Posted on by seasonsshadow

English – Why Are You Like This?

Would you like to know what this post was supposed to be about? This post was supposed to do a bit of an outline on when to use spacing in your words versus when you should leave them together. I spent a little while brainstorming what kind of words I wanted to use as examples and I was all prepared to write them up and discuss if there was some hard and fast rule of when to use them together versus spaced out.

Instead, I found myself down this rabbit hole of word definitions.

Let me explain.

The words that my brain goblin really likes to second guess are things like into/in to, onto/on to, altogether/all together, ahold/a hold, setup/set up, onboard/on board, and nevermind/never mind.

So first. Things like in and on are usually prepositions. For those that need a reminder, a preposition is the part of a sentence that will explain where in relation to another thing the subject is. For example, Mary is on the bed. Mary is the subject, and ‘on’ dictates where she is in relation to the bed. If we change the preposition to ‘in’, that adjusts our understanding of where Mary is. In the first example, she exists on the bed as a whole. Once it is changed to ‘in’, this implies that she is likely under the covers as she is now inside the bed as a whole. Unless there was an unfortunate murder, it is safe to say that ‘in’ the bed would only be comfortable if you were in amongst the blanket parts.

Okay sweet. Now how about in to vs into? Well, into is also a preposition. Usually. If we stick with the example from the last paragraph, Mary can get into bed, just as she is in bed. This is just the difference between whether it is an action that you are talking about, or whether it is the location you are talking about. Can you bring the groceries into the house? Otherwise, if you want to know where the groceries are, they are in the car, because no one’s brought them inside yet.

I have two rules of thumb here because there are always exceptions to the rules of how you use these words and using the two of them together is ALMOST foolproof. (Except for English deciding that to shapeshift, or to undergo metamorphosis is to change into something else. That’s a rant for another day.)

Rule ONE: Is the space, concept, object, or state something you can abstractly or concretely put your subject in or access? Shock, kitchen, desk drawer, meditation. She went into shock. She went into the kitchen. She went into the desk drawer. She went into meditation.

Rule TWO: Can you put a comma between ‘in’ and ‘to’ and it still makes sense as proper English and doesn’t change the meaning? Shock, kitchen, desk drawer, meditation. She went in, to shock. To shock what? Not a sentence. She went in, to the kitchen. She went inside the house. She stood like a sim, aimless at the kitchen border, not entering, just staring. Okay, I’m sure someone somewhere used that as a real sentence, but hopefully, you’re picking up what I’m putting down? She went in, to the desk drawer. Again, she goes there and just stands, staring at the drawer. Maybe she doesn’t have a key. She went in, to meditation. This isn’t conjugated properly so is not a sentence.

Happily, everything I’ve said above applies to ‘onto’ vs ‘on to’ with the adjustment of instead of the subject being abstractly or concretely being able to be in or access, the subject can be placed abstractly or concretely on top of something.

This sadly does not carry over to altogether, all together, ahold, a hold, setup, set up, onboard, on board, nevermind, and never mind!

Before anyone says anything about these all being conjugated words versus prepositions, no. Up and on are prepositions.

So let’s take all together and altogether. Different words. Because sometimes language be like that. Altogether is an adverb. If you can replace it with ‘wholly’ or ‘completely’, you are using the right form. All together is an adverb, modified by a determiner. If you remove “all” and the sentence still more or less makes sense, then you’ve got it. If it no longer makes sense, perhaps you should be using ‘altogether’.

Example! Mary was altogether fed up with John’s behaviour. Mary was all together fed up with John’s behaviour. Mary was ‘completely’ fed up with John’s behaviour sounds okay, but Mary was together fed up with John’s behaviour doesn’t make much sense. The correct usage is then ‘Mary was altogether fed up with John’s behaviour.’

Example again! The group was excited to be altogether again. The group was excited to be all together again. The group was excited to be ‘completely’ again does not make sense, but the group was excited to be together again makes sense. The correct usage is then ‘The group was excited to be all together again.’

Are you still with me? This is turning out to be a long one. In an effort not to waste your time with filler and fluff, I’m heading right into talking about ‘setup and set up’.

Setup is the noun. Person place or thing. Set up is the verb. Action, occurrence, or state of being. You can be set up because you are the subject and the thing is happening to you. You can’t be setup. You are not a computer, and you do not need all your settings adjusted to function. A smart toaster that is voice-activated can be set up (placed upright on a surface) and requires setup (programming to toast your toast and recognize your voice). If you yourself are not this toaster, you can’t be both.

Now for another relatively straightforward one with a bonus hyphenated occurrence! Onboard has the corporate definition of training people and amalgamating them into a company’s structure and ideologies. On-board reflects the location of something within a vessel that travels over land, through the sea, or in the air. On board is the term for being present in the vessel whether it is moving or stationary at the time. If you are thinking you don’t see that much difference between the last two, the third example is when it is used as a preposition, and the second is when it is used as an adjective. I don’t have a trick for this one. I looked for a few days to see if the internet had anything better to say but came up empty. I’d love to hear from you if you have something that works for you!

I will start the next section with a little filler and fluff. This choice might have been made because there’s no point in pretending I’m perfect and just know all this stuff. Guess what I learned while I was researching my little trouble phrasings?

That I should not be using ‘nevermind’. Like, ever. Why? Because it currently belongs specifically to the turn of phrase ‘no nevermind’. Haven’t heard of it? No. Me neither. Apparently, if something is bothering you, someone may tell you to pay it ‘no nevermind’. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on this one. I personally don’t know how I feel about it.

The last combo I had on my little list was ‘a hold’ vs ‘ahold’. I debated leaving it out because it’s a slippery slope between accepting ‘ahold’ as a word, and accepting ‘alot’ as a word which I am absolutely against.

In fact, please see exactly how I feel in the timeless Hyperbole and a Half blog.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Ahold is an informal word that has been recognized by dictionaries. You can use it in the context of grabbing ahold of something or getting ahold of someone. What I want you to notice is that in both cases, the ‘ahold’ is followed by an ‘of’. This is it. This is the whole trick. If the phrasing is ‘This television show has a hold on me’, you can’t replace ‘a hold’ with ‘ahold’, there is no ‘of’! Since ‘ahold’ is informal anyway, if you are ever unsure, err on the side of ‘a hold’!

So there you have it. Something that was supposed to take me a few hours this weekend to type up and get ready for you ended up taking much longer and now has me questioning everything English does. I hope you found this interesting or useful, and I would love to hear about the words that sometimes give you trouble, or if you have any tricks to share about the above!

REFERENCES

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Change Paragraphs Every Time You SPIT

Have you heard the “Tip Top” trick for knowing when to break paragraphs? Create new paragraphs each time you change – TIme, Place, TOpic, Person.

TIme – Make a new paragraph any time that you are skipping either forward or backward in time.

Place – Make a new paragraph any time that you are moving to a new place. If your piece was a film, this would be a transition. If your piece was a play, this would be a set change.

TOpic – Any new topics, ideas, or subjects need to have their time to shine and grab the reader’s attention. Do this by introducing them in their own paragraph.

Person – When you are writing in an omnipotent point of view and change focus to a different person change paragraphs. When a new person is speaking, new paragraph. When you are introducing a new character then guess what? New paragraph.

I have one I like a little better than that.

Change paragraphs every time you SPIT.

Or, for a catchier/morally questionable option –

SPLIT WHERE YOU SPIT.

S – Speaker

You HAVE to break paragraphs each time a new speaker takes the spotlight, or every time the speaker changes within a dialogue. I know this is a modern rule but it was implemented for clarity. Dante did not follow this rule. I never knew if he or Virgil were speaking in the Divine Comedy. I would punch Dante if I had that power. It’s hard to follow and in modern writings can stall the flow of the text.

P – Place

Please change a paragraph when the focus of your narrative moves to a different place. Place is not just geographical. It can also be emotional or a state of mind, if you care to debate philosophy. This point is nearly identical to the one in TIP TOP. If your piece was a film, a new paragraph would happen every time there was a scene transition. If your piece was a play, a new paragraph would happen every time you struck the stage. When I refer to the emotional place or state of mind, I have found that it can be helpful to really accent and emphasize that change or difference between the two states when you break.

I – Introduce

“Introduce” is kind of my cheater point. If you are introducing a speaker, a place, a state of mind etc you likely already have made the necessary paragraph breaks. Consider this though, I needed a vowel to make my acronym work.

Okay but on a more serious note, I wanted a catch all for introducing new ideas, new plot points, new non-speaking characters, and anything else that you would care to bring into your work in progress. “Introduce” is a fairly good way to emphasize that everything in your writing, if it is worth mentioning, is worth a proper introduction and should be relevant to your work. If you are struggling to give the element its own paragraph, consider if it is really necessary or if there is a way to acknowledge it in an alternate way.

T – Time

This point is the same as the one in TIP TOP. Any time you are moving either forwards or backwards in time, you should be creating a new paragraph. If nothing else, the new paragraph will force your reader to pause which can create enough mental space for you to ease your reader into the alternate time stream.

I used a couple of references to help me lay out the above thoughts.

I would love to hear thoughts on the above, or what other writers (regardless of genre) have found helpful in their paragraph splitting journeys!

Posted on by seasonsshadow

My OTN -> One True Nemesis

Affect vs. Effect

So the hope in writing a post on my OTN super duper early in this website is twofold.

1) I will get a handle on it a bit more and maybe help others in the future.

2) If this website takes off my deep dark grammatical failure will be hidden away in the recesses of time.

Not to be dramatic though.

I have read a lot of descriptors about how to use affect and effect. I have heard all of the tips and tricks. A is for Action and that is Affect (a verb!). E is for End result and that is Effect (a noun!). I have put it in order so it spells RAVEN (Remember! Affect is a Verb! Effect is a Noun!) If it was as easy as that, then I wouldn’t be here, lamenting my inability to keep the two straight.

Affect

Let’s start with Affect. The Verb. A refresher on verbs? Merriam-Webster considers the essential meaning of a verb “a word that is usually one of the main parts of a sentence and that expresses an action, an occurrence, or a state of being.”

If you are impacting something, you are probably affecting it. If you act on something, you are affecting it. If you change something, you are affecting it. If you influence or improve something, you are affecting it. Now, just in case you are thinking “well of course this is all very straight forward” I have two more for you. If you have steady, unchanging, baseline emotions, you have flat affect. Another, in case you were still feeling confident. If you are pretentious, or you are pretending to be someone you’re not trying to impress other people, you affect that trait. You can affect an accent. I mean, please don’t. But you could.

If Thing A is doing something to PRODUCE a desired result, then it is affect.

Effect

The noun! Similarly to its precursor, I will start with the Merriam-Webster definition. “A word that is the name of something (such as a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, or action) and is typically used in a sentence as subject or object of a verb or as object of a preposition.” I personally find this one helps me less but in the interest of treating these words fairly I pursue.

If the subject experiences the thing, it is effect. If you can replace “effect” with the word “result” or “consequence” then you have used it right (for most applications). If you are effective, you are successful. This is the end result.

Examples? Sure.

“This will take effect tomorrow.”

“Despite how many he had downed, the beer seemed to have no effect.”

“Nurse April handed over the husband’s personal effects.”

Closing thoughts

I read that if there’s an “a”/”an”/”the” in front of the subject/object then that’s a pretty good way to determine that the correct word is effect. I haven’t tested this myself but it seems to check out so far.

Just because I am an Agent of Chaos I will give you a counterintuitive example. It is better to effect change than it is to affect change. To affect change means that you are impacting the change, which is pretty good. To effect change is to create and bring about change. That is a much stronger movement in most everyone’s opinion.

Because affect and effect are my OTN, this post was hard to write. Even though I spent a week reading articles on the difference. This is a call to all Grammar Nazis. Please comment if you see something in this post that represents affect and effect poorly (besides my attitude). I’d love the opportunity to reign victorious over my nemesis!

Primary Sources: