Mignon Fogarty's Blog: Mignon Fogarty's Blog - Posts Tagged "mystery"
Using Grammar to Hide Your Clues
I heard an interesting thing about grammar and mystery novels when I was at Stanford the other day.
It's possible that clues appear more often in subordinate clauses than main clauses of mystery novels because people aren't as drawn to the subordinate clauses. The professor speculated that putting a clue in a subordinate clause is a way to hide it in plain sight.
Has anyone else heard this theory or noticed it in practice?
Mignon Fogarty is better known online as Grammar Girl.
It's possible that clues appear more often in subordinate clauses than main clauses of mystery novels because people aren't as drawn to the subordinate clauses. The professor speculated that putting a clue in a subordinate clause is a way to hide it in plain sight.
Has anyone else heard this theory or noticed it in practice?
Mignon Fogarty is better known online as Grammar Girl.
More on Using Grammar to Hide Clues
My last blog post was about hiding clues in subordinate clauses, and I just talked to someone who uses grammar in a different way to hide information. (It's been a great week for grammar tidbits!)
An old friend who is a lawyer says he always uses active voice in his briefs except when he has a piece of information that looks bad for his case. Then he switches to passive voice because he thinks people gloss over passive sentences more easily than active sentences. He thinks when something is in passive voice, it doesn't draw as much attention.
Interesting approach. If you're a lawyer, do you deliberately switch between active and passive like this?
Mignon Fogarty is better known online as Grammar Girl. Read her article about active voice versus passive voice.
An old friend who is a lawyer says he always uses active voice in his briefs except when he has a piece of information that looks bad for his case. Then he switches to passive voice because he thinks people gloss over passive sentences more easily than active sentences. He thinks when something is in passive voice, it doesn't draw as much attention.
Interesting approach. If you're a lawyer, do you deliberately switch between active and passive like this?
Mignon Fogarty is better known online as Grammar Girl. Read her article about active voice versus passive voice.
