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}}A {{tag|preposition}}. Once you’ve put one at the end of a sentence, it’s a habit you’ll never tire of.
}}A {{tag|preposition}}. Once you’ve put one at the end of a sentence, it’s a habit you’ll never tire of.


Anywhere else in a sentence, it is indicative of tortured writing. See? I just tortured some writing, right there. To say “it is indicative of tortured writing” is to torture a sentence that could have said, “it ''indicates'' tortured writing”. This is “[[nominalisation]]” (though strictly speaking, it’s [[adjectivisation]]) in that it guts a perfectly good {{tag|verb}} (“to indicate”) replaces it with a more boring [[verb]] (“[[to be]]”), turns it into an {{tag|adjective}} (relating to the subject of the sentence “[[to be]]”).
Of is a harmless little fellow, but it can be an indication of tortured writing.  


We have a theory that “of prevalance” indicates laboured writing. The higher your “[[of ratio]]”, the worse your writing will be.
See? I just tortured some writing, right there. To say “it can be an indication of tortured writing” is to take “it ''indicates'' tortured writing” and draw it across a rack, bludgeoning it with a new, blunt, colourless verb (“to be”), cruelly eviscerating the perfectly adequate verb that already was there (“indicates”), ghoulishly rearranging it as a noun (“indication”), and putting them in relation to each other with a new preposition: “of”
 
This is “[[nominalisation]]” (the only thing worse is adjectivisation: to take that same perfectly suitable verb and make it into an adjective: “it can be ''indicative'' of tortured writing”.)
 
In either case, “of” is the giveaway. Being a preposition, “of” puts two things in relation to each other, and so tends to favour basic vocabulary over interesting words that describe that relation. So: “piece of writing” over “poem”, “letter”, “extract”, or “passage”;
 
We have a theory that “of” prevalance is a good measure of how laboured a passage is. The higher your “[[of ratio]]”, the worse your writing will be.


===Pompous possessives===
===Pompous possessives===

Revision as of 08:17, 30 November 2021

Towards more picturesque speech
Would it have been as good if it was called Brian’s Life, though?
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A preposition. Once you’ve put one at the end of a sentence, it’s a habit you’ll never tire of.

Of is a harmless little fellow, but it can be an indication of tortured writing.

See? I just tortured some writing, right there. To say “it can be an indication of tortured writing” is to take “it indicates tortured writing” and draw it across a rack, bludgeoning it with a new, blunt, colourless verb (“to be”), cruelly eviscerating the perfectly adequate verb that already was there (“indicates”), ghoulishly rearranging it as a noun (“indication”), and putting them in relation to each other with a new preposition: “of”

This is “nominalisation” (the only thing worse is adjectivisation: to take that same perfectly suitable verb and make it into an adjective: “it can be indicative of tortured writing”.)

In either case, “of” is the giveaway. Being a preposition, “of” puts two things in relation to each other, and so tends to favour basic vocabulary over interesting words that describe that relation. So: “piece of writing” over “poem”, “letter”, “extract”, or “passage”;

We have a theory that “of” prevalance is a good measure of how laboured a passage is. The higher your “of ratio”, the worse your writing will be.

Pompous possessives

Of” is the pompous writer’s favourite possessive, because it makes something fun sound austere and sonorous. And it’s hard to screw up. Apostrophes — the grocers favourite means of indicating possession — terrify lawyers, who fear making the same mistake grocer’s do.[1]

“Skywalker’s rise” doesn’t sound quite so momentous as “The Rise Of Skywalker”. “England’s Bank” sounds like some ghastly New Labour funding initiative for social housing. “The Bank of England” is incontrovertibly the Grand Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.

Our favourite example is dear old Ken Adams’ A Manual Of Style For Contract Drafting[2] which, despite being dedicated to style, has stubbornly mangled its very own title, through four editions and fifteen years. As it is, it’s a bit Bob Cunis: Ken could have gone the whole hog, and called it “A Manual Of Style For The Drafting Of Contracts”, or embraced his inner rebel, and called it — I dunno, a “Contract Style Manual”?

Colour me crazy.

Nominalisation dead giveaway

Other mendacious uses of “of”: look out for the character string “...ion of”. This is a dead giveaway for a passive nominalisation. For example, "In the event of a determination of an Event of Default by the Non-affected Party..." — makes you weep, doesn’t it — can be less tiresomely (and ambiguously) rendered as “if the Non-affected Party determines there has been an Event of Default

See also

References

  1. Lawyer’s Motion Objects to Opponent’s Use of Possessives
  2. Get your copy here, folks. It’s only a hundred quid!