897. Have you ever written yourself into a "that that" or a "had had" situation and wondered how you got there? It doesn't mean you're a bad writer! I explain why this happens sometimes and how to best fix it. Also, we talk about the fascinating subconscious rules that guide conversations.
897. Have you ever written yourself into a "that that" or a "had had" situation and wondered how you got there? It doesn't mean you're a bad writer! I explain why this happens sometimes and how to best fix it. Also, we talk about the fascinating subconscious rules that guide conversations.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/the-subconscious-rules-of-conversation
| Segment 2 is by Valerie Fridland: Website. Twitter.
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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about double words and the rules of conversation.
Before we get started, I want to remind you that I have three LinkedIn Learning courses about better writing, punctuation, and commonly confused words. They're great for everyone, but they're especially great for professors because lots of universities provide free access through their libraries. So if you have students who are struggling with some specific writing problem, like writing in active voice or using semicolons, you can refer them to one of my quick 2- or 3-minutes videos on just that topic, and you can bookmark specific videos to make them easy to find every time you have students with those common problems. Just search for "Grammar Girl" at LinkedIn Learning at your library, and all three course should pop up.
Double Words in Sentences
by Mignon Fogarty
Have you ever been writing, and suddenly you realize you've made a sentence with two words in a row, like "had had" or "that that," and wondered what happened? Asking like David Byrne of the Talking Heads "Well, how did I get here?"
Well, don't worry! It doesn't mean you're a bad writer. It usually just means you've stumbled on a situation where you're using a word that can legitimately be different parts of speech. For example, the word “that” can be a pronoun, an adjective, a conjunction, and an adverb, so it makes sense that sometimes the word can appear twice in a row in a grammatically correct sentence.
So let's talk about the different kinds of double words that can arise as you’re writing your first drafts, and how to fix them, because even though they aren’t incorrect, they are distracting.
That That
As I said, the word “that” has many roles, and double “that"s tend to occur after you use it as a conjunction.
In this example, “that” as an conjunction is followed by "that" as a adjective:
His indifference to fresh brains confirmed my suspicion that that man is only pretending to be a zombie.
I've used “that” to identify a specific man: “that man.” Two ways to fix it are to use a more specific adjective or to replace the initial pronoun with the description. I could write:
His indifference to fresh brains confirmed my suspicion that the shuffling man is only pretending to be a zombie.
or
That man’s indifference to fresh brains confirmed my suspicion that he is only pretending to be a zombie.
And of course, in that second example, you could even delete the second "that."
In this example, "that" as a conjunction is followed by “that” as an adverb:
It’s still a matter of conjecture that that much chocolate is what made Squiggly sick.
There, I used “that” to emphasize how much chocolate it took to make Squiggly sick: “that much.” Two ways to fix it are to insert a gerund after the conjunction or to rewrite it with a different conjunction:
It’s still a matter of conjecture that eating that much chocolate is what made Squiggly sick.
or
People are still wondering whether eating that much chocolate is what made Squiggly sick.
Had Had
Here's another common problem.
“Had” is word that plays different roles and can accidentally appear twice in a row in a grammatically correct sentence; it happens when you use the verb “to have” in the past perfect tense.
Past perfect tense sentences describe two things that happened in the past:
Julia had only seen mimes on TV before she went to Paris.
Bernard had run every day until he hurt his foot.
You can see that if you substitute the past tense of the verb “to have” in similar sentences, you’ll end up with a “had had”:
Julia had had Gouda cheese before she went to Paris.
Bernard had had a flight booked for a marathon before he got hurt.
The best way to eliminate the double “had” is usually to use a different past tense verb:
Julia had tried Gouda cheese before she went to Paris.
Bernard had booked a flight for a marathon before he got hurt.
Do Do
Much like the “had had” problem, you can get a double “do” in a grammatically correct sentence when one “do” is acting like a helping verb (for example, for emphasis) and another “do” is acting like an action verb. Imagine this conversation:
Julia: You always scratch your chin when you want to ask a question.
Bernard: Wow. I do do that, don’t I?
The first “do” is a helping verb that adds emphasis, and the second “do” describes the action. Often, you can simply eliminate the verb that adds emphasis. It changes the feeling of the sentence a little bit, but it eliminates the distracting double word.
Wow. I do that, don’t I?
The The
When a name or title starts with the word “the” and you want to use it in a sentence following “the,” it’s OK to just drop the capitalized word from the title:
I got the information from the New York Times reporter.
I wish I could meet the "Hunger Games" cast.
According to the Chicago Manual of Style, you can also drop the article from the title when it makes your sentence sound better:
Who took my "Hunger Games" poster?
Is Is
Unlike the other double words we’ve considered, sometimes the double “is” is grammatically correct and sometimes it is wrong. In speech, it’s not uncommon to hear someone say something like “The problem is is that it's almost dark outside." But that is wrong and clunky, and you shouldn’t use it in standard written English. But it's an easy fix to just delete one of the "is"s:
The problem is that it's almost dark outside.
A question like this, though, actually is grammatically correct:
What this is is a mess.
“What this is” is the subject of the sentence and is followed by a predicate that starts with “is.” It’s easier to see when you consider a sentence with a similar subject that uses a different verb. Instead of "What this is," let's try "What this merits" as a subject:
What this merits is a rewrite.
You can eliminate that first double “is” by changing the subject. Instead of "What this is is a mess," try just
This is a mess.
Or if for some reason you want the wordiness, like maybe it's dialogue in fiction or something like that, you could try:
What we have here is a mess.
That segment was written by me.
Next, I have a segment by Valerie Fridland.
Grice’s Maxims: The 4 Rules That Guide Our Conversations
by Valerie Fridland
For every instance where we say exactly what we mean, there are probably just as many times when we require our co-conversationalist to “get” our drift without our saying it explicitly. For instance, say you ask me what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, and I reply with “You might want to have an umbrella.” Notice I did not really provide a direct answer. I never said that it was expected to rain. Instead, my answer led you to infer that it might rain. If you ended up dragging an umbrella around all day and it never rained, you couldn’t really accuse me of giving you bad information about the weather, since all I said was to bring an umbrella. After all, you were the one that jumped to conclusions.
But you might still feel a little bit mislead, and with good reason because you assumed I was playing by the same rules you were. By rules here, I mean the set of rules that we all implicitly follow which makes for smooth and successful conversations. We may not think about it very often, but there have to be rules that help regulate our conversations, or we would do things like speak in soliloquies or say random and unrelated things. And though you may not have ever been taught these rules the same way you are taught other ones, like spelling rules or rules for verb conjugation in Spanish, you learned them as part of your communicative competence, a fancy way of referring the socially appropriate knowledge we learn as speakers of a language.
The rules we speak by
In 1975, philosopher Paul Grice wrote an influential article called “Logic and Conversation” proposing that conversation is a norm or rule-governed activity. He suggested that, to be successful, conversationalists have to approach the task of conversation with the idea of being maximally cooperative, a guiding principle he termed the “cooperative principle.” Now, the cooperative principle just tells us to be as cooperative as possible in broad fashion, but Grice also came up with four sub-rules, or what he called maxims, that provided more detail about how we go about being cooperative and also about how we make sense of other’s responses that, on the surface, might not seem all that cooperative.
For example, when Aardvark asks Squiggly to go fishing on Saturday, and Squiggly tells him he has to wash his hair, why is it that Aardvark feels rejected? On the surface, hair-washing and fishing are not related at all, and it would appear that Squiggly did not appropriately respond to Aardvark’s question, but, because of the underlying rules of conversation that we have learned to follow, Aardvark understands the implied meaning, making something called a conversational implicature.
What are these rules, or conversational maxims as Grice called them?
One of the rules Grice proposed is the Maxim of Relation. This rule states that we should make what we say pertinent to the situation and conversation at hand. For instance, if I told you I failed my math test, and you respond by saying that your dog bit the mailman, it is hard to see how that relates at all to how I did on my math test. So, to make our conversation effective, you instead know that you need to say something that that relates to what I said, like offering commiserating consolation or by telling me your own math score.
Of course, in the hair-washing example above, it might also seem the reply was not relevant to the question. After all, how does hair washing relate to fishing? But herein lies the rub. In addition to following the maxims, Grice proposes that we can also “flout” them, meaning we say something that signals to our listener to look beyond the literal meaning of what we said to a more implied meaning – one like, I can’t go fishing because I have a whole hair-washing spa-thing planned for tonight which will keep me otherwise occupied.
Why would we bother flouting instead of just saying no? Often to be polite, as saying something more direct and explicit, like “Heck no, I have no interest in fishing with you” might not come across as very cooperative or kind. By flouting the maxim, we are able to let people come to their own conclusions and save face.
The next maxim is the Maxim of Quality, which basically says we shouldn’t say something false or for which we lack evidence. In other words, if you tell me Aardvark got the highest grade on the math test, I assume that you have some information that leads you to this conclusion and are not just proclaiming it so. When we engage in conversation, we assume that we can take what others say at face-value, unless we understand that they are “flouting” the maxim for some intended effect like sarcasm or irony, like when they tell us that wait at the DMV was not bad at all while rolling their eyes. Of course, bad actors can and sometimes do exploit our socialized willingness to trust what others say, and this is why lying feels like such a violation.
There is also the Maxim of Quantity, a maxim that tells us to be as informative as is needed in the specific situation. In a nutshell, this means that we need to be detailed enough without going overboard. For instance, if Aardvark asks Squiggly if he knows the time, and Squiggly simply answers with “Yes, I do!” then that is a violation of the maxim of quantity, and Aardvark can rightfully find Squiggly annoying. Part of what it means to have cooperative conversations is to understand the norms for what constitutes the appropriate amount of information to share and, as part of his cultural knowledge, Squiggly knows that asking someone if they know the time is really a request for telling them the time. So, Squiggly was violating the maxim of quantity, likely for comedic effect. On the flip side, if you have ever had the sense that someone “overshares” details – or is giving you TMI - then it is probably because you sense that they are violating the maxim of quantity.
The final, and perhaps most interesting maxim, is the Maxim of Manner. This maxim is really more about how we choose to say something as it guides us to make sure we are clear, brief, organized, and unambiguous in what we say. So, for instance, when Aardvark says “Squiggly came to the party and I left,” we take it to mean that Aardvark left after Squiggly showed up, not before, because of the way Aardvark presented the information. And, given that Squiggly blew off Aardvark’s fishing invitation earlier, who can blame Aardvark for avoiding Squiggly?
Again, when people “flout” this maxim by doing something like spelling out the word “WALK” as W-A-L-K in front of their dogs, which is more vague and inefficient than just saying the word, it is a signal to a listener that they need to look deeper for how to make sense of it in the context – for example, that the speaker was trying to avoid over-exciting the pup.
Of course, these maxims are guides, not do-or-die rules, so people do not always follow them. But when people overtly violate them – by lying, by over-talking, or being dis-organized and vague in how they package what they say – they don’t tend to have a lot of subsequent conversations.
That segment was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of the forthcoming book, "Like, Literally Dude," about all the speech habits we love to hate. You can find her at valeriefridland.com or on Twitter at @FridlandValerie.
Next, I have a familect story.
"Good morning, Grammar Girl. Here's another familect story for you. Like many two-year-olds, my now 17-year-old daughter liked to eat goldfish crackers as a snack. Not remembering the name of the snack, she asked for cookie fish. It only took a minute to figure out what she was asking for, and her name for the treat was so charming that it stuck. We still called the delicious yellow crackers cookie fish. Thank you. Bye."
Thank you. That was so cute. It made me laugh.
If you want to share the story of your familect, a family dialect or a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL, and I might play it on the show.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to my audio engineer Nathan Semes and my editor Adam Cecil. Our ad operations specialist is Morgan Christianson, our marketing and publicity assistant is Davina Tomlin, our intern is Kamryn Lacy, and our digital operations specialist is Holly Hutchings, who loves to cuddle her black lab, Deputy.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. You can find me on Twitter and YouTube as @GrammarGirl. That's all. Thanks for listening.