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ABOVE THE FOLDA NEWSLETTER ON WRITING AND EDITINGStar Tribune

Minneapolis, Minn.May/June 2006

Vol. 6, No. 3

4 Writing a book about grammar has made Lynne Truss an international celebrity. No kidding.

5 Recommended reading: A teen born in Pakistan and raised in California writes of summer stays in

his parents’ homeland — Afghanistan — as his father helped form a new government there.

F I R S T ( A N D P O S S I B LY L A S T ) A N N UA L G R A M M A R I S S U E

If these sentences don’t make you cringe, you’d better turn inside right away. We can help you. Cringing, in this case, is desirable.

! At the end of the competition, he laid on his back in exhaustion.

! Please bring this package to the post o∞ce.

! I’m going to run to the store which is closing next week.

Turn to Page 2.

Mistakes we should never make (but often do)

By Laurie Hertzel • Projects Editor • Star Tribune

This is going to be tough. I don’t want to explain rules of grammar in a way that sounds like I’m explaining rules of grammar, because that

way lies doom. Your eyes will glaze over just like they did back in junior high when you didn’t learn this the first time.

Instead, I am going to try to make this crystal clear without using words like “subjunctive” and “gerund” and “past participle,” partly because I’d have to look up all those words to make sure I was using them correctly.

Bear with me. I have super copy editor grammar gurus Jim Foti and Holly Collier reading over my shoulder to make sure that I don’t steer you wrong.

So here goes:

Mistakes we should never make (but often do)

2 ABOVE THE FOLD

That and whichI learned this from my old city editor,

Doug Smith, back in Duluth, so if it turns out he taught me wrong, wander over to our Outdoors desk, where he now lives, and whop him upside the head. His advice, lo those many years ago, was that I should think in terms of “The house that Jack built.”

Basically, if you need a comma, you need a “which.” And if you don’t need a comma, you need a “that.”

So sometimes you’ll see me, even now, muttering at my desk, “The house that Jack built…” before I can determine which word to use.

Lie and lay Lay and lie are two di≠erent words.

They have di≠erent meanings. They are not interchangeable. The thing that confuses us, I think, is that lay is the past-tense of lie. But lay is also its own word, with its own past-tense (laid).

We should never get this wrong, but we frequently do. To lay is an action that involves an object. It’s something you do to something else. (Please no dirty jokes here. I’ve heard ’em all. I’m unshockable. Don’t even bother.)

You lay something down. You lay the baby down. You lay the books down. You lay the car keys down. Think of it as a synonym for “place” (the verb).

But if you are going to put yourself down, you lie down. (Unless you want to get really wordy and make yourself the object of the sentence and say, “I’m going to go lay myself down,” but when would you ever, ever do that? Not in this paper.)

If you need a

comma, you need a “which.”

If you don’t, you

need a “that.”

“That” example: The house that Jack built is on the corner.

“Which” example: The house, which Jack built out of red brick and salvaged timber, is on the corner.

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There are other rules for lay and lie, but this is the one that we seem to violate most often: We think lay means lie. It doesn’t.

“I’m going to go lay down,” is wrong. It’s “I’m going to go lie down.”

“He went and laid down,” is wrong. (He lay down. Past tense of lie. Not laid, which is past tense of lay. It’s not that confusing if you think about it.)

Telling your dog, “Lay down!” is wrong. (Unless he’s holding something that you want him to put down, in which case the appropriate command is, “Drop it!”)

There was some aphorism akin to Doug Smith’s “The house that Jack built” that’s supposed to help people remember this rule; I remember a high school teacher saying, sternly, “Only hens lay eggs.” But I can’t remember how that applies anymore. Better in this case to just remember the grammar.

Bring and takeYou bring something to the speaker.

You take something away from the speaker. The correct word choice lies in the location of the speaker in relation to the thing carried. (That’s not the clearest sentence I ever wrote, and it got me to wondering if this is why Tim O’Brien called his novel “The Things they Carried” instead of “The Things they Brought,” or “The Things they Took,” but probably not, and I digress.)

“Bring” takes the action to the speaker, and “take” goes away from the speaker.

If all I’ve done is muddy the waters, well, at least I’ve stirred up the waters a little bit. And the best advice of all comes from Holly Collier: You should always feel free to ask.

Telling your dog to lay down is wrong. But it’s OK to ask it to bring you the paper.

Tenses for lie: Lie, lay, lain• You should lie down now. • You lay down for a nap yesterday.

And you’re tired again?• Over the years, you have lain

down for a zillion naps.

Tenses for lay: Lay, laid, laid• Please lay the book on the table.• You laid the book on that table

last week. I don’t know why you can’t find it now.

• Over the years, you have laid the book on that table in the corner. Now the table’s missing, too.

Examples• Bring me a glass of water.

(Because the water is coming to the speaker. That is, it is if the listener obeys.)

• Take this report to your next meeting. (Because the report is going someplace away.)

4 ABOVE THE FOLD

It all began with a

littleparty chat.

Lynne Truss had toiled as a journalist and radio commentator for many

years before the Night that Changed her Life. That night, she went to a party. (Personal digression: My life will never change, because I never go to parties.) A book publisher she met there told her he’d enjoyed her radio essays about grammar, and he wondered if there was a book in all that.

Oh, no, not at all, she said. As she told this anecdote

a couple of months ago at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall, the audience erupted into merry laughter. Because of course there was a book in all that — a very funny, intelligent book about punctuation and grammar and clarity of language. A book that resonated with you and me and millions of our soulmates. A book called “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” that has made Lynne Truss an international celebrity.

Truss spoke in April as part of the Star Tribune’s Women’s Lecture Series, and she was delightful — witty, with an infectious laugh and a knack for self-deprecating stories. (She was introduced by an equally witty Sarah T. Williams, the Strib’s books editor.)

“Eats, Shoots and Leaves” had a modest fi rst run of 15,000. It took o≠ almost immediately, going into a second and third

and fourth printing. At the time, Truss found this to be alarming. She’s basically a nervous person anyway, she said, and instead of enjoying the rush to fame, she started fearing the worst.

Would her publisher go out of business because he had to print so many copies of her book? (More warm ironic laughter from the audience.) (“I know, I know,”

Truss said, nodding sheepishly.)When her book sales reached

90,000 right before Christmas, she worried that the 100 or so grammar sticklers in the country would each get 20 copies of her book for Christmas, and then the day after Christmas they would each return 19 of them, sending her book sales into an enormous collapse and making her the biggest failure in publishing history.

But of course instead the book continued to sell. It’s now out in paperback. The new edition comes with a “grammar repair kit” — little stick-on punctuation marks that you can apply when you’re really bugged by something.

Truss said she’s taken to going around London and fi xing punctuation on signs and billboards and then autographing them. “Like the Scarlet Pimpernel!” she said, and laughed, and the whole crowd at Orchestra Hall laughed with her.

LAURIE HERTZEL

How grammar made her famous

JANE BROWNThe new edition of Lynne Truss’ book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” comes with a “grammar repair kit” — little stick-on punctuation marks that you can apply when you’re really bugged by something.

her book sales into an enormous collapse and making her the biggest failure in publishing

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RECOMMENDED READING

A teen grows up as a nation is reborn“Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager’s Story,” by Said Hyder Akbar and Susan Burton. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 352 pages, $24.95.)

Said Hyder Akbar was born in Pakistan after the Soviets invaded his parents’

country of Afghanistan. When he was 2, his family moved to California. There, Hyder had a quintessentially American childhood: driving the freeways, downloading U2 into his iPod, eating fast food, chatting on his cell phone.

His father — once a diplomat and politician in Afghanistan — ran a hip-hop clothing store in Oakland. Except for the fact that they all spoke Pashto at home instead of English, they fi t right in. And then came 9/11, followed by the U.S. ouster of the Taliban. Hyder’s father sold his store and headed back to Afghanistan to help Hamid Karzai build a government. And for three consecutive summers, Hyder went with him.

“Come Back to Afghanistan” tells of Hyder’s summers in his father’s homeland between 2002 and 2004. He’s just a 17-year-old kid the fi rst time, but he’s smart and observant and he knows the language and the culture. His is an amazing journey, from the suburbs of San Francisco to the markets of Kabul and the remote villages of Kunar Province, where his father became governor.

His honesty and enthusiasm are charming, and he doesn’t mind showing himself as an impressionable teen trying to fi t in. (He calls his mom back home in California: “Mom! I’m at the loya jirga!”)

His father’s connections, as well as

Hyder’s language skills, give him entry into places where Westerners can’t go. He visits palaces and bombed-out villages and secret Al-Qaida mountain routes into Pakistan and high-level meetings with Karzai. As the book progresses, Hyder grows up, gets a little less idealistic, quits trying so hard to prove himself and starts shaping his life to help rebuild his country.

Back home in California for the school year, he fi nds himself a fi sh out of water. “Life there was just more interesting, I think. Then there’s the corollary: There I was more interesting. And the tone of the place: Over there, people are so simple, more real.

When I begin having thoughts like these, I know I’ve already been away too long. When you start idealizing Afghanistan, it’s time to go back.”

LAURIE HERTZEL

From Oaklandto Kabul, a son follows his father.

ABOVE THE FOLD is a monthly newsletter produced for the employees of the Star Tribune. Unless otherwise indicated, its contents are the work of Laurie Hertzel, projects editor and writing coach. Copy editors: Jim Foti and Holly Collier. Designer: Scott Reed