Formal Grammar Rules Some Writers Skirt Around

Chances are, there are certain grammar rules that you've been sure were spot on. But times change, and so do the rules of the language road. It's easy to have this time warp happen, given how languages are taught as if there is a solid road map for working with them. For instance, I had an English class in high school where we diagrammed the parts of sentences. Those types of exercises can leave the impression that language is a static thing, where every element of speech stays in its lane. Yet even what's considered a contraction, such as the word because, gets debated by grammarians and others, and resources like the Urban Dictionary came into being specifically because languages are in flux.

Grammar rules are no exception, and this drift in approach extends beyond spoken language. For instance, if you asked authors how they represent a character's thoughts in print, some will prefer styling thoughts in italic text, while others won't use that more traditional distinction (potentially using the context to make that reality clear and leaving the thought roman [unitalicized], or using words like “he wondered’’ to call that fact out).

Learning how to skirt traditional grammar rules can add depth to your writings (image credit: fabrikasimf, freepik)

Here are some traditional grammar rules that could be weighing down your writings in some cases, in contrast to my previous post about more straightforward rules to likely run from.

Avoiding Passive Voice

If you learned that good sentences have a subject, verb, and then an object the verb acts on, that is a stellar way to construct sentences. Putting the subject first in a sentence helps orient readers, and direct sentence structures often require fewer words than passive voice ones. But some languages like Japanese put the subject toward the end of sentences, so it's not a hard-and-fast rule in the first place. And several good reasons exist to use passive voice.

While using active voice often works, having a sentence subject take a back seat while using passive voice at times can add subtlety to writings (image credit, freepik).

An author might do so now and again as part of changing up sentence styles, which can increase the overall energy of a piece. Or there may be a strategic reason, such as to change the pace of a passage by using the lengthier prose that passive voice often entails. Using passive voice can also be a tool for de-emphasizing the doer when the object that's affected is more important for the reader to focus on than the subject or verb. Or it might be a tool used by a memoirist or novelist to distance themselves or a character from an action.

Take the sentence, “When I reached for the phone, I dropped the puppy.’’ To allude to my guilt about having done this, I might instead write, “When I reached for the phone, the puppy slipped out of my hands. ’’ In Spanish, for instance, this approach is built in to the reflexive clause, “se me cayó’’ (it fell from me).

Several examples of strategic passive voice appear in Edward Hoagland's A Courage of Turtles. In one, he talks about not saving some baby turtles from the eventual death of living inside shells that had been painted, and writes, “Somehow there were so many of them I didn't rescue one.’’ At the end of the essay, when he throws a turtle he had purchased into the Hudson River because it wasn't an easily kept freshwater species, he realizes the dire choice from the turtle's perspective. Reflecting his misgivings, he shares in a staccato-paced passage that ends the essay that “since, short of diving in after him, there was nothing I could do, I walked away.’’

Nixing Fragmented Sentences

If you're writing someone's biography, or something like a book proposal or a query letter to convince publishing professionals that you have writing chops, using traditional approaches to sentence structures (syntax) will matter. But if you're penning the next Catcher In The Rye, a down-to-earth memoir or something else where you need to be casual in how you converse with readers, writing more like people talk will be key. This often involves incomplete sentences. The “Catch you later,’’ answered with the “ ’kay. Dinner first.’’ Paying close attention to how others talk and jotting down some examples is one way to start thinking about what types of conversations and topics to make into fragments in written form.

Skipping the Subjunctive Mood

Much of what I've shared has related to adding nuance into your content. These choices often influence the tone/mood of a piece. This tip is about mood, but in a different sense: the subjunctive tense, or subjunctive mood.

Whenever you express that you wished a situation would be different, but the reality isn't like that, or express a hypothetical future possibility, that statement traditionally is shared in English using the subjunctive tense. Fans of “Fiddler on the Roof’’ will immediately recognize this from Tevye's song about pondering what it would be like to be wealthy. He sings, “If I were a rich man,’’ using the third person, past tense subjunctive form of the verb to be. Or there's the common phrase, “So be it’’ instead of “So is it,’’ and “I wish she were more upbeat.’’ The subjunctive also comes up after commands, such as in, "She demanded that the meeting begin later that day. ’’  

But it's not uncommon to hear “If I was’’ used in casual speech, and potentially by mistake in writings, such as a parent telling a child, “I wouldn't do that if I was you’’ or a partner saying, “I suggested that she should make my favorite dish,’’ using the third person, (command-focused) indicative and present tense, rather than the subjunctive and, in this case, past tense. Straying from traditional subjunctive use is typically less frowned upon when a statement has been made about something that might be contrary to fact or hypothetical, but there's lack of clarity on that. In this case, the indicative is sometimes used instead, such as with “If Jesse was aware of the planned heist, he knew nothing of how it would get carried out.’’ Understanding the ins and outs of the subjunctive matters to get it right, and I've listed some articles below for that, and also recommend the recap in the fourth edition of The Copyeditor's Handbook, by Amy Einsohn and Marilyn Schwartz.

Avoiding negative statements, particularly two in a row, can lighten readers' mental load (image by freepik)

Clarity and Double Negatives

I'm going off topic a bit, while throwing in a syntax approach that isn't so much an old rule to avoid hanging onto as tightly; double negatives are more of something to avoid in general, when clear writing is your main goal. I'm adding this one in because it speaks to a bigger, unspoken rule I've learned in decades of writing that often helps readers connect: framing content in a positive way. This can include avoiding sentences that involve no and other words that require extra focus on less concrete, absent things.

“I can't get no satisfaction’’ is a great line for a song, partly for rhythmic reasons. But “I'm dissatisfied’’ is easier for readers to grasp quickly than The Rolling Stone's version. Take a look at some other double-negative sentences, and you'll see what I mean:

“The findings are not inconclusive.’’ versus “The findings are solid.’’

“He wasn't disrespectful in his appearance.’’ instead of “He dressed respectfully.’’

“She couldn’t find anyone she knew at the dance.’’ versus “She was a stranger to all at the dance.’’

Or this example from The Copyeditor's Handbook, fourth edition:

“Crime rates will not decline without a citywide effort to reduce poorly lit downtown streets.’’ That whopper can morph into “To reduce crime, the city should increase lighting on downtown streets.’’

Don't get me wrong, someone may have a perfectly good reason to use the less direct versions above. If you have a formal character who's trying to impress colleagues, “The findings are not inconclusive’’ may well fit the bill. But like word and other choices in writing, it's helpful to intentionally select the grammatical structures in your content, as part of giving readers the most compelling experience possible.

By Barbra A. Rodriguez, who coaches intentional living authors on developing their works of self-help, memoir, or other nonfiction, as well as historical fiction, whether at the idea stage, for developmental or proposal feedback, or when an author's ready to self-publish or learn the agent pitching process.

To receive a free guide about your book idea's potential and my Scoops4Scribes shares on writing and publishing, click here.

One of my go-to gurus on grammar, Mignon Fogerty, covers the basics of the subjunctive mood.

Learn more about which verb tense gets used when with the subjunctive versus the indicative.

For word nerds, someone at Brigham Young stowed away this piece about the cultural swings in use of the subjunctive mood.

Check out common sentence patterns with double negatives.