Stop dangling those modifiers. Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP.

Today, in my official capacity as the curator of the HorseBack UK Facebook page, I was going to use the word disinterested.

After some consideration, I deleted it. I was using it in its correct sense, of having no skin in the game. I worried that some people would read it in its new meaning of not interested, and the whole sentence would collapse into a mess of misinterpretation.

I felt very sad about this. I mourn disinterested. I think it is lost to us.

I am not against language shifting and renewing itself. I understand it is a febrile, living thing, and that is part of its thrill. I adore the new use the young people have made of random, which no longer merely means having no specific pattern or purpose, but also weird, unknown and unexpected, often in a comical way. (Interestingly, the young people themselves have already started a backlash against the overuse of this word, and are busy restoring it to its original sense. I still like it.) What saddens me is the loss of a word which cannot be replaced. Nothing else quite gets the precise meaning of disinterested: neutral and impartial carry different nuances.

Nor am I against breaking the strict rules of grammar. I often start a sentence, even, daringly, a paragraph, WITH A PREPOSITION. Strunk and White would faint. For me, the sole, shining purpose of grammar is clarity. Clarity in writing is everything. Play around with language and form all you want: be antic; be bold. But never, ever let the sense be lost.

This is why I grow so wild with rage when I see a dangling modifier. At its worst, the dangler confuses and muddies. The actual intention of the sentence may be completely lost. At its best, the dangler clunks hideously on the ear, even if the sense may be discerned.

I saw two today. One was on the front page of The Telegraph. The Telegraph. Are the subs doing it for a bet? The other was in a newspaper column written by an author and journalist who has been using words in a professional capacity for twenty years. Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?

Really. There are days when, if it were not for the spreading sweetness of Red the Mare, I would give up. She, of course, would never dangle a modifier in her life. The duchess in her would not permit it.

 

Too tired for pictures today. Just the hills, and my darling Minnie the Moocher:

Wrote this at the end of a long day. 1169 words of secret project; two other pieces of work; usual equine activity. Whenever I rant about grammatical crimes, I fear that there shall be at least one typo or missing word or mistaken comma. Just so everyone can point and laugh. My eyes are squinting too much to proof-read with any accuracy. But if the howler is there, I suppose it shall simply be the gods of hubris, warning me not to flap my wings. They are flinty and ruthless, like that.

This and that. And the other thing.

There are so many matters to report and so little time. I wanted to do a whole thing on grammar, since there was a discussion on it as I listened to the Today programme this morning. They were trying to get up a little controversy – the old argument of Does Any of it Really Matter? The language is a living thing, la di dah; it was all different in the time of Shakespeare. Etc, etc, etc.

I love grammar. I mind about it. I love to play with language, but I need to know the rules are the rules, before I can throw them up in the air and make free with them.

In fact, I don’t need to write a dissertation. I think grammar matters because of two things: clarity and elegance. And that is all there is to that.

I went up to HorseBack for my work there. The two men who arrived on Monday, rather hunched and uncertain, are now standing tall, doing all manner of things with their horses, making jokes, even teasing. I don’t still quite know how this transformation happens, but it does, and it is a quite breath-taking thing to watch in action.

The real good professional photographer who sometimes does work for them was there. I felt very shuffly and humble. I take their daily pictures now, and my amateurish efforts are so shabby compared to her diamond brilliance. I muttered some of this to her. She was amazingly kind and generous. I think that people who are really good at what they do can be like that. They don’t need to be judgemental or proprietorial or mean-spirited, because they are comfortable in their own talent.

I rode the mare out, into novel territory, with nothing more than a rope halter and my native wits. The remarkable trainer was up on the lovely American Paint filly, and together we broke new ground and felt the wild sense of achievement that brings. It was only a tiny ride, but I have gone back to basics with my dear girl, almost as if I were backing her for the first time, to build ease and confidence for us both. So even though we never moved out of an amble, it felt like flying. Soon, we will be cantering over the mountains, but because we’ve gone back to baby steps, there will be no trepidation.

I walked down to see her in the evening sun last night, with Mr Stanley the Dog, and stood in the amber quiet before the dusk fell, and felt her head on my shoulder and told her stories.

She listens always, very politely, to my stories, blowing gently through her sweet nose. She is one of the nicest people I ever met. She is the love of my life and that’s all there is to it. That feeling never diminishes or fails to astound or gladden me. It’s not what I expected would happen to me now. None of this is. But it feels like some random existential force just woke up one morning, stretched itself, and decided to send me a bloody great present.

 

Today’s pictures:

The happy HorseBack herd:

The wonderful Mikey, one of my fast favourites:

The real photographer – the great Fay Vincent (available for weddings, parties and any brilliance you want) – with Archie, ready for his close-up:

Someone else who is very good at what she does:

That’s the smiling face which tells the story:

Off for the first ride down to the river:

Stanley the Dog, who has been getting a lot of love and admiration from the Dear Readers lately, to my intense delight:

My lovely red girl:

Chilling out with her sweet American friend after their first ride together:

And on Tuesday, in the bright sun, which has buggered off again:

Myfanwy the Pony, who seems to get prettier by the day:

Very out of focus hill. But since this is a place for imperfection, I thought you would not mind:

A moment of pedantry

I did a terrible thing the other day.

I was mooching about on Facebook (obviously not looking for horse pictures) when I came across something someone had posted for a friend. It was an advertisement for a Writers’ Retreat, in the lovely Umbrian hills. The virtual flyer was beautifully produced, with a picture of verdant Italy. One could almost smell the pines and imagine the coruscating literary conversation.

The only problem was that the headline said:

WRITERS RETREAT.

I pondered this for a while. I attempted to employ restraint. In the end, I could not help myself.

I left a little comment, with a mitigating smiley face at the end of it to indicate that I was not shaking my finger in a maiden aunt-ish way, but coming in peace. I pointed out, as politely as I could, that WRITERS RETREAT should have an apostrophe in it. Otherwise, I said helpfully, it actually meant a lot of writers going backwards. I had a sudden vision of a cohort of bespectacled scribblers running away from Moscow. Did they learn nothing from Napoleon?

There was, of course, no reply. I could imagine the author and her friend tutting and grumbling about ghastly interfering know-bests on the horrid internet. It was none of my business, after all.

Just this morning, I found a rather brilliant video which had text running over it. I counted at least three grocer’s apostrophes. I shuddered a little, but said nothing. It was a video about horsemanship, not writing, so I felt that the errors were not egregious. They did not take away from the professionalism of the thing, since the profession was not literary. Who cares if they referred to horses in the plural as horse’s?

Even good, professional writers can slip mistakes past the subs. I saw Douglas Murray dangle a modifier in this week’s Speccie. I’m afraid to say that even dear old Auntie is prone to this. I remember a terrible moment on the News At Ten when the newsreader said, of Beryl Bainbridge: ‘Nominated five times, the Booker Prize continued to elude her.’ Which of course means the Booker was nominated five times, not the brilliant Miss Beryl.

Oddly, I mind about modifiers almost more than I mind about misplaced apostrophes. A dangler is so ugly and clumsy; it arrests the eye, and drags the reader to a screaming halt. The worst ones muddy or even entirely obliterate the sense of the thing. Often one must go back and read the sentence again to see what it really means.

The reason that pedants get so grumpy is not, I think, because they are twitchy fusspots, always looking for something over which to chunter. I think it is because they love clarity. That is certainly why I get cross. Whenever sense is lost, a little piece of my writer’s heart dies.

Of course, I sit in the middle of the most shattery of glass houses on this one. I have blind spots over the spelling of certain words. Because I write this blog quite fast, and do not have time for endless editing, there are often typing mistakes. (Sometimes the Dear Readers kindly correct, saving me from shame.) I use far too many semi-colons. I start sentences with conjunctions; sometimes whole paragraphs too. I dare to end a sentence with a preposition, when the to whoms and of whiches sound a little too pompous. I throw words in the air and watch them fall. In this post alone there has been ‘aunt-ish’ which is not a word at all.

Still, even though people may pick up their brickbats and hurl them right at me, I stand by my principle. Clarity is queen, and I shall serve her all my days. Even if that service shall sometimes be a little imperfect.

 

Today’s pictures:

Horrid, dour, shivery sort of day, with angry low skies and sloppy snow. So the only answer was the close-up, for beauty:

Myfanwy is very pleased with her smart blue rug, to keep her cosy as tonight’s blizzards roar in:

Red and Autumn having a quiet girls’ moment:

Before this happens:

It’s a big moment, the first schooling in full Western saddle. Annoyingly, I take Red to the other side of the field to do some sedate standing exercises. HOW long do I have to stay here?:

Because there is something REALLY interesting going on over there:

Like THAT:

Oh, all right:

She stood, stock still, for ten minutes, whilst Autumn had a little bronco moment, and I wandered across the paddock, faffing about with the camera. It’s one of those exercises that a lot of people would think perfectly nuts. I like it. It teaches trust and attention and manners. I like these small building blocks; I like working from the ground up. It’s no fun having an unsettled, barging, pushy horse. Sometimes I think, as we do leading and standing and backing, the simplest, most honest things, that everything I am doing with her is about stillness. She may be an ex-racing thoroughbred mare, but she has a real talent for stillness. It’s one of the things about her that touches my heart the most.

Prettiest, most demure face:

And from Stanley the Dog, most serious Sit and Stay face:

There is a big stick at his feet and he is counting the seconds until he is allowed to chase it again.

Hill: