Snippets from Pinker on coherence

Snippets from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century on coherence.

Pages 170 to 185 of Chapter 5 use a detailed examination of a page of John Keegan's 1993 magnum opus, A History of Warfare, to illustrate how an experienced and esteemed military historian failed to achieve coherence.

p171: The confusing opening of A History of Warfare provides us with an opportunity to look at three other contributions to coherence, which are conspicuous here by their absence: clear and plausible negation, a sense of proportion, and thematic consistency.

p172: More than three centuries ago, Baruch Spinoza pointed out that the human mind cannot suspend disbelief ...
The cognitive difference between believing that a proposition is true ... and believing that it is false ... has enormous implications for a writer.

p185: How could a seasoned author like John Keegan ... serve as a model of incoherent writing ...
... most of the problem comes from the very expertise that made Keegan so qualified to write his books.
... he became a victim of professional narcissism ...
... aftger a lifetime of scholarship he was so laden with erudition that his ideas came avalanching down faster than he could organize them.

A coherent text is a design object.
Like other designed objects, it comes about not by accident but by drafting a blueprint, attending to details, and maintaining a sense of harmony and balance.

Snippets from Pinker on sequences

Snippets from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century on arcs of coherence involving sequences.
p165 (my bold): Though English cleanly distinguishes the order in which things happened in the world from the order in which they are mentioned in a text, English speakers tend to be more concrete, and naturally assume that the order in which events are mentioned is the order in which they took place ...

All things being equal, it's good for a writer to work with the ongoing newsreel in readers' minds and describe events in chronological order.

If the spotlight of attention has been lingering on a later event, ... the imperative to mention given before new trumps the imperative to mention early before late.

p166: A coherent text is one in which the reader always knows which coherence relation holds between one sentence and the next.

p167: As a writer bangs out sentences, she needs to ensure that the readers can reconstruct the coherence relations she has in mind.
... writers can ... leave connectives ... outwhen the connection is obvious to the reader.
Too many connectives can make it seem as if an author isbelaboring the obvious or patronizing the reader ...
Too few connectives, on the other hand, can leave the reader puzzled as to how one statement follows from the last.
Even more challenging, the optimal number of connectives depends on the expertise of the reader.

pp167-8: Figuring out the right level of explicitness for coherence relations is a major reason that a writer needs to think hard about the state of knowledge of her readers and show a few of them a draft to see whether she got it right.

p168: Humans are cursed with attributing too much of their own knowledge to others ... which means that overall there is a greater danger of prose being confusing because it has too few connectives than pedantic because it has too many. When in doubt, connect. 

p169: Coherence connectives are the unsung heroes of lucid prose.
... they are the cement of reasoning and one of the most difficult yet most important tools of writing to master.

Thought the claim that good prose leads to goos thinking is not always true (brilliant thinkers can be clumsy writers, and slick writers can be glib thinkers), it may be true when it comes to the mastery of coherence.

Snippets from Pinker on synonyms

Snippets from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century on synonyms.

Chapter 5 offers as clear an overview of when and when not to use synonyms as one could hope for. This is an important issue for thinking writers and into-English translators alike. Writers in many languages believe it is good style in their language to use multiple synonyms rather than repeat a word or term. Many factors need to be considered when translating such texts into English. Pinker summarises the essentials admirably.

One point that he failed to mention, however, is the extreme position adopted by technical writers and their translators, which is to say by those who produce technical manuals and the like for software, industrial and consumer products and so forth. This group refrains in almost all circumstances from using any synonyms at all, no matter how many time a word or term needs to be used.

p156: ... he (the writer) doesn't strain for new ways of referring to the birds. The herons are herons; they don't turn into Arden herodias, long-legged waders, azure airborne avians, or sapphire sentinels of the skies.

Henry Fowler, author of Modern English Usage ... sarcastically stigmatized the practice as "elegant variation".

... journalese ... peppering ... prose with words that journalists use but that people never say ...

p157: When a noun is repeated in quick succession, readers may assume that the second mention refers to a different individual and fruitlessly scan the stage for him.
So which guideline should a writer follow, "Avoid elegant variation" or "Don't use a word twice on one page"?

Translators might have preferred 'term' rather than 'word'; but the meaning is clear.

Wording should not be varied capriciously, because in general people assume that if someone uses two different words they're referring to two different things.

When wording is varied only certain variations will be easy for the reader to track. The second label is acting as a pseudo-pronoun ... First, it should be more generic ...

p158-9: ... zombie nouns like anticipation and cancellation (as opposed to anticipate and cancel) ... do have their place in the language. The problem with them is that knowledge-cursed wrtiters use them on first mention because they, the writers, have already been thinking about the event, so it's old hat to them and is conveniently summarized by a noun. They forget that their readers are encountering the event for the first time and need to see it enacted with their own eyes.

p160 (my bold): Examples, explanations, violated expectations, elaborations, sequences, causes and effects are arcs of coherence that pinpoint how one statement follows another.

David Hume, in his 1748 book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, wrote, "There appear to be only three principles of connections among ideas, namely Resemblance, Continuity in time or place, and Cause or Effect.
... linguists have subdivided Hume's Big Three into a dozen or more specific kinds of connection.
The key linguistic couplers are connective words like because, so and but.

p161: It is always surprising to me how often scientists thoughtlessly use synonyms in comparisons, because the cardinal principle of experimental design is the Rule of One Variable.

p162:  Parallel syntax is just the Rule of One Variable applied to writing.

Snippets from Pinker on style, Ch5

More snippets from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

Chapter 5, entitled Arcs of coherence, presents into-English translators with a host of questions and arguments justifying significant departures from 'close' translation strategies.

On page 160, Pinker defines the term "arc of coherence" as follows (my bold): Examples, explanations, violated expectations, elaborations, sequences, causes and effects are arcs of coherence that pinpoint how one statement follows another.

p139: Even if every sentence in a text is crisp, lucid, and well formed, a succession of them can feel choppy, disjointed, unfocused -- in a word, incoherent.

p145 (my bold): Paragraph breaks. Sometimes a writer should cleave an intimidating block of print with a paragraph break just to give the reader's eyes a place to alight and rest.

This advice should be followed not only by writers, but by translators and the graphic artists and layout teams that format the translator's work.

French-mother-tongue graphic artists and layout teams typically laid out my English versions of technical publications and articles in the same way as they did the French version, refusing to admit that the change of language might be good cause for a change of approach. This often resulted in huge blocks of visually uninviting text because they preferred layouts with no paragraph spacing or indents.

p147: ... a reader must know the topic of a text in order to understand it. As newspaper editors say: Don't bury the lede (lede being journalistic jargon for "lead", which might otherwise be misread as the heavy metal).

p148: ... the reader usually needs to know the point. ...
Human behavior in general is understandable only once you know the actor's goals.

p149: ... magazine and newspapers help the reader with a tag line (an explanation beneath the title) or a pull quote (an illustrative sentence displayed in a box).
But everyone should strive to inform, not dumbfound.

p151: The word "topic" in linguistics actually has two meanings.

p152: It's always easier for a reader to follow a narrative if he can keep his eyes on a protagonist who is moving the plot forward, rather than on a succession of passively affected entries or zombified actions.

p153-4: ... moves temporal modifiers to the front of the sentence.
... avoids the monotony of a long string of similar sentences ...
Given always precedes new.
The noun system of English provides a writer with ways to distinguish entities the reader is being introduced to for the first time from entities he already knows about. This is the major distinction between the indefinite article, a, and the definite article the.

p154: Indefinite plurals and mass nouns ...
Definiteness can be marked by other th- words such as this, that, these, and those, or with a genitive noun, as in Clarie's knee or Jerry's kids.

pp155-160: See Snippets from Pinker on synonyms.

p160 (my bold): Examples, explanations, violated expectations, elaborations, sequences, causes and effects are arcs of coherence that pinpoint how one statement follows another.

DID's innovative headlines

Defense Industry Daily, or DID, produces a steady stream of headlines that, to my mind, innovate in one way or another.

The examples below clearly demonstrate that technical journalism has its innovators and that each innovation raises multiple issues for technical journalism translators. Question that will spring to mind for anyone translating such articles include: Should I aim to be as innovative as the original? If so, will I be understood or will I simple raise hackles?

A few may employ American expressions or US military jargon that will be more familiar, hence less innovative, to North American readers than to me

The following examples were gathered after consulting fewer than a dozen publication dates:

Puns on aircraft, project and system names, etc.

• Gripin’ in Switzerland: Referendum Shoots New Fighter Deal Down
• Lightning Rod: F-35 Fighter Family Capabilities and Controversies
• Ring My Bell: New Helicopters for Canada’s Coast Guard
• Warthogs Appear to Be Republicans

Playing with military and technical terms

• Gripin’ in Switzerland: Referendum Shoots New Fighter Deal Down
• Saudi-Financed French Arms Deliveries Hit Lebanon
• India’s Light Helicopter Contract Hits Turbulence, Stalls. Again. Starts.

Humorous

• Warthogs Appear to Be Republicans

Interesting use of everyday terms in (sub)headings

• Pimp My Ride: Weapons & Accessories
• Warthogs Appear to Be Republicans
• Lithuania Entreats Germany for Still More Hardware
• UK to Top Off Bomb Stocks After 300+ ISIS Sorties | Saudi-Financed French Arms Deliveries Hit Lebanon | Blue Force Tracker Gets First Export
  ('Top off' may be an Americanism. I would have said 'top up'.)
• Mistral Amphibious Assault Ships for Russia: Deliveries Hanging
  ('Hanging' is odd but eye-catching.)
• THAAD: Reach Out and Touch Ballistic Missiles
• Airfields Afloat: The USA’s New Gerald Ford Class Super-Carriers
  ('Airfield afloat' is new to me. And clever too.)
• JSTARS Replacement: Competition Opened Wide
  ('Opened wide' is a nice variation of 'wide open' or 'now wide open'.)

Multi-headings in the 'Rapid Fire' section using vertical seperators

• Industry Opposes Reform Bill | Germans to Dump G-36 | Japan Picks Dassault’s Falcon 2000
• Marines Developing Air-Air Tactics to Integrate F-35s with F-18s | Poland Chooses Patriots & Airbus H225M | Swiss Will Replace F-5Es
• UK to Top Off Bomb Stocks After 300+ ISIS Sorties | Saudi-Financed French Arms Deliveries Hit Lebanon | Blue Force Tracker Gets First Export

Other

• Timely Defenders: Keeping Patriots in Shape
  (Is the copy editor playing with 'time keeping'?)
• New-Old Nukes: GBP 350M for Final Refit of UK’s Vanguard Nuclear Missile Subs
  

  ('New-old' is clever.)
• Soldier Battle JTRS: The HMS Radio Set + SANR 
  ('Soldier battle' is a strikingly succint qualifier.)

Grammatical and punctuation quirks (presumably to attract attention)

• F-X2: Brazil Buys Gripen, Deal Raises Prosecutor Eyebrows
  (Why not 'prosecutor's eyebrows'?)
• Naval Air, Unmanned: The Long Deferred UCLASS Develops
  ('Develops' is, IMHO, odd but eye-catching. It's is also more adventurous than most translators, again IMHO, would feel comfortable with.)
• Blue Force Tracker Gets First Export
  
  (One doesn't normally 'get' a 'first export'. Presumalby this is a variant of 'win a first export contract'.)
• X-47B Drone Refuels, Swarms
  (Two verbs separated by a comma.)
• SSBN-X Subs: Congressmen Promote Refresh, Have Sub Bases in Districts
• India’s Light Helicopter Contract Hits Turbulence, Stalls. Again. Starts.

Alliteration, assonance and other stylistic devices

• BMD in Bunches: The USN’s Multi-Year Destroyer Contract, FY 2013 – 2017
• Airbus’ A400M Aerial Transport: Delays, Development, and Deployment
• Growlers Considered for New Target Triangulation Trick

The one grammar rule that really counts

I once read, long ago, that the one grammar rule that really counts for anyone writing (or translating into English) and wanting to convince, persuade or cajole (as opposed to just showing off one's possibly superior knowledge of grammar is this: Never use any expression that is likely to take the reader's attention off what you are trying to say.

In Give some ground to the pedants in the ‘I/me’ battle, subtitled You can argue with many grammar rules, but there are sound reasons for sticking to them, FT columnist Michael Skapinker comes to the same conclusion (my bold).

So Mr Wulf’s students could write “he is taller than me” or they could write “he is taller than I am”. Most people find either acceptable, while they regard “he is taller than I” as strange and stilted.
Having said that, I usually opt for the spelt-out “he is taller than I am” form. Why? Because I know I will not upset those who insist that “than” has to be followed by the nominative. They will concentrate on my argument rather than my grammar.
It is the same with infinitives. There is nothing wrong with splitting them. Those who insist it is bad are the same tiny group who are trying to squeeze English into Latin.
But unless not splitting the infinitive results in an awkward sentence, I leave it unsplit. So do writers on The Economist, whose style guide says that while the ban on split infinitives is pointless, “to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it”.

then adds:

The problem is that most objectors do not complain. They simply assume you do not know the rules. ...

Most people ... are not grammar historians but people with their own linguistic shibboleths.

I would not give a job to anyone who confused “its” and “it’s”, even if Kamm points out that “it’s was a possessive until the 19th century”.
You never know when you are going to cross what we can call someone’s “stickling point”. (I had hoped to claim authorship of this term but Ian Mayes of The Guardian used it in 2000.)
You can argue with many supposed grammar rules, but it is best to know what they are and to break them only when you are sure it is not going to do you any harm.

On the basis of this reasoning I also avoid using 'whom' wherever possible, not because I don't know when and how to use it, but because there is always a serious risk that some of my readers will think more about my grammar than my (or my client's) message.

26 April: Further support for this line of thinking comes from no less an authority than Fowler’s Modern English Usage. The review, by Michael Quinion, of the fourth edition quotes author Jeremy Butterfield concerning the use of the word literally (my bold):

{Butterfield] ... concurs with the recent decision of the Oxford English Dictionary to recognise the figurative use of literally to mean “figuratively”, a sense that goes back at least to Dickens. But he cautions, after nearly two pages of discussion: “Knowing that your readers may have the screaming abdabs (dated British slang for ‘have a fit’) if they read literally prefacing a metaphor ... you might want to avoid using it altogether.”

So, when it doubt as to what your reader might think or how they might react, abstain. 

Here and there

Relaying a recent post on Translation Tribulations:

• Máquinas virtuais para traduzir e ditar no Apple OS/X para Todós (ou como os Macs são os melhores amigos dos tradutores Portugueses)

and another on Unprofessional Translation

• Urdu Language Brokering in the USA

Note: For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, *language brokering* is the interpreting done by the bilingual offspring of immigrant parents for their parents, families and other members of their entourage.