Phil Gordon's Little Green Book

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Absurdist:

I already gave an example in another post. But if you want another one, look at the paragraph on the bottom of page 84. For starter's the word "I" appears 14 times.

Also, several of the sentences are horribly written. For example, Phil writes (in the middle of the paragraph): "When I check-raise, if they then re-raise me, I can be fairly certain that I'm beat." Now here's my rewrite: "When I check-raise, if reraised, I'm probably beat." Notice that my version eliminates 8 of the 16 words (including one "I".)

I'll let others address additional problems in this paragraph.

best wishes,
Mason

[maurile]

Hey Nick, I'm an avid reader of your reviews and appreciate the effort you put into them.

That said, your criticism of Gordon's usage is misplaced (at least in the examples you provided).

[ QUOTE ]
P. 35, 3rd paragraph, 3rd and 4th sentences:

"But with 8-6 suited, it is very unlikely that my opponent will have one of those. Unless they have a pocket pair... ."

One: Most copy editors would, uh, flag a sentence that begins with "But".

[/ QUOTE ]
No, most copy editors wouldn't.

Garner's usage tip of the day.

<font color="blue">It is a gross canard that beginning a sentence with "but" is stylistically slipshod. In fact, doing so is highly desirable in any number of contexts, as many stylebooks have said (many correctly pointing out that "but" is more effective than "however" at the beginning of a sentence) -- e.g.:

o "Objection is sometimes taken to employment of 'but' or 'and' at the beginning of a sentence; but for this there is much good usage." Adams Sherman Hill, The Principles of Rhetoric 88 (rev. ed. 1896).

o "Of the many myths concerning 'correct' English, one of the most persistent is the belief that it is somehow improper to begin a sentence with ['and,' 'but,' 'for,' 'or,' or 'nor']. The construction is, of course, widely used today and has been widely used for generations, for the very good reason that it is an effective means of achieving coherence between sentences and between larger units of discourse, such as paragraphs." R.W. Pence &amp; D.W. Emery, A Grammar of Present-Day English 106 n.15 (2d ed. 1963).

o "The widespread public belief that 'but' should not be used at the beginning of a sentence has no foundation but is seemingly unshakeable." Robert W. Burchfield, Points of View 119 (1992).

o "If you want to begin a sentence by contradicting the last, use 'but' instead of 'however.'" Christopher Lasch, Plain Style 101 (Stewart Weaver ed., 2002).

Good writers often begin sentences with "but" and have always done so -- e.g.:

o "But reading his speeches in cold blood offers a curious experience." H.L. Mencken, "The Archangel Woodrow" (1921), in The Vintage Mencken 116, 119 (1955).

o "But such simplicity of instinct is scarcely possible for human beings." Bertrand Russell, Education and the Good Life 192 (1926).

o "But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments." Albert Einstein, "Science and Religion" (1939), in Ideas and Opinions 41, 42 (1954).

o "But Joyce manages to do something even more subtle than that." Vladimir Nabokov, "Ulysses" (ca. 1955), in Lectures on Literature 285, 346 (Fredson Bowers ed., 1980).

o "But it is a careful, angry, honest film, and nothing it says is less apposite now than it would have been ten years ago, or twenty." James Agee, Agee on Film 206 (1958).

o "But perhaps the more valuable achievement to come out of France for the novel has been a whole body of criticism inspired by the new novelists." Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation 104 (1966).

o "But the virtues of the film are many and considerable." John Simon, Movies into Film 78 (1971).

o "But the modesty is usually false." William Safire, What's the Good Word? 44 (1982).

o "But he had got used to that and it did not disquiet him." Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind 143 (2001).

These are not good writers on bad days. No: they were having good days. And the list could be expanded a thousandfold.</font>

[ QUOTE ]
Two: "My opponent" in the first sentence refers to the same person as "they" in the second sentence. I would categorize this as "substandard English". This is exactly the situation I was talking about in my previous post.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't care for the singular they myself, but it is incorrect to call it incorrect.

<font color="blue">"Though the masculine singular pronoun may survive awhile longer as a generic term, it will probably be displaced ultimately by they, which is coming to be used alternatively as singular or plural" (Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 718).

[maurile]

By the way, if you open Time or Newsweek or The Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or any other respected journal and start reading articles at random, you will notice that about 8% of all sentences start with coordinating conjunctions ('and,' 'but,' 'for,' 'or,' 'nor').

[npc]

I wanted to quote from the previous message, but cutting and pasting from the (tiny) Post window is a real PITA using firefox on MacOS. I'm not a big fan of the forum software being used here, but that's a discussion for another day.

I said that most copy editors would flag sentences beginning with "But". You disagreed. Our experiences working with copy editors differ. Note that I don't say that one should never do this. For every style usage that is considered improper in the language someone can find an occurance where the "wrong" way is the best way. Decent books on writing are replete with examples of this. That doesn't mean that we should throw out all the rules of language style. I would claim that Gordon's usage in this instance isn't necessary, and therefore isn't appropriate. I believe copy editors I've worked with would agree with me.

As for the singular "they", Garner may be right that this will become common usage someday, I don't know. It certainly does solve the gender usage problem. When I've written conference papers and my book and had them copy edited, instances where I've done this were corrected, I believe rightly so. At some point this might be considered to be correct usage, and this point of view does seem to be gaining some sympathy, but I believe it is far from accepted practice at the present time.

Moreover, I hope it doesn't become commonly used. It's already hard enough in English to determine context from our overloaded pronouns. There has to be a better way to handle gender issues in print than making the word "they" even more vague than it already is.

Here's the deal. I said I thought many places in Gordon's book were poorly worded. I was asked to provide an example. I opened the book and quoted the first location I found that met my criteria. There are many other places where the wording is awkward at best, and Mason has provided another good example. I really don't plan to go through the book again looking for more or better examples because it takes me a lot of time to read that carefully, and I don't think it's that important.

Gordon's book communicates its good ideas adequately enough to make it well worth reading, but as I said in my review, in many places the writing made me cringe. I stand by that statement. I would expect that a copy editor would have worn out a red pencil going over this manuscript. I'm surprised a major publishing house released it in this form. Maybe that's just me.

[larrondo]

You got it, pal.

[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
Moreover, I hope [the singular they] doesn't become commonly used. It's already hard enough in English to determine context from our overloaded pronouns. There has to be a better way to handle gender issues in print than making the word "they" even more vague than it already is.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm with you on that. I never use the singular they and I cringe when other people do. But it is widespread enough now that I don't think it can justly be called an error.

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't plan to go through the book again looking for more or better examples because it takes me a lot of time to read that carefully, and I don't think it's that important.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with you there as well: it's not that important. It's just that "don't begin a sentence with 'but'" is one of the canards (Fowler called it a superstition) I hate seeing repeated. You will not find a single style manual or usage dictionary that condemns starting a sentence with 'but' -- they are unanimously in favor of the practice.

Other superstitions I hate seeing repeated:

- Never end a sentence with a preposition.
- Never split an infinitive.

Good list here (with references).

[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
By the way, if you open Time or Newsweek or The Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or any other respected journal and start reading articles at random, you will notice that about 8% of all sentences start with coordinating conjunctions ('and,' 'but,' 'for,' 'or,' 'nor').

[/ QUOTE ]
Also by the way, I once had an online discussion about this with someone who claimed to have been a copyeditor for Rolling Stone Magazine. I pointed out a research paper in an academic journal that found that, over the course of a particular year (maybe 1997 or so), 8% of the sentences contained in articles on the front page of the New York Times began with coordinating conjunctions. (I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to come up with a citation to the article, but without success. I think it was 8%, but it may have been even higher -- possibly 12%.)

His response was that a rag like the NYT may go in for such a plebian sentence structure, but top-notch periodicals like Rolling Stone Magazine never would.

So I went to Rolling Stone's website, picked five articles at random, and showed him that every single article contained at least one sentence that began with "and" or "but"; and the overall number of sentences beginning with coordinating conjunctions was slightly higher than the one reported for the NYT front-page stories.

He then responded (I believe incorrectly, but I didn't look into it further) that the online articles are entirely different from the print articles. The print articles in Rolling Stone, he maintained, would never allow an author to begin a sentence with "and" or "but."

I gave up at that point, but another participant (this was in an old Yahoo! Groups discussion) went to the library and got a print version of the magazine. Sure enough, the same ratio of sentences began with "and" or "but" in the print version as in the online version. (Different issue, so different articles.)

Dude was

[binions]

[ QUOTE ]

"But with 8-6 suited, it is very unlikely that my opponent will have one of those. Unless they have a pocket pair... ."

One: Most copy editors would, uh, flag a sentence that begins with "But".


[/ QUOTE ]

If they flag every sentence that starts with "But", they'd be wrong - not to mention anal. It is perfectly acceptable to start the occasional sentence with "and" or "but". And that is certainly true in a book written in a conversational tone.

[binions]

[ QUOTE ]

Also, several of the sentences are horribly written. For example, Phil writes (in the middle of the paragraph): "When I check-raise, if they then re-raise me, I can be fairly certain that I'm beat." Now here's my rewrite: "When I check-raise, if reraised, I'm probably beat." Notice that my version eliminates 8 of the 16 words (including one "I".)
st wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

If you thought about it, you would probably choose to re-write it differently.

"If my foe re-raises after I check-raise, I'm probably beat."