"The house caught on fire; also...": Why you should avoid using "also" as a transition

If there's one transition word that I wish I could wage holy (and, admittedly, self-righteous) jihad against, it's also.  As a transition, also is not your friend.  It is not here to save you.  And using it will only mark you as the noob to writing that you may or may not be.

Before I get too wound up, let me clarify: Today's lesson is especially geared to less-experienced writers, especially high-school and college-level writers, in addition to new teachers of English who're struggling to articulate why they feel queasy when they see a sentence that begins with "Also."  Even if you don't fall into one of these categories, keep reading, because I explain a principle about transitions that's helpful for everyone.

What's the problem with also?

There's nothing inherently wrong with the word also.  I'm not here to argue that it should never be used, that it's best to avoid it, or any of the other typical, universalizing, overly-generalized dicta that other writing gurus are in the habit of nailing to doorposts.  Despite my opening "jihad" metaphor, what I really want is not for us to abolish the word also but to understand that it is a top contender for Weakest and Therefore Most Useless Transition Word and should probably be avoided on those grounds.

What's the difference between transition also and other uses of also?

First, let's clarify that also, as a part of speech, is an adverb, so it's got lots of uses, functionally (rather than grammatically) speaking. 

Here's an example of also put to good use:

There are three good paths for walking to the store, but there are also two good paths for biking there.

In this case, "also" modifies the coordinating conjunction, indicating not a contradiction but an addition that is different.  "And" could replace "but," but the use of "but" carries with it a functional emphasis on contradiction, and "also" manages to squeeze in some of the additive sense that "and" would have added.

Now, here's an example what I'm calling transition also:

There are many reasons to adopt this policy.  Also, several experts have called for similar policy measures to be taken.

What the writer is trying to do here is tie the first sentence to the next one.  Sometimes, I see "also" used like this but with a semicolon instead of a period used between the two sentences/independent clauses.  Doesn't matter; the problem is still the same: the transition here is weak and vague.

I used to tell my students that also could be used to tie together any two sentences and make it seem as if there's a transition there without there actually being any there there (so to speak).  My favorite example of this was:

I went to the store today.  Also, the house caught on fire.

Huh?  What's the relationship of these two ideas?

See, that's the principle of transitions: they should always clarify what you think the relationship of Idea A is to Idea B.  If your transition misses the mark either by being vague or inaccurate, you're not doing your readers any favors.  You're suggesting that the path from Idea A is up some stairs and around the corner when in fact the way to Idea B requires crossing a highway and walking six blocks.  There's a slight difference between "and" and "but also" and a much bigger difference between "therefore" and "however."  It's up to you to help your readers know where they're going in your writing.

Still not sure how also is vague?  Try substituting another more-specific transition word in its place.  The results reveal just how comically vague also is:

I went to the store today.  Therefore, the house caught on fire.

I went to the store today.  However, the house caught on fire.

I went to the store today.  Alternatively, the house caught on fire.

I went to the store today.  Consequently, the house caught on fire.

How can you remediate transition also?

I see transition also all the time in my EFL students' and clients' writing.  Whenever I see it, I ask the writer, "What's the relationship between Idea A and Idea B?  Why did you put this sentence [or phrase] after the first one?"  In the case of my favorite example, it's hard to explain how going to the store is related to the house catching on fire.  If there's no way to explain it, I'd tell the writer to reconsider organization: Maybe one of the sentences needs to find a more appropriate place in the paper.  If the writer can articulate the reason, then I suggest that we make that reason clearer.  Chronology seems to be the most likely reason for putting Idea A (about going to the store) next to Idea B (the house catching on fire), in my example, so I might suggest using "Subsequently" as an alternative to "Also."

So, the next time you find yourself writing "also," especially at the beginning of a sentence, stop to wonder whether you're using it as the glue that ties ideas together (not just in a list or in phrases like "and also" or "but also").  If you are, ask yourself whether there's a more-specific term you could use to express that relationship.  Your readers will thank you.

Today's Proscription: Embellished Resumes

Just a quick update to the Oratoria today, and the message is one I think our patron saint, Philip Neri, would condone:

It's never ok to embellish your resume.

Many months ago, a potential client contacted me about a resume update.  This person was between jobs and career fields, so a couple different resumes would be on order, and because I could write a resume in my sleep, it would have been an easy way for me to pay the rent.

Because there were so many potential changes needed to this person's existing resumes, I offered to do a prospectus of sorts before being officially hired.  Which was a mistake.  No one should work for free, but I thought it seemed like pretty straightforward changes were needed, and I didn't mind explaining what I planned to do.  I might have wanted the same thing, were I in this person's position.

I should have suspected from the beginning that things weren't quite right with the resume.  The client (or, actually, potential client) wanted to know if it was ok to list a job title that was slightly different than the job title given to them (NB: I'm using the plural pronoun here to avoid identifying the gender of the client) by the employer.  After all, they told me, they'd actually done more than the job title implied.

In other words, the client wanted to lie on their resume.  No two ways about it: something like that is a straight-up lie, in this genre.

There were a few other trouble spots: the client was terminated from a job because of a falling out with an employer.  Ok, but it's not alright to suggest that the job did or didn't last longer than it actually did to suggest that the falling out happened sooner or later.  It's also not okay to say that you had responsibilities on the job that your former employer wouldn't corroborate should your prospective employer call to inquire about them.  None of these things are okay.

So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the prospective client said to me, "I'm going to have someone in my field edit my resume.  I disagreed with what you had to say about it."  At first, I was disappointed and a little hurt.  But then I remembered that I'd done the right thing.  It's not okay to lie on your resumes, friends, and it's doubly not-ok to ask a professional writer to lie on your resume for you. 

In the end, I hope that person heard from other people, too, that it's not okay to fudge the details of a resume.  Not only is it dishonest, it puts you at risk.  In other words, you can take the altruistic angle, or you can take the pragmatic angle; both lead you back to the conclusion that it's just not okay to embellish your resume.

You've been warned!

False Proscriptions: "Due to" v. "Because of"

I never have enough to do [pause for roaring laughter], so in addition to being a freelance copyeditor and writing teacher, I'm also a Masters of Divinity student at an internationally known seminary that I see no point in naming here [ahem]...

I was sitting in class not long ago, enjoying a lecture by a writer/editor who seems to be quite successful (I think we heard that she'd gotten "a piece placed in the New York Times" five or so times; I stopped counting after she breached her contract [I'm assuming] by name-dropping the person for whom she'd ghostwritten the NYT piece) and in general had useful advice, much of which was taught to me as a graduate student and much of which I've taught my first-year university students for a decade.  Classic genre-analysis strategies.  All quite useful.

The writer/editor "critiqued" three of my classmates' papers as well as two of my professors'.  This wasn't so much a workshop as an editorial postmortem: she asked the writers to read their unedited texts aloud, and then she showed everyone in the class the edited version of the texts, each bleeding-red with Track Changes revisions and such. 

My colleagues weathered this with the kind of humbleness and gratitude one should expect from seminarians.  But I would never have subjected my students to the potential humiliation of being asked to read aloud something they've worked hard on only to see it changed beyond their desire or control by someone whom they think clearly "knows more" and is going to "fix" all the "problems" in their texts.  And then to subject my students to a public inquisition before their classmates (Student respondent: "I really liked what you did in the introduction."  Student writer: "Thanks!"  Writer/editor: "I really wasn't sure of what you were trying to say in the introduction, so as you can see in the revised version, I changed it substantially.")?  Never.

I experience this situation all the time, though.  I'm sure that chiropractors often think, "If only that person with horrible posture would just come into my office, I could help so much!"  I often see people helping other people with writing in ways that are discouraging or that perpetuate myths about writing or that aren't collaborative or rhetorically sensitive.  But I can't fix everyone's posture, so I just go about my business.

There is one "correction" that the writer/editor made a point of saying before critiquing the students' drafts about which I can make a quick public service announcement.  Her claim was that due to is replacing because of, and anytime a writer uses because of, she should replace it with due to.

I don't know which editor she heard this from, but she either misunderstood or got bad advice.  Her assertion is factually wrong and pragmatically unhelpful.

It's easy to find official examples of important editorial styles that not only allow for but sanction because of in pertinent circumstances.  Here are the facts from the Chicago Manual of Style's website.  Here are the pragmatics about the Associated Press style guide's lack of proscription against the use of because of from the legendary copyeditor of The Baltimore Sun.  Here is some additional discussion from well-respected linguistics blog Language Log about the history of due to and about the ways in which the phrase's usage is changing.

The short version of why her proscription was false is this: due to should be used as an adjective (description) phrase.  Example: The rise in profits was due to the increase in revenues.  Notice how that sentence is structured very much like another one: The rise in profits was big.  Big is an adjective, and due to functions in the same way, grammatically.  If you could substitute in the word "related" for "due," then you could test its appropriateness: The rise in profits was related to the increase in revenues.

And because of is a preposition phrase.  Example: The profits rose because of a change in policies.  Try testing this by substituting in other prepositions: The profits rose around a change in policies.  Not the clearest example, but perhaps when I come up with one, I'll use the magic of the internet to make some emendations.

The upshot is this: no matter who you are, how successful you are, or how sure you are, be careful about the proscriptions you announce, especially if you're helping people who are already less-knowledgeable than you.  Encourage them to double-check your assumption by looking up the accepted usages in their manual of choice.  Never be too quick to say "never," because language and usage change quickly.  Depending on how staunch your proscription was, you may be somewhat wrong or very, very wrong sooner than you think!