Sunday, December 07, 2003
(4:51 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Josh Marshall Writes Like a Financial Services Advertisement
The dwindling number of us who still read print magazines are likely familiar with the distinctive writing style of financial services advertisements. "Spender and Rob is everything you expect from a financial service provider. Reliable. Honest. Profitable. And Ethical." "Here at First Financial Whatever, we know that you want a financial service that will ease your mind. And increase your bottom line. That's why...." It's as though there's some kind of tax on commas. Or sentences that don't begin with conjunctions. Or complete sentences.
Josh Marshall, one of the guiding lights of the blogging revolution, writes like that. For instance, in this post, he writes, "My point isn't that there's anything hidden or conspiratorial about it per se. It's just that cutting the deals surrounding the debt issue is central to much of what happens in Iraq next year. And much of what happens in Iraq period." Do you notice that that last sentence is technically a fragment? I understand that he wants to emphasize the "and," but most web browsers support italics: "It's just that cutting the deals surrounding the debt issue is central to much of what happens in Iraq next year and much of what happens in Iraq period." Overuse of italics is annoying. And I know I'm one of the primary perpetrators. But putting every idea into a separate sentence for "emphasis" is annoying. And ineffective.
Here's another one: "So many articles get published every day. And it's a struggle to know which are the must-reads and which can be safely ignored." In this case, the new sentence obscures the direct connection between the two clauses. They are independent clauses on a literal, grammatical level, but they clearly belong together in a single sentence. Why not replace that unnecessary period with a comma and a humbler, lower-case "and"?
A particularly egregious example is found here: "I had lunch today with someone who is not a politician but a fairly prominent Washington Democrat -- certainly not someone from the party's liberal wing. And in the course of answering a question, I said 'If it [i.e. the nominee] ends up being Dean ...' At which point, with the rest of my sentence still on deck down in my throat, my friend shot back : 'It's Dean.'" First of all, the "And" in the second sentence isn't even necessary. Had it been removed, the connection between the two sentences would have remained clear. In the third sentence, the use of a new sentence is somewhat justified in that Marshall is evoking an interruption, but the long phrase about "the rest of the sentence still on deck in my throat" (the literary merits of which are certainly debatable) robs the fragment of its impact. What we have here is basically one long sentence awkwardly chopped into three. Ideally, the entire passage could have been recast: "I was talking to this prominent Democrat guy, and I was saying, 'If the nominee ends up being Dean....' He interrupted: 'It's Dean.'" I realize my version doesn't have a lot of flair, but I think it's better structured. He could even sandwich in the "on deck in my throat" thing if he wanted.
To be fair, blogs are by nature first drafts. And our rhetorical tics, which might be edited out in more formal settings, are bound to show up more often. But attentive readers might note that I was able to pick out these particular gaffes from within the top five entries on the page.
Also, to be fair, I have (at minimum) the following rhetorical tics:
- Overuse of dashes
- Overuse of "Also"
- Overuse of adverbs and adverbial phrases
- Overly long sentences
- Over use of parenthetical clauses
But I think my faults are more difficult to imitate.
And that's what's really important here.
Endnote
I originally wanted to entitle this essay "Josh Marshall Writes Like a Woman," but the only examples I could cite are a frequent contributor to Dennis Bratcher's discussion board and a columnist from the Flint (MI) Journal. I truly believe that women are more prone to sentence fragments than men. And this is something that really needs to be investigated. But I'm too lazy to do so.
