It's Octopides!

"Dawn crept slowly over the sparkling emerald expanse of the country club golf course, trying in vain to remember where she had dropped her car keys."

Sally Sams, California

I attended a legal writing course a few months back. You may or may not be surprised to learn that attorneys struggle with understanding archaic legal jargon as much as anyone else. The traditional formal language of the courts full of the "Now, if it pleases the Court..." and "Now comes before you…" that seems better suited to an episode of Masterpiece Theatre than to modern discourse is slowly being replaced by a crisper model.

This is similar to how Victorian architecture gave way to Arts & Crafts and modern design. People were beginning to choke on all of that gingerbread trim, upholstery, tassels and frou-frous. A person can't breathe or think when they are surrounded by so much dust and clutter. Legal writing is the same...if it's confusing and obfuscated by vocabulary and language that's not in modern usage, the message is never really driven home.

Thus, a few months back, a gravitas of lawyers and paralegals were sitting metaphorically at the feet of a gentleman named Bryan Garner and soaking up his particular slant on legal writing in particular, and the use of modern language in general. Garner is an attorney on a mission. Once described by a book reviewer as being a person who, as a child, was constantly wedgied by other children, Garner preaches his absolute, unequivocal commitment to the English language and its proper usage.

We are not talking about a man who wants you to use proper verb-tense agreement, or position your commas correctly. We are talking about the elevation of English to a surgical precision, here. This is a man who knows that the plural of "octopus" is NOT "octopi" or "octopuses." The word "octopus" is derived from Greek and could never have a Latin "i" ending for the plural form. The correct word is "octopides".

Thus, we all move incrementally higher up the ladder of knowable stuff and our lives just become a tiny bit more informed. Now, whenever we go to a marine exhibit and marvel at the many varieties of cephalopods, we can say, correctly, "Yes. They have quite a comprehensive octopus exhibit here, don't they? I don't know when I've seen so many octopides in one aquarium."

I walked in to the course confident that I was language savvy. I walked out considerably deflated and convinced that my writing skills will never be better than remedial. I owned a hardbound copy of "Garner's Modern American Usage" before the sun went down that evening.

There are, of course, endless examples of how words are misused and become part of common writing and speaking. A "gauntlet" is a glove, and you can throw it down if you want to indicate that you are challenging someone physically or intellectually. You can not, however, "run the gauntlet" as a form of medieval punishment. If you are role-playing with your Society of Creative Anachronism friends at the park and are wearing your chain-mail, you may "run the gantlet."

I don't know that attending Garner's course has made me a more precise writer, but I am more attuned to usage than I was prior. (Note the use of "prior" standing alone. Adding "to" after "prior" or "subsequent" is redundant.) When I read the following in a magazine, "female marsupials generally almost always have pouches", I cringed with snooty certainty. "Always" is an absolute sort of word. It cannot be modified to mean that something always happens, except when it doesn't. That's why we have "occasionally", "consistently", "often", etc. So, let us all pledge our support Bryan Garner and his kind for keeping us alert, lest we slide into the abyss of "generally, almost always."

Yet, while we should all celebrate our language when it's elevated to diamond clarity, let us also keep a candle burning for the very worst of what English communication has to offer. If you are not aware of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, then it gives me great joy to bring you up to speed. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was an author famous for beginning his book, "Paul Clifford" (1830), with a single paragraph so meandering and obfuscated that he has become an icon to writers everywhere. You will, no doubt, recognize the opening, "It was a dark and stormy night…" made famous by the journal entries of Snoopy, the erudite beagle.

Back in 1983, an English professor at San Jose State University named Scott Rice conceived of starting a literary contest of the worst opening sentences for a novel ever committed to paper. Rice believed that there were enough literary reviews and publications in the world that unfairly favored the talented writer. Writers who lacked any discernable ability were being shut out completely from achieving literary success. Thus, The Dark and Stormy Contest was born.

The deadline for submission of one perfectly execrable sentence is April 15, every year. It is free. The only real cost to the winner (to paraphrase 1999 winner, Dr. David Chuter, Surrey, England) is the predictable hounding from the paparazzi and the downward spiral into booze, drugs and loose morals that celebrity always brings. Sometimes there are prizes, but winners agree that just being recognized as one of the worst writers of English on the entire planet is satisfaction enough.

The contest has spawned at least four compilations: "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night", "Bride of Dark and Stormy", "Son of It was a Dark and Stormy Night" and "Dark and Stormy Rides Again". These are often out of print, so slip them into your bag or pocket whenever you see an unguarded copy (except mine...you may NOT keep mine!).

A new hardcover edition, "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" was published in September of 2007 that I believe combines all previous books, but I haven't seen a copy yet and cannot say for certain.

How bad does the winning entry have to be? Oh, so very, very bad. Following is just a small sample of previous winners and honorable mentions:

"André, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the east wall: André creep...André creep…André creep."

David Allen Janzen, California

"I was very hungry and the meal was good and I drank a bottle of Capri and a bottle of St. Estephe and a bottle of grappa and a bottle of the fake Chianti, after which I felt splendid on the veranda, watching Japonica bathe in the cold stream, the one with the good hard tangible pebbles at the bottom."

Norman Burnett, Virginia, in the style of Ernest Hemingway

"The droppings of the migrating Canada geese just missed the outdoor revelers at the inaugural Asian math puzzle competition, marking the first time that dung flew over the Sudoku Fest."

Kevin P. Craver, Illinois

"Gerald began -- but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash -- to pee."

Jim Gleeson, Wisconsin, 2007 Winner.

"Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before."

(Dave McKenzie, Washington)

"The rain splattered down on the tables of the café like raisins dropped by uncaring gods."

Patricia A Folkerth, South Carolina

"Just beyond the Narrows the river widens."

Warren Tupper Way, Washington

It is impossible to properly convey the majesty of a Bulwer-Lytton sentence or the work of his gifted followers in this small space. But if you feel a surge of creative energy, compare and contrast your bad-writing skill to Bulwer-Lytton's dazzling opening sentence from "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834):

"Ho, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus tonight?' said a young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb."

God doesn't often bestow that sort of talent on mere mortals. But "the moving Finger writes..." (Omar Khayyam), nay, it is COMPELLED to write, so I direct you to the following resources for your inspiration.

Should you wish to become the sort of writer whose every sentence is word smithing perfected, visit Bryan Garner at www.lawprose.org/subscribe_tips.php. You will receive Garner's Usage Tip of the Day that will leave you feeling kind of illiterate. But, on the upside, in no time at all you will be able to correct other people for their incorrect language usage, and that sort of smugness is priceless. Enjoy!

You can enter the Bulwer-Lytton Fictional Contest at www.bulwer-lytton.com, and read all of the winning entries at www.bulwer-lytton.com/lyttony.htm.

If you become a true devotee, I recommend the article written by Dave Zobel, 2004 Winner, for Cal Tech News about his Dark and Stormy experience (scroll down to the link on the official website). He's very, very funny, and I want to marry him. My stalking efforts have not been successful, so if you find the guy, please contact me. Here is Zobel's winning entry:

"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight ... . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail ... though the term 'love affair' now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism ... not unlike 'sand vein,' which is after all an intestine, not a vein…and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand...and that brought her back to Ramon."

If you just want to have enough grammatical chops to know that "lie" means "to recline" and "lay" means "to place", and conjugate all forms of either word, I recommend "Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English" by Patricia T. O'Conner.

If you have trouble distinguishing the use of a colon from a semi-colon, make like quick bunnies to purchase a copy of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss. The paperback version comes with a "Punctuation Correction Kit" allowing you to become a punctuation vigilante and correct misplaced commas and dashes and quotes wherever you may find them. Good luck and good writing.

Note-to-Self 2: Bulwer-Lytton is also listed in "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" as the source of the expressions "the great unwashed" and "the pen is mightier than the sword."

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Ingrid divides her life between the San Juan Islands (where her heart lives) and Austin, Texas (where her paycheck is generated). While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra ..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Ingrid is an old-school Libra and believes that the Revolution should be a catered event.

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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