– Grammar

When you say one thing, but everyone knows you really mean something else, that’s an idiom. It’s an expression peculiar to itself that cannot be understood from the definitions of its individual words. For example, in the sentence “Fred kicked the bucket”, we know we aren’t talking about someone kicking an actual, physical bucket—the phrase can’t be understood compositionally. It doesn’t say that Fred died, but that’s exactly what it conveys. If your editor says, “We’re on the same page” you would know that he probably isn’t talking about your book, rather that the two of you have come to an understanding.

A native English-speaker knows thousands of idioms and uses many every day. They are in the very air that we breathe, and we assimilate them effortlessly, but idioms don’t translate well—when translated directly word-for-word, either the concept is changed or it becomes entirely absurd. Idioms can also be regional—one that makes sense in some regions might not be understood in others. Or they can be generational—something that works for your grandparents could make you scratch your head and stare.

What do idioms mean?

Idioms often use words in a manner that differs from the norm. Consider make over, make up, make out, give over, give up, give out, give way, and give in. You’ll notice each phrase has nothing to do with the usual idea of over, up, out, way, and in, so how do you figure out their meaning? You probably didn’t study them in school—unless you were in a linguistics class.

Fortunately, some idioms have backstories that help.

• Axe to Grind—having a hidden agenda or motive
  • There’s a story about a passing stranger who admires a youth’s grindstone and dupes him into sharpening his axe. Once the axe is sharp, the man walks away, laughing, having used his appreciation of the grindstone to cover up his real agenda—getting his axe sharpened.
• A little bird told me—refusing to name the source of information
  • This one traces its written origins to Ecclesiastes 10:20: “…curse not the rich…for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.”
• Brass tacks—details of immediate practical importance
  • Instead of holding out a piece of cloth along an arm’s length, cloth was measured between brass tacks set into a shop’s counter. “There was a little square counter, heaped with calicoes and other gear, except a small space clear for measuring, with the yards tacked off with brass tacks.”

Unfortunately, some have changed to suggest the opposite of the original.

• Lead foot—motorist driving at high speeds
  • Originally a lead-footed person moved slowly due to lead being a heavy metal.
• Put Out to Pasture—force someone to leave a job because of old age
  • Originally it referred to bringing the animals out to feed for the day.

Why do we care?

Using idioms in dialogue can help establish the character’s background, but be careful—using idioms incorrectly will only confuse the reader.

A hyphen has two main uses…but is often used for the wrong reason—as a dash. We’ll cover how to properly use Dashes later. For now, we’re going to go over the two reasons to use a hyphen: connect words into a larger chunk or show where a word is broken across a line.

Multiple Modifiers

Modifiers are used to tell what kind a thing is, and sometimes it takes more than one word. What kind of candy? Rock hard. So it’s ‘rock-hard candy’. What kind of boy? A quick witted one, so we have ‘a quick-witted boy’. What kind of hotel? A dog friendly one, so it’s a ‘dog-friendly hotel’. What kind of singer? One that is well known, so we have a ‘well-known singer’.

Without hyphens, sometimes a modifier is unclear. Let’s say that you got a new job, and in the work schedule, it says that you are going to work “twenty four hour shifts”. Does that mean you have a bunch of short shifts or one long one? There is a big difference between “twenty four-hour shifts” and “twenty-four hour shifts”. The first are a bunch of short works periods—the second a long time to be at work.

Compound Words

There are some words that we always keep together, for example: Mother-in-law, Master-at-arms, Editor-in-chief. And there are some words that used to be hyphenated but aren’t anymore. Did you know that ‘online’ originated as two words? From the mid-1800s until the mid-1960s, it was ‘on line’ with a space. Then the hyphenated form took over until 1980, when the single-word version became popular, and that’s how we use it today. (If you haven’t had a chance to play with the Ngram Viewer on Google Books, it’s really interesting.)

Broken Words

Allowing your words to be hyphenated will help keep your lines of text fairly even. That way if a word is close to the end of the line, it can be broken onto the next line. It is especially important if you have narrow columns (such as in a newspaper).

The option to turn on hyphenation is on the Page Layout Tab, in the Page Setup Group. To see how your document will look with hyphenation, just turn it on to automatic. If you don’t like the way it looks, you can just undo it (ctrl-Z) and do it manually. Opening the Hyphenation Options dialogue box will allow you to tweak the settings until you get it just the way you want.

Using a half-visible Optional Hyphen in certain words allows you to use the hyphenation process with more control. Those words will only break where you want them broken…if they need to be.

Many professionals tell us to write in active voice, but what does that mean? Two issues here, but we’ll get to the second definition later…after we discuss grammatical passive voice. Although some editors claim you should avoid passive voice at all costs, it is not true that it is an error. “There are legitimate uses for the passive voice,” says Paul Brians, professor of English at WSU. “If you don’t know who is responsible for an action, passive voice can be the best choice,” says Mignon Fogarty (aka Grammar Girl). Apparently many writers talk about this problem without knowing what it is, thinking that any ‘to be’ verb signals passive voice, per Bryan A. Garner, yet the sentence “I am holding a book” uses ‘am’ (a form of ‘to be’) while being in active voice (the actor is the subject).

Grammar

We are going to call the person in the sentence who is doing something the Actor. (Linguists call it the Agent.) The person being done to is the Target. (Their term is Patient or Theme.) Consider:

• Amy hit Bill.

Amy is the Actor and Bill is the Target. In this case, the Actor is the subject, so this is active voice. We can trade things around, getting:

• Bill was hit by Amy.

The same thing happened, but now the Actor is the object and the Target is the subject, but the subject isn’t doing anything…he’s passive, and so is the sentence—but it can get even more passive if we leave Amy out completely: “Bill was hit.” It happened, but no one is admitting doing it.

As we saw, a clue to passive is that the subject isn’t actively doing anything, but that isn’t always bad:

• Focus on the Target
  • The cookies were taken. (not the cake or pie)
• We don’t know the Actor
  • The store was robbed. (police are still searching)
• Focus on the Actor
  • He was killed by his own doctor. (not by his wife)

As with other style choices, over use is the real problem. Keep your passive sentences under control and no one will complain.

Passive Verbs

Now comes the second part. You may be writing in Active Voice, but are the verbs themselves active, that is, do they give your reader a sense of action? We aren’t talking about Stative and Dynamic verbs here, rather we mean wimpy or exciting verbs.

• Did your character walk across the room?
  • Or did he stride, pace, stomp, sway, storm across the room?
• Did he pick up the ball?
  • Or did he grab, snatch, confiscate, secure, choose it?
• How about the jewels? Were they just stolen?
  • Or were they pinched, swiped, lifted, purloined, or did someone simply walk off with them?
• Did the girl cry?
  • Or did she weep, sob, snivel, wail, or just whimper?

Get out your thesaurus, expand your vocabulary, and find new words with interesting connotations—see what it does to your writing!