CHAPTER 12

Honor the Definite (or How to Clean Up Your Act)

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

—Mark Twain

Are we ever definite about anything? Ask me if I can have lunch with you a week from today and I will most likely say, “Probably.” Ask me if I think I have enough money saved to retire when I turn 70, and I most likely will say, “I hope so.” Heck, even in these examples I am using will most likely. Life happens, and with the amount of information that comes at us these days, being definite on issues may be difficult. But you can help clear up some of the haze by being definite in your word choices.

Indefinite Nouns

Indefinite nouns occur when we use imprecise, catch-all words to try to describe thoughts we haven’t clearly identified. Some of the more common indefinite nouns include things, stuff, trouble, activity, efforts, and someone.

If you write a sentence such as you need to do several things before your project is complete, you really haven’t formulated a clear idea. The other person has to ask you, or you have to think about, what those things actually are. Does he need to check with IT to make sure the bandwidth is big enough? Does he have to test out the speakers and microphones? Does he have to prepare an agenda, make sure everyone who needs to be at the meeting is at the meeting, send out the links, test the links, test everything that is recording? How about sending out information on how to test the connection? In other words, what do you mean by things?

Avoiding indefinite nouns requires discipline of mind. You can’t just send a flick-of-your-hand- and-promise-to-think-about-it-later message; you have to be clear about your own thoughts before you send out that message. While you may be thinking I don’t have the time to clarify those things, you simply do not have the time not to. Without taking the time to think through something before you use a word, you run the risk of being misunderstood. And that itself will cause a huge expenditure of time just to clarify what you should’ve done in the first place. Again, a little investment on the frontend yields big returns in time and clarity on the backend.

That’s in the micro world. In the macro world, using indefinite nouns can cause huge misunderstandings. At best, using them can delay action. At worst, using them can create rifts between groups or create anger and discomfort in a large section of the population. We have to be careful that we define what we mean. If we aren’t talking about the same thing, we make no progress.

For example, some general concepts also become indefinite nouns. How do we define happiness? Irritation? But the more important indefinite nouns are ones we use to talk about larger concepts and absolutes. Take the word poverty for instance. Does poverty just mean poor? How do you define poor? Is what is considered poor in rural Nebraska the same as you define poor in San Francisco? Does poor mean a certain income level? A certain group? The word poor often serves as a code for a squirrel’s nest of issues related to race, social class, opportunity, cultural values, and regional identity. It serves as an emotional trigger for many people, and quite often we are swayed by our own definition of the word rather than a rational, clear definition of what the person who used the word is talking about.

Sometimes we also are deliberately deceived as the user intends for us to have an emotional reaction rather than a logical reaction to this word. The same effect happens with imprecise nouns such as family, religious, conservative, liberal. Can you be a conservative and still support what many would consider to be liberal causes? By family do you mean the nuclear family? Extended family? If the majority of America is no longer a two-parent household consisting of one male and one female parent, can we define the word by that concept?

And if we talk about family values, doesn’t each family value something different? We may value SEC football in my family while your family values ACC basketball. We need to be specific. If you’re conservative, does that mean you don’t support issues about the environment? One may think that someone who composts everything, recycles, uses green energy, and is a careful steward of the earth would not be labeled conservative. But how is that different from being a conservationist? Before choosing your words, do some clear thinking about what you actually mean. Having specific and concrete ideas makes progress as well as understanding much clearer.

Indefinite Modifiers

Modifiers can also be indefinite or definite. You may know what you mean—or you may not. If someone is very successful, just how successful is he? How do you measure success? If you need considerable effort to finish a project, how much exactly do you need? What you may perceive as considerable may to me be trivial or insignificant. But unless I explain to you what my definition of trivial is, we have a flyby—our ideas never connect because we really don’t know for sure what the other person means.

Some other indefinite modifiers include the word really; if I worked really hard on the project, how do I define really, in time, effort, and thought? Or if I work very hard, again how much time, effort, thought, etc. did I put into my effort? Other indefinite modifiers include professional and managerial. Effective companies spell out exactly what their definition of professional is. What precisely does one need to do to be managerial?

Indefinite Pronouns

Quick: what’s a pronoun?

Pronouns replace a noun. So if I am talking about Marty, and I say, Marty is the manager at Best Buy; he will make sure you get the right laptop cord, the word he is the pronoun. It replaces Marty.

Pronouns are very helpful words. They keep us from boring people to death—can you imagine what that sentence above would sound like if I didn’t use the pronoun? Marty is the manager at Best Buy; Marty will make sure you get the right laptop cord. I’d wind up sounding like some 1950s advertising jingle. All you would hear is the repetition of his name; you’d miss the point of my sentence.

So far so good. Next comes the tricky part. Some pronouns are called demonstrative pronouns. They point out particular people or things. We have only four of them in the English language: these, that, this, and those. And here is where the problems begin. Suppose I am having lunch. Today my lunch consists of a salami sandwich, blueberries, yogurt, homemade hummus, and ice cream. My friend walks up, looks at my lunch, and says, “I want some of that.” Some of what? I have five things in front of me. Which one do you want? All five? Just the hummus? What?

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a tearful two-year-old crying, “Want that!” knows the situation. Because you aren’t sure what she’s referring to, every effort you make seems to make the situation worse. Guess what: the same lack of clarity and making things worse occurs daily in business writing. When we aren’t clear as to what word we want our pronoun to refer to is, we have what is known as an indefinite pronoun.

The good news: making your pronouns definite is easy. First you have to approach the concept logically: a pronoun replaces a noun. Although we have several types of pronouns in the English language, an indefinite pronoun error usually occurs in the use of personal pronouns.

Now think logically: if something replaces something else, don’t you have to have that something else first? In other words, you have to have a noun before you can replace it with a pronoun. An indefinite pronoun occurs when you don’t have that noun. We aren’t definite about what the writer means, so the use becomes indefinite.

For example:

It is this process that makes our beer unique. [Apologies to Coors, but an error is an error.]

The pronoun in this sentence is it. But does the word “it” replace anything? No. What the pronoun refers to is the word “process.” But process comes after the pronoun, so the usage is incorrect. And the pronoun is indefinite.

Or look at this example:

They say that Hurricane Hanna will hit Savannah.

Who is “they”? We don’t know. So the pronoun is indefinite.

Or this example:

This is what I want.

What is “this”? This what? We don’t know. So the error is indefinite.

To fix this problem, ask yourself, “What does the pronoun refer to?” Then use the answer as you revise. So the first example then becomes

This process makes our beer unique. [See how I not only cut the “it is” but the “that”? Not every “that” needs to be cut, by the way; relative pronouns are necessary in certain situations. But here we didn’t need the that.]

The second example would now read

Weather forecasters say that Hurricane Hanna will hit Savannah.

And the third one becomes

This format is what I want.

See how making sure your pronouns are definite makes your writing clearer?

More on Making Your Pronouns Definite: You Have to Make Them Get along With Each Other

To be clear, you need to make your nouns and the pronouns that refer to those nouns agree. To agree means the pronoun has to be the same gender and number as the noun; that way your message is clear. Yet we mess this one up often as well.

Take a look at the following. What’s wrong here?

When the patient is on time and prepared, the appointment they are scheduled for goes more smoothly.

Or here?

Duke Energy has raised their rates. They want to make more money.

Test of logic: How many people is they? More than one, right? How many people is one organization? Well, this one is tricky. While the organization is comprised of many different people, sometimes into the thousands of people, it is still one organization. It is still one entity. In other words, it is one.

More logic: can one equal more than one? Absolutely not.

But in grammar, the rule states that the pronoun that replaces a noun has to agree with the noun in number. That means it has to be the same number as the noun is. So in the first example, the patient is one. But they is more than one. So the sentence has an agreement error.

That same error occurs in the second sentence. Duke Energy is one corporation; therefore, it is singular. It is one. The pronoun that refers to Duke Energy in the second sentence is our old friend they. If we use that they, then we have an agreement error.

So what? Does it matter?

It does. Although some of us may be inclined to dismiss the value of having these two items agree, think for a moment about what we lose when we pitch this rule out the window. First, we lose clarity. The listener (or reader) may be listening with only half his mind focused on your words—something that happens often. And he may hear that they and think he has lost somehow the thread of what you were saying. By losing that one small tight thread, we risk losing the whole intent of the message. If the listener starts wondering who they is and doesn’t listen to the rest of your message, you’ve lost the whole shooting match.

Second, we lose a little of our professional image. As we have discussed before, professionalism is far more than being able to wear a suit and use big words; overusing big words will hurt your image, but misusing the small words will cause serious harm. Just as your mom told you to always wear clean underwear in case you were in a wreck because you never knew who would see you, I’m telling you to always make your pronouns and nouns agree. You never know who will be listening to or reading your words—and who will notice if those words don’t agree. Part of professionalism is being able to put your best communication forward. You don’t want something like an agreement error to mar your image.

OK, You Say. You Get It. What About Political Correctness?

But if you make the noun and pronoun agree, you may argue, you have to use he. And you want to be politically correct. You don’t want to offend the women in the world—a smart move, by the way.

So how do you fix the issue? For the first sentence, you can do one of three things:

    •   You can alternate between he and she.

    •   You can make the noun plural, as in the patients.

    •   Or you can go ahead and use he. People will forgive your masculine-dominant pronoun a lot more easily than they will forgive an unclear sentence.

So let’s go back to the second sentence:

Duke Energy has raised their rates. They want to make more money.

To fix the sentence, first find your noun; in this case, it is Duke Energy. Now ask yourself how many the noun is. In this case, it is one. That one is known as a collective noun, which means it is one thing comprised of many; all of those employees are collected into one entity.

A collective noun is an it. So you use it and its:

Duke Energy has raised its rates. It wants to make more money.

Simple.

The Indefinite They: Who Are These They People, and Why Are They Making My Life Difficult?

At the risk of becoming the grammar police, at this point I have to talk about those they people. Who are they? We hear all the time something such as “They say it is going to rain” or variations. Yet we still don’t know who they are. They has become an American vernacular, a sort of catch-all phrase to refer to a vague unclear person or group of persons not totally identified. Using that generic unidentified they allows us to be imprecise and vague—not at all what we want to be.

To help your communication reach that inner peace and ease, what we need to do is simplify. They say—who’s they? Answer the question. Was they the meteorologist on television, your uncle Phil who felt the rain in his bones, or a report in the online newspaper? To be clear, we need to be aware of how we speak. They becomes therefore not only another of those indefinite pronouns but sneakily one the biggest clarity stealers of all time.

The clearest way for us to communicate the message, one in which the other person knows exactly what we are talking about, is to just replace the they. So replacing the they with the answer to Who do you mean by that they again? gives us “the forecast says it’s going to rain,” which is a lot clearer.

The Indefinite It

Take a look at the following sentence:

If a company-wide method is put in place, it gives deliverers a blue print.

Now tell me: what’s (or who’s) it?

In this sentence, the word it refers to the company-wide method. Nothing is grammatically wrong here.

But something structurally is wrong. Read that sentence aloud. Do you hear the looseness of the sentence? By looseness, we mean that the manner in which the sentence is constructed allows the reader to do one of a few things as he reads. She can slur all the words together, without any real rhythm or emphasis, which then allows her to say or read the words without attaching much meaning to them or internalizing them. Or she can read the words all in the same monotone, which has the same non-internalizing effect. In essence, the looseness of the sentence construction makes the content as bland as yesterday’s French fries, kind of gooey and not of any real enjoyment or value.

What made the sentence loose? The pronoun.

Let’s go back to the Zen concept of simplicity. We keep only what we need. Sometimes we need a pronoun, as we did in the sentences about the patient and Duke Energy. But often we do not; we just add in the pronoun because we didn’t give enough due forethought and clarity to our own thoughts as we wrote them down or spoke them. In the sentence about the company-wide methods, we don’t need a pronoun at all. We need to tighten and cut unnecessary parts.

So:

If a company-wide method is put in place, it gives deliverers a blue print.

becomes

A company-wide method gives deliverers a blue print.

See how this simple change makes the sentence stronger and clearer?

Ridding the World of there

Another of the great clarity stealers is the word there. The word there means location, as in The way to Rome is over there (in contrast to being here).

But so many of us use there as a slipped-clutch catch-all to start a sentence. The result is a reader or listener whose mental focus is jolted and thrown off balance, which in turn cuts off her best focus on the speaker’s idea.

Look, for instance, at the following:

There is a lot of stress and pressure placed on group leaders daily, weekly and annually.

What’s wrong with the sentence? The there (but you knew that, didn’t you, because we are talking about there.) But what’s wrong with it? Remember that there means location.

Read the sentence again. Do you see any location mentioned in that sentence? In fact, does the sentence have anything at all to do with location?

It does not. You can’t answer where by reading the sentence. Therefore, it has nothing to do with location. The there is simply isn’t needed. It’s a lazy way of starting the sentence. We tried to make there a subject, but because it doesn’t refer to anything, it isn’t a noun. It’s an indefinite.

So the “subject” is an indefinite but not a pronoun or a noun. Therefore, it can’t take a verb, even if the writer has tried by tacking on that bland little is. The there is is meaningless and empty. It adds no value; in fact, all it does is take up valuable space in the reader’s mind. It needs to go. So to fix the sentence, first ask yourself who is doing the placing. You don’t have an answer in this sentence, so you will have to guess—just as the reader or listener of this sentence will have to do, and chances are good that the guesses will be something quite different from what you as the writer intended.

What you have in this instance is what is known as hidden passive; that means you have an accusation but no facts to back it up. So who is doing the placing? The boss? The job? The employees themselves? You have to answer the question. Who is placing? For the sake of example, let’s say that the manager is placing unnecessary stress. Therefore,

There is a lot of stress and pressure placed on group leaders daily, weekly and annually.

becomes

The manager places a lot of stress and pressure on group leaders daily, weekly and annually.

See how much clearer the revised version of the sentence is? Hear how much stronger and—ahem—more professional the revised version sounds?

One Last Sneaky there

Look at this sentence:

There is a list that tells you what to do.

This one’s easy. Is location what matters here? Nope. What matters is that the list tells you what to do. So shift your subject. Cut the there is totally and let the word list be your new subject. You will have to cut the word that, but because you used that only as a ballast against the unnecessary weight of the there is, you can cut it happily.

One Closing Thought

In a world where someone gives us a present that is almost what we wanted, gives us information that is close to what we needed, or opportunities that we nearly saw before it was too late, we need to be definite when we can.

Check your nouns, your modifiers, and your pronouns. Your listener and readers will thank you.