Contents:

Grammar-Checker and "Shooting an Elephant"

Grammar-Checker and "The Gettysburg Address"

The Most Important Day — Helen Keller

What is Love? — Helen Keller
 
 

Your word-processing program (generally Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, etc.) probably has a grammar-check program under "Tools."  Perhaps it automatically underlines with red, green, or blue words and phrases to which you should pay attention.  Keep in mind that this grammar-checker is a "flagging" program.  The grammar-checker is not a "thinking" program.  It has no idea what you are writing about and may mislead you if you don't know enough grammar to detect when it is erring.

One of the best stylists in the 20th Century was George Orwell, but let's check out what a grammar-flagger says:

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of<<*_U12. WORDY. REPLACE large numbers of BY many *>> people--the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.<<*_S4. IS SENTENCE TOO DIFFICULT? *>><<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 31 WORDS *>>  I was subdivisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European<<*_C1. UNUSUAL CAPITALIZATION: anti-European *>> feeling was very bitter.  No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress.  As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> safe to do so.  When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.  This happened more than once.  In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves.<<*_G3. SPLIT INTO 2 SENTENCES? *>><<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 31 WORDS *>>  The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all.  There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.<<*_S4. IS SENTENCE TOO DIFFICULT? *>><<*_S6. LONG PARAGRAPH: 198 WORDS *>>

[And later in the essay, the grammar-checker says this:]

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick--one never does when the shot goes home--but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd.<<*_G3. SPLIT INTO 2 SENTENCES? *>><<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 37 WORDS *>>  In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant.<<*_S4. IS SENTENCE TOO DIFFICULT? *>>  He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered.  He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down.  At last, after what seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> a long time--it might have been five seconds, I dare say--he sagged flabbily to his knees.<<*_G3. SPLIT INTO 2 SENTENCES? *>>  His mouth slobbered<<*_U1. COLLOQUIAL: slobbered *>>.  An enormous<<*_U9. IS THIS JUSTIFIED? enormous *>> senility seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> to have settled upon him.  One could have imagined him thousands of years old.  I fired again into the same spot.  At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping.<<*_S4. IS SENTENCE TOO DIFFICULT? *>>I fired a third time.  That was the shot that did it for him.  You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs.  But in falling he seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he<<*_P3. IS COMMA MISSING AFTER him ? *>> seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> to tower upwards like a huge<<*_U9. IS THIS JUSTIFIED? huge *>> rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree.<<*_S4. IS SENTENCE TOO DIFFICULT? *>><<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 35 WORDS *>>He trumpeted for the first and only time.  And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed<<*_S17. WEAK: seemed *>> to shake the ground even where I say.

<<** SUMMARY **>>

The document SHOOTING. was analyzed using the rules  for Fiction writing at the College education level.

READABILITY INDEX:  7.67

 4th      6th    8th  10th     12th  14th

 |****|****|****|*** |      |     |    |    |    |    |

SIMPLE| ?????? GOOD ????? |COMPLEX

Readers need an 8th grade level of education.

Number of Words in Document: 478

Average Number of Words/Sentence: 19.000

STRENGTH INDEX:  0.47

   0.0      .5      1.0

 |****|****|****|****|*** |  |  |  |  |  |

WEAK  STRONG

The writing can be made more direct by using:

? shorter sentences

? fewer weak phrases

? more positive wording
 

DESCRIPTIVE INDEX:  0.48

 0.1       0.5     0.9  1.1

 |****|****|****|*** |  |  |  |  |  |  |

TERSE| ???????????? NORMAL ???????????? |WORDY

The use of adjectives and adverbs is normal.

JARGON INDEX:  0.00

SENTENCE STRUCTURE RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Most sentences contain multiple clauses.

Try to use more simple sentences.

7. Most sentences begin with pronouns.

Try using other sentence start conditions.

14. Many prepositional phrases are used.

<< WORDS TO REVIEW >>

Review this list for words that may confuse your message.

These include words that are negative, frequently misused, colloquial, or jargon.  As you review each word, think of its effect on the reader.

1  devilish  (Possible jargon)

1  impact  (Often misused)

1  senility  (Possible jargon)

1  slobbered  (Colloquial or slang)

1  subdivisional  (Possible jargon)

1  terrible  (Possible jargon)

<< END OF WORDS TO REVIEW LIST >>

<<** END OF SUMMARY **>>

The Gettysburg Address

<<_P7.  IS THIS QUOTE CLOSED?  *>>"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created<<*_S1 PASSIVE VOICE: are created *>> equal. <<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 29 words  *>><<*_G3. SPLIT INTO 2 SENTENCES? *>>

Now we are engaged<<*_S1. PASSIVE VOICE: are engaged *>> in a great<<*_U9.  IS THIS JUSTIFIED? great *>> civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.<<*_G3. SPLIT INTO 2 SENTENCES? *>> We are met<<*_S1 PASSIVE VOICE: are met *>> on a great<<*_U9. IS THIS JUSTIFIED? great *>> battle-field of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that the nation might live.<<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 27 WORDS *>> It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But<<*_S7. SENTENCE BEGINS WITH "BUT" *>>, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground.<<*_S11. IS SENTENCE TOO NEGATIVE? *>> The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.<<*S11.  IS SENTENCE TOO NEGATIVE? *>>  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget<<*_U21. NEGATIVE: never forget *>> what they did here.  It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated<<*_S1. PASSIVE VOICE: be dedicated *>> here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.<<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 26 WORDS  *>> It is rather<<*_S9. WEAK SENTENCE START: It is rather *>>for us to be here dedicated<<*_S1. PASSIVE VOICE: be here dedicated *>> to the great<<*_U9. IS THIS JUSTIFIED? great *>> task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the<<*_S11. IS THIS SENTENCE TOO NEGATIVE? *>><<*_G3. SPLIT INTO 2 SENTENCES? *>><<*_G9. IS the BEING USED CORRECTLY? *>><<*_S3. LONG SENTENCE: 72 WORDS *>> people, for the people, shall not perish<<*_U21. NEGATIVE: not perish *>> from the earth.<<*_P7. IS THIS QUOTE CLOSED?*>>"

<<** SUMMARY **>>

READABILITY INDEX:  10.17

   4th  6th  8th  10th  12th  14th

 |****|****|****|****|****|****|

SIMPLE  | -----GOOD ------- |COMPLEX

Readers need a 10th grade level of education.
 

STRENGTH INDEX:  0.00

0.0  0.5  1.0

|*  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

WEAK        STRONG

The writing can be made more direct by using:

— the active voice

— shorter sentences

— fewer weak phrases

— more positive wording

DESCRIPTIVE INDEX:  0.66

0.1  0.5    0.9  1.1

 |****|****|****|****|****|****|*|  |  |  |

TERSE  | -------------- NORMAL ----------------|WORDY

The use of adjectives and adverbs is normal.

JARGON INDEX:  0.00

SENTENCE STRUCTURE RECOMMENDATIONS:

1.  Most sentences contain multiple clauses.  Try to use more simple sentences.

7.  Most sentences begin with pronouns.  Try using other sentence start conditions.

Helen Keller--A Useful Model for Novices

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was an author, lecturer, humanitarian, and, of course, a role model for handicapped people.  Born at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, she became deaf and blind at the age of nineteen months from an illness called "brain fever."  At the time, the physicians thought the fever turned the victims into idiots.  However, an innovative teacher, Anne Sullivan, taught Helen to communicate with the world.  Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904.  She was the author of several books: The Story of My Life (1903),The World I Live In (1908), and Helen Keller's Journal, l936-37 (1938).

[1] The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.  I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects.  It was March 3, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.

[2] On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant.  I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the hurrying to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps.  The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch and fell on my upturned face.  My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the familiar sweet southern spring.  I did not know what the future held of marvel or surprise for me.  Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for weeks, and a deep languor had succeeded this passionate struggle.

[3] Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen?  I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass and sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! Give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

[4] I felt approaching footsteps.  I stretched out my hand as I supposed to my mother.  Someone took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me.

[5] The morning after my teacher came, she led me into her room and gave me a doll.  The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it, and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward.  When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l."  I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it.  When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly, I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother, I held up my hand and made the letters for doll.  I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation.  In the days that followed, I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat,cup, and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.

[6] One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both.  Earlier in the week, we had a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r."  Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and "w-a-t-e-r" is water, but I persisted in confounding the two.  In despair, she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity.  I became impatient at her repeated attempts, and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet.  Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst.  I had not loved the doll.  In the still, dark world in which I lived, there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.  I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed.  She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine.  This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

[7] We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered.  Someone was drawing water, and my teacher placed my hand under the spout.  As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly.  I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers.  Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.  I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand.   That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!  There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

[8] I left the well-house eager to learn.  Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought.  As we returned to the house, every object that I touched seemed to quiver with life.  That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door, I remembered the doll I had broken.  I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces.  I tried vainly to put them together.  Then my eyes filled with tears, for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and remorse.

[9] I learned a great many new words that day.  I do not remember what they all were, but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among these--words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers."  It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and, for the first time, longed for a new day to come.

[10] I recall many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's sudden awakening.  I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned of their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world. . . .

[11] I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it.  Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and painful process.  But whatever the process, the result is wonderful.  Gradually from naming an object, we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare. . . .

[12] I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word, "love."  This was before I knew many words.  I had found a few violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher.  She tried to kiss me, but at that time I did not like to have anyone kiss me except my mother.  Miss Sullivan put her arms gently round me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen."

[13] "What is love?" I asked.

[14]  She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time.  Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.

[15]  I smelt the violets in her hands and asked, half in words, half in signs, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"

[16]  "No," said my teacher.

[17]  Again, I thought.  The warm sun was shining on us.

[18]  "Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came.  "Is this not love?"

[19]  It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow.  But Miss Sullivan shook her head, and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.

[20]  A day or two afterward, I was stringing beads of different sizes in symmetrical groups--two large beads, three small one, and so on. I had made many mistakes, and Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and again with gentle patience. Finally I noticed a very obvious error in the sequence, and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads.  Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."

[21]  In a flash, I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head.  This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.

[22]  For a long time, I was still--I was not thinking of the beads in my lap, but trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new idea.  The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.

[23]  Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"

[24]  "Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out," she replied.  Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained:  "You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day.  You cannot touch love either, but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.  Without love, you would not be happy or want to play."

[25]  The beautiful truth burst upon my mind--I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others. . . .

Some Suggestions

1.  Go through "The Most Important Day" and underline all action verbs:  remembered, stood, lingered, etc.

2.  Circle all of the linking verbs:  is, are, was,were, etc.  Do not circle helping verbs.

3.  Put a wavy line under all passive verbs: was caught up, etc.

4.  Count the number of verbs in each category:

Action _______; linking ________; passive __________

5.  What key words relate to the "significance" in the first paragraph?

6.  Which sentence of paragraph 2 turns the essay from a discussion of a general subject to a discussion of a specific occurrence?

7.  The climax occurs, of course, at the pump, with water gushing over Helen's hands.  Put boxes around references to WATER, MIST, or other nautical images.

8.  At several points during the essay, the adult Helen is analyzing her reactions as a child.  When does this self-examination occur?

9.  Keller paints excellent word pictures despite her handicap.  What sensory (sense) words help her to make the scene come alive?  Notice the word felt.  Does it only mean to "feel with fingers"?

10. Which Keller essay deals with her learning about a concrete noun (one that can be touched)?  Which deals with her learning about her first abstract noun (one that can't be touched)?

11.  How does the Keller essay relate to the play/movies, The Miracle Worker?  Patty Duke played young Helen in the 1960s, with Ann Bancroft playing Anne Sullivan.  In the 1980s, Patty Duke played the teacher, while Melissa Gilbert (of Little House on the Prairie) played Helen. In 2000, a TV film was made of Helen Keller's story.

12.  An extensive biography has recently been done of Laura Bridgeman, the first "Helen."

Go to Densonary, Part 4