grammar for the spoken word – Adept Word Management

Dummy Subjects

Here’s an interesting concept!

2 min ago

This bit from her blog enticed me to do some more research. So I’m going to investigate dummy subjects for my next several posts. As always, I’ll be exploring how the idea of Dummy Subjects can aid us in Capturing Voices.

Common terms used in teaching the expletive use of it and there are “dummy it, ” “dummy there,” and “dummy subject.”

expletive: Of a word or phrase: serving merely to fill out a sentence or a metrical line without adding anything to the sense.

Dummy
A derivative of dumb (“unable to speak), dummy boasts twenty-one shades of meaning in its OED entry. There’s even a verb, to dummy up: “to render silent.”

Merriam-Webster arranges its definitions of dummy under five headings, one of which is “an imitation, copy, or likeness of something used as a substitute.” This is the word’s meaning in the general terms “newspaper dummy,” “ventriloquist’s dummy,” crash-test dummy,” and “dummy corporation.” All stand in for or act as a substitute for something else. The usage is clear.

When it comes to the grammatical terms—“dummy it,” “dummy there,” and “dummy subject”—connotation enters the picture.

Words exert power.

Some words exert so much power that they must not be spoken or written.

For the orthodox Jew, the word God is so fraught with divine power that it is written as G-d. In speech, a different word altogether—Hashem (“Name”)—is used.

An English word that centuries of contemptuous use have imbued with toxic power is now referred to as “the n-word.”

A word that seems innocuous or even pleasant to one speaker may stir feelings of discomfort in another. For example, an insect name that had always sounded romantic to me—the “gypsy moth”—has been officially changed by the Entomological Society of America. The change was prompted by the fact that—for Romani people—the word gypsy has distressing connotations.

In Anglo-Saxon times, our linguistic ancestors used the adjective dumb only to mean “speechless” or “unable to speak.” The word dummy was coined to refer to people so afflicted. It didn’t take long for the noun to acquire the meaning, “stupid person.”

It can be argued that the dummy in “dummy subject” is so totally removed from use of dummy as an accusation of stupidity as to be irrelevant. But, although words can be conveniently categorized in a dictionary, connotations often overlap in use.

Take the British word for a baby’s pacifier, for example. In the UK, crying babies are given a “dummy.” In this context, the word dummy is a substitute nipple, but it is also a means of obtaining silence from the baby.

The word dummy used to label a grammatical construction implies that there is something wrong, if not stupid, about the usage. Here are some sentences that might be said to contain a “dummy subject.”

There’s a unicorn in the garden.
There will be a time to sleep, but not now.
It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.
It’s too late to apologize.

So what exactly is a dummy subject? And how does it figure in writing and speech? The Editor’s Manual explains:

What is a dummy subject?

A dummy subject conveys no meaning of its own but simply fills the position of subject in a sentence. The subject is whom or what a sentence is about. It usually precedes the verb.

EXAMPLES

Maya wants to travel the world.
We don’t know where Poco is.
The book you were looking for is on the bookshelf.

A sentence must have a subject. When one isn’t available, the pronouns it and there fill this position.

EXAMPLES

It is raining today. Not “is raining today.”
There is no way Farley can win this match. Not “Is no way Farley can win this match.”

Note how dummy subjects don’t refer to anything specific. Compare this with it being used as a pronoun in place of a specific noun.

EXAMPLE

Look at this wooden table. It is three hundred years old. In this sentence, it refers to something specific: a wooden table. Therefore, the word isn’t being used as a dummy subject.

TIP

The dummy subject is variously called a fake, artificial, or empty subject.

grammar for the spoken word, Punctuation of the spoken word, style manuals, transcription clarifying the subject, punctuation

Write How You Write, Not How You Speak-from Daily Writing Tips

“If you’ve ever seen a transcript of an extended discourse — a written record of someone’s comments, rather than the prepared script for a speech — you’ll understand how widely spoken and written English can diverge.” DailyWritingTips.com

Beth McLaughlin

7 min ago

He’s talking here about phrases like “so to speak” and “In my opinion,” but the difference between the written and spoken words goes much deeper. A transcript is a “written record of someone’s comments, rather than the prepared script for a speech.”

“Readers expect your prose to be direct and dynamic,” and the spoken word is not. It’s riddled with “um”s and “uh”s, self interruptions, reactions to distractions, and lazy speech. You know can be a bid to buy more time or a request for reassurance that the listener is actively listening and understands your point.

There are a wealth of differences between the spoken word and the written word, and most people don’t give them a second thought. But that is precisely the focus of transcription. A transcript of the spoken word edited to the expectations of the written word would be unrecognizable.

Recently, I wrote about word patronage, the often-unnecessary inclusion of self-referential expressions as “as you will” and “so to speak” in one’s writing. This post expands on that one to recommend that you inspect your writing for anything that smacks of spoken English.

If you’ve ever seen a transcript of an extended discourse — a written record of someone’s comments, rather than the prepared script for a speech — you’ll understand how widely spoken and written English can diverge.

Spontaneous speech, at least, is riddled with qualifications and equivocations. It’s easy enough to dispose of “um”s and “uh”s, “well”s and “you know”s when converting a transcript to an essay, but writers should purge their prose of other utterances, words, and phrases as well that add a lot to a word count but little to a description or an argument. (See this post, for instance, for a list of adjectival intensifiers and their adverbial forms to avoid.)

In addition, omit hedging phrases such as “as I see it,” “from my point of view,” “in my opinion,” and “it seems to me.” Search and destroy such pompous filler as “be that as it may” or “other things being equal.” These are all understandable (though not necessarily forgivable) indulgences in spoken English, whether impromptu or rehearsed — at best, they’re nearly meaningless phrases one tosses off while thinking of what to say next, and at worst, they clutter a speech, distracting and discouraging listeners. But readers expect your prose to be direct and dynamic, and there’s no place for such self-gratification in written form.

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grammar for the spoken word, transcription transcript a written record of comments, writing vs speaking

SOME Q&A TIPS FROM THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE

Answers to some of the dilemas we encounter in our effort to capture voices. The Chicago Manual of Style is Adept’s primary style manual.

Q. Should there be a comma after “also” when it begins a sentence?

CMOS Answers: Yes, an introductory “also” would normally be followed by a comma. The relevant rule is the one that applies to an introductory adverb like the word yes in the previous sentence (see CMOS 6.34). Note, however, that after an introductory adverbial phrase rather than a single word, the comma can often be omitted, particularly if the phrase is short (see CMOS 6.31). So,

As of late 1999 our Y2K fears still seemed warranted.

but

Also, many of us were new to computers back then.

Q. Hi. I’m working on a label for an image in a printed brochure. The entire label is “bison shoulder blade hoe.” How would you punctuate that—with an en dash (“bison–shoulder blade hoe”)? Or hyphens (“bison-shoulder-blade hoe” or “bison shoulder-blade hoe”)? I was thinking that technically an en dash would be correct according to CMOS 6.80, but that seems too formal and, as CMOS states, unlikely to be noticed by most. There is no room to reword it. Thank you!

Q. Regarding open compounds, would an en dash be correct in “Mr. Potato Head–like head” and “rubbing alcohol–soaked cotton”? Thank you!

CMOS Answers: See CMOS 7.85: “With the exception of proper nouns (such as United States) and compounds formed by an adverb ending in ly plus an adjective (see 7.86), it is never incorrect to hyphenate adjectival compounds before a noun.” The goal of adding such hyphens is to clarify the meaning of the text.

To start with the bison, that example refers to a hoe fashioned from a bison’s shoulder blade. The three relevant terms are bison, shoulder blade, and hoe, so the clearest version is the last: “bison shoulder-blade hoe.”

We agree that an en dash wouldn’t work all that well; in “bison–shoulder blade hoe,” readers would need to recognize “shoulder blade” as a distinct compound before “hoe.” You’d be better off leaving the words open (“bison shoulder blade hoe”), trusting readers to sort out the modifiers without the help of hyphens or dashes. Or you could use two hyphens (“bison-shoulder-blade hoe”), but that doesn’t single out “shoulder blade” either, so the uncluttered open version is better.

As for the second question, it would be hard to improve on “Mr. Potato Head–like head,” where the en dash provides a perfect illustration of the principles covered in CMOS 6.80. And though the en dash is technically correct also in “rubbing alcohol–soaked cotton,” we’d advise rephrasing: “cotton soaked in rubbing alcohol.” Readers then won’t have to mentally sort out the string of modifiers to identify “rubbing alcohol,” a compound that, like “shoulder blade” in the bison example, lacks Mr. Potato Head’s prominent initial caps. Nor would “rubbing-alcohol soaked cotton” work; participles like “soaked” always require a hyphen in that position (see the hyphenation guide at CMOS 7.89, sec. 2, under “noun + participle”).

Q. With a compound subject, does the verb number change when the conjunction “and” is replaced by “and then”? For example: “Swimming in the ocean and then running a marathon require/requires great endurance.” I’m told CMOS 5.138 applies and the verb should be plural (“require”). But it seems to me “and then” has combined the two actions into a sequence (as one) which would take the singular “requires.”

CMOS Answers: Two subjects joined by and can sometimes be considered singular. The test is whether the subjects express a single idea or more than one. In your example, what requires endurance is the combined action of swimming in the ocean and running a marathon—a continuous feat of athletic activity. The adverb “then” makes this clear.

But adding “then” won’t always make a plural compound subject singular. Consider the following sentence, in which the subjects clearly take a plural verb: “A bandage and then an ice pack were placed on the wound.” On the other hand, you can write a sentence with a compound-but-singular subject without the help of “then.” For example, “Peanut butter and jelly is the best thing to happen to sandwiches since sliced bread.”

So it’s best to consider such sentences on a case-by-case basis.

The Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition text © 2017 by The University of Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition text © 2010 by The University of Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style Online © 2006, 2007, 2010, 2017 by The University of Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style is a registered trademark of The University of Chicago.