There’s another one: a full page with a single sentence, in italics: “This page intentionally left blank.”
Clearly, that’s just not true. I can see it. Right there. Someone intentionally put a sentence on an otherwise blank page rendering it … no longer a blank page!
My young grandson is just beginning to learn his numbers. He’s been wrestling with the concept of zero. Lately he’s been telling me, “Zero means nothing, and that’s something.” Maybe that’s what the sentence means, “this page is nothing, even though the fact that you can see it and feel it is something.”
I understand why it might be useful to insert intentionally blank pages here and there. It’s neat and tidy to have each new chapter begin on an odd numbered page (or even numbered, as long as it’s consistent). If so, then the page before the blank page could say “The following page left blank intentionally.” But why is that necessary at all? If the page before the blank page ends with a full sentence, then I can be confident that nothing was left out.
Uh-oh … ends “with a full sentence” could be the problem. Before I get into that, a disclaimer: I did not major in English and I’m certainly not a member of the grammar police, you know, those insufferable souls who whine about dangling participles and can suddenly be reduced tears by a split infinitive. (See what I did there?)
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I’m also realistic. Languages – at least the “living languages” – are constantly evolving. I’ve given up my crusade against using the adjective “impacted” as a verb. Don’t even get me started on the misuse of “gifted.”
There’s an elegance to a simple sentence: subject, verb, object. Begin with one complete thought, express it clearly, and then move on to the next complete thought. A well-constructed paragraph is a thing of beauty: topic sentence, a couple of supporting sentences, and then a conclusion sentence.
These days, though, readers are often confronted with tangled jumbles of random thoughts tied together with all manner of conjunctions and punctuation marks to make it look like a sentence. And paragraphs? They’re a candidate for endangered species status.
Tempting as it is to blame this on the Internet, it’s broader than that. I’m reading a current best-selling novel and navigating 150-word sentences and paragraphs that go on for pages.
An early mentor of mine was an old newspaper editor named Harrison Stephens. One of Harrison’s rules was: Great writing should be coherent, cohesive, and consistent, in that order. If you can’t make logical sense (coherent), then be sure you make a reasonable argument (cohesive) and are consistent. But, if all you’re doing is saying the same thing over and over (consistent), then you’re not communicating, you’re boring.
I’m afraid my old friend Harrison would be alarmed at our writing these days. Coherence and cohesiveness were early casualties. Lately we’ve abandoned consistency in favor of sheer volume. You need look no further than most social media posts. As the old Randy Newman song says, “I’ve got nothing to say, but I’m saying it anyway.”
I worry that this decline is a symptom of a deeper problem. Good writing, it seems to me, is built upon clear thinking. Does it follow that addled thinking leads to bad writing? In the doctor’s office a while ago I laughed at the title of a brochure: “No Head Injury is Too Trivial to Ignore.” I hope they mean pay attention to every head injury, even those that seem too trivial. Still, I wonder about the treatment for No Head Injury.
Craig Wruck describes himself as a relentless optimist. He is a retired college administrator who recently relocated to Rochester to spend more time growing up with his grandson. Send comments on columns to Jeff Pieters, jpieters@postbulletin.com.
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March 01, 2022 at 11:32PM
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Craig Wruck: This page coherently, cohesively and consistently left blank - PostBulletin.com
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