opera142

Plural of Jack-in-a-box?

Jacks-in-the-box sounds like many Jacks in one box; Jack-in-the-boxes sounds like one Jack, many boxes. Jacks-in-the-boxes, I dunno.

I'm struggling with two things in my quest to gain the grammar skills of a reasonably educated 3rd grader. The first is that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know, and that gets daunting and make me question every grammatical choice I make. It also encourages chickening-out and just using words/sentences/punctuation I know. I'm working on making myself look up things, double-check things, learning them once and for all.

That plan, however, is stymied by my other issue. I grew up hearing awful English. My family, our neighbors, said things like "Them apples are rotten." Grammar wasn't "taught" as a correct/incorrect thing, but as a class issue. Yes, really. There was the way hoity-toity rich people (and the wanna-be's) spoke, and there was the way we (us real people) spoke. Because the crappy elementry schools I went to didn't much in correcting that, I grew up believing grammatical issues were choices. Snobs used "whom" and "as", real folks used "who" and "like".

Overcoming that isn't as easy as realizing how dumb that sounds and setting myself to learning proper grammer 20 years too late. I struggle with grammar because I so rarely heard it used correctly (because I never did get to hear it right). It's not natural yet, and I don't have years of correct usage to guide me (not to mention that years of hearing incorrect speech has made incorrect sound.

So when I look up a rule, all I have is as much information as that rule gives. Take like/as. The rule says, as is followed by a verb, like isn't. An apple tastes like mush; drying is as much work as washing. But what if the verb is implied? What if the verb comes 8 words later? I don't have years of hearing the correct choice to fall back on and I like to split hairs and fret about my writing. It gets frustrating.

***

I read an awful short story this week, and it revitalized me. Which, I guess, is terrible. But, I hope, it won't be so terrible once I finish explaining myself. I realized that I don't want to write like that-- prose clogged with to-be verbs, details that describe nothing, cliches instead of characterization, a story the reader can't "see".

A while ago, I made a choice about the way I was going to write. And me being me, I've doubted that decision ever since. I mean, I left most goals vague and loose and able to be pushed aside in service of the story, but I still felt like I was putting style above story. Or that I chose to follow a path that's headed straight towards a dead end. Or that somehow, someway it would stymie me or set me back or lead to V. Bad Writing. Or that I'm so in love with writing that way that I don't see poor verb choices clogging the prose, details that sound pretty and describe nothing, clarity sacrificed to avoid a cliche, a story a reader can't "see" because my writing is in the way.

It's not that the awful story assured me my choice was absolutely correct or that my way of writing is the ne plus ultra of awesome. But it did show me that the basic goals I've set for myself are contributing (for now) to me writing well.

I don't suck in every way possible. Yay.

Troublesome sentence: The clatter disguised the door opening, but Punk heard it thump closed.

Dangling Modifier y/n

I'm thinking yes because "clatter" is the subject, so the pronoun "it" refers back to that, rather than door. Right? Or, is the sentence okay because "door" and "it" are both objects in clauses that could stand alone?