she promised to hang out and watch Spaceballs with you.

Wait, forget that last part.

Middle-branching (aka Mr. Fear of Commitment)

The middle-branching sentence is living through a perpetual identity crisis. Sometimes it wants to be left-branching, sometimes right-branching, which leaves it stuck in the middle, waffling and confusing everyone. It can’t figure out where to drop all that heavy subordinate information, so it just gives up, drops it at its feet, and stomps away in a fuss.

The middle-brancher places subordinate information between – or, um, in between – the subject and predicate. This makes for some interesting appositives or adjectival phrases that make your sentences more interesting.

Or more awkward. It depends on the style or effect you’re going for.

A middle-brancher would sound like this, “He drove, filled with shame and self-loathing, to Walmart.”

A lot of editors might immediately want to “correct” these sentences and make them left- or right-branching, but in defense of all things artistic, they can be used to vary the flow of a piece, and present important information in a way the actively engages the reader. If you’ve already introduced your subject, immediately following up with adverbial or adjectival information is a way to place emphasis without having to add a ton of supporting words that scream, “pay attention to this part right here, it’s super duper important, for real!”

The middle-branching sentence relies heavily on restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. If you really need to qualify how or why your subject did something (to say, build character, establish setting, or foreshadow) the middle-branching sentence might be exactly what you need. If the clause you’re placing in the middle is non-restrictive and just adds some other sundry detail for spice, left or right branching might be more appropriate.

Syntactic exploration is the cardamom and curry powder of writing

Next time you’re writing (or editing!), pay attention to the style of sentences you’ve used. Is it heavy on the right-branchers because you were a little too comfortable with your language when you wrote the first draft? Is it packed with tedious left branchers because you drank too much and started remember all the times you and ::named redacted:: went to the movies in 2001? Is it full of weird, lurching, awkward pariahs of language that dawdle about in the middle for too long?

If so, change it up. Any type of sentence can be transformed into another type with some clever grammar Feng Shui. When you review your own work, pay attention to the syntax just as much as the content and word choice. A little variation or emphasis passed on through the proper sentence structures can take your writing from “yea, I’ll read this” to “holy shit I can’t put this down.”

“Superfluous branches we lop away that bearing boughs may live” -Shakespeare