Susan Dominus went to the doctor and wrote this in the New York Times: “The meeting was only my second with this gynecologist, a woman who struck me as chic, professional and in a bit of a hurry, which was to be expected, as she is part of a large health care group — the kind that makes you think you’d rather die from whatever’s ailing you than try to navigate its phone tree one more time.”
This reference relies on pathos for its power, depending upon a common shared experience most adults would recognize: the endless phone tree run-arounds. I often find myself mindlessly repeating "agent, agent," or "I want to speak to a person." Amazingly, this scattershot approach often gets me to a live customer service rep. But even then, most of my encounters with large businesses is annoying and even maddening.
I most admired the control of the writer, however, creating that compound-complex sentence that rolls along for 63 words. Particularly impressive were those two descriptive phrases -- the first on the doctor and the second a comment on large health groups.
Most students will struggle to create such lengthy sentence, and I often find myself suggesting to my college writers that they would save themselves trouble by simply stopping their sentence and starting a new one. Run-ons, usually involving comma splices, continue to be the single most common grammar error among my students.
I continue to point out where sentences spin out of control. Students appear to generally ignore my advice. So it goes.
Michelle Cottle previewed (also in the NYT) the State of the Union address: “One question that always carries with it a frisson of unease during big presidential addresses: On a scale of 1 to Lauren Boebert, how disrespectfully will members of the opposing party behave?”
It's always nice to see one of our state's "best and brightest" mentioned in a national publication. Of course, Boebert might take this sort of reference to her as a complement. See, she might point out, my name and reputation are so well known that no explanations are needed as to this writer's meaning.
This was fun since an informed reader knew at this point (a week later) that things got quite out of hand... though Mr. Biden handled the chaos adroitly. Boebert was uncharacteristically well-behaved.
The Economist examined a winter pastime: “In ancient Israel, somebody walking across a body of water constituted a miracle. In Minnesota, it just means that it is ice fishing season.”
For those who grew up in the northern latitudes of the U.S., frozen-over ponds and lakes are taken for granted. This excerpt requires minimum understanding of some basic Bible stories to work. Another argument for teaching "Bible as literature." The allusions to that text are endless. The possibilities of not connecting to readers only grows as religion recedes in the country.
The more articles I read about the death of the English major, and the more I learn about various efforts to decrease teacher independence... added to increasing unwillingness to take on anything controversial among teachers generally (understandable, but...), the more I can imagine a time where even a "Jesus walked upon the waters" reference can't connect.
And in The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert described the onetime ubiquity of an American sex symbol with the first name Pamela: “In the ’90s, Anderson was one of the most famous women in the world, the highest-paid actress on the most-watched television show (that would be ‘Baywatch’), her scarlet swimsuit and box-blond curls covering more bedroom walls than Sherwin Williams.”
The reader is expected to recognize "Sherman Williams" as a brand of paint. Not knowing this basically ruins the sentence, and if the reader can't add in HOW Ms. Anderson ended up on those walls, the assumption that we all know of her famous poster becomes too subtle. So this example requires at least two pieces of information in the reader to make sense.
Let's face it: much of the "clever" writing that Frank Bruni shares in his newsletter relies on readers being "of a certain age."
I am definitely in that group.
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