TheWritersBag.com

You learned in school to avoid repetition in writing. But if you learned anything in school, you should have learned that you can’t believe everything you learned in school. Repetition (the previous two sentences are filled with it) can be used as a literary device. To strengthen my point, read the following stanza of a wonderful poem by William Butler Yeats entitled “When You Are Old”:

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Yeats used the word “loved” (or “love”) no fewer than five times in those four lines. Repetitious? Sure. Could he have avoided it with words such as “adored,” “worshipped” and so on? Of course. But he chose not to. I assume he felt that “love” is a good, powerful word, and that using it repeatedly would strengthen – not weaken – his poem. I believe he was right.

There is one caveat to using repetition as a literary device: Make sure it’s a conscious, well-thought-out strategy, and not just laziness.

Which of the following sentences is correct?

1. Susan, as well as Ginny and Ralph, are born leaders.
2. Susan, as well as Ginny and Ralph, is a born leader.

Sentence #2 is correct. Why? Because the subject for the sentence is “Susan” and that’s a singular subject. Even though “Ginny and Ralph” are plural, they are not the subject of the sentence. They are simply part of a phrase that could be ripped out of the sentence without changing its primary meaning. You would not say “Susan are born leaders,” would you?

Here’s another quiz: Which of the next two sentences is correct?

1. My mortgage payment, in addition to my two car payments, is making me poor.
2. My mortgage payment, in addition to my two car payments, are making me poor.

If you think sentence #1 is right, you’re correct. The reasoning is similar. What is the subject of both sentences? It’s “my mortgage payment.” So the verb should agree with that singular subject. Yes, “my two car payments” is plural, but those two payments are not the subjects of the sentence. They are merely tagging along in a phrase that has been added to the sentence, and which could be deleting from the sentence without changing its meaning.

I just realized that my opening sentence in this post is yet another tricky subject that could cause some subject-verb agreement confusion. Some people might be tempted to write:

• Which of the following sentences are correct?

But not you! You would know that the subject of that sentence is the singular “which,” and the phrase “the following sentences” is part of a tag-along prepositional phrase that could be yanked from the sentence without changing its meaning. So, you would make the verb agree with the singular subject “Which” rather than the plural subject “the following sentences.”

… Wouldn’t you.

I’ve been thinking about a gift I could give you to thank you for being a reader of this blog. I’ve thought about what you might want and it occurred to me that perhaps the best gift would be to provide you with a forum where you could publish your work and let others read it and maybe even get feedback from other writers who would like to offer positive suggestions.

So that’s what I’m doing. Actually, I announced this in a quiet way in a recent post a few days ago when I wrote …

If you have a piece of writing you want others to read, I invite you to submit it as a comment to this post. People around the world who follow this blog – individuals who, like you, are interested in writing – can then read what you have written.

I, too, will read what everyone submits, and will feature some of the submissions that I find to be particularly interesting or notable in one of my regular blog posts in the coming week or two. I plan to make this a regular feature at TheWritersBag.com.

This is your chance to be published and have your work read by thousands of people. I hope you’ll take advantage of it.

So there it is. The challenge and the opportunity.

Show off your work. Put something you’ve written out there for all to see. Simply submit it as a comment to this post. In the coming week or two, as I mentioned, I will include a few of the more interesting or notable submissions in a blog post. That way, even those who don’t read the comments will see and read the selections.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be shy. Let the rest of us see what you’ve written.