Note On
And then...
"I'm only cautioning against replacing it with something that makes the sentence malformed. I guess that's my grammarian's brain speaking up."
Yeah, but one person's "malformed" is another's "well-formed." From your example:
"She paused, changed it back, sighed, consulted a style manual, pressed Delete."
I like it fine; but grammatically speaking, it's not a sentence. That's one difference between fiction writing and business English: One's trying to be unambiguous, and the other's trying to be evocative.
As for writers' ears either cheering or hissing the phrase, how can anyone make that judgment without context? Writers talk about rhythm sometimes as though it's some great abstraction. It's not; it's beats and divisions of beats. Sometimes, an additional beat completes a rhythmic pattern, so the "and" makes a significant, concrete difference.
But beyond rhythmic concerns or literal parsings, there's also the fact that humans repeat words for emphasis. He's really, really nice. I want to do something extra, extra nice for him. Bad grammar, yeah, sometimes. Sloppy thinking, sure, maybe. But it's also unambiguous communication, and there's more information present than if the word hadn't been repeated. That information is: This is emphasized.
"And" and "then" may be literally redundant--but when a circle of kids leans in around the campfire, wide-eyed, and asks the storyteller, "And then!? And then!?" it means more than just "And?" or "Then?" I think that's the result of both rhythmic and emphatic functions.
Now--that doesn't mean that when "and then" occurs, it's usually for reasons of emphasis. Usually, it's probably for reasons of not having thought about it. But since we're discussing it (and since the day gig is really dead today)... I think it's got its uses.
"I'm only cautioning against replacing it with something that makes the sentence malformed. I guess that's my grammarian's brain speaking up."
Yeah, but one person's "malformed" is another's "well-formed." From your example:
"She paused, changed it back, sighed, consulted a style manual, pressed Delete."
I like it fine; but grammatically speaking, it's not a sentence. That's one difference between fiction writing and business English: One's trying to be unambiguous, and the other's trying to be evocative.
As for writers' ears either cheering or hissing the phrase, how can anyone make that judgment without context? Writers talk about rhythm sometimes as though it's some great abstraction. It's not; it's beats and divisions of beats. Sometimes, an additional beat completes a rhythmic pattern, so the "and" makes a significant, concrete difference.
But beyond rhythmic concerns or literal parsings, there's also the fact that humans repeat words for emphasis. He's really, really nice. I want to do something extra, extra nice for him. Bad grammar, yeah, sometimes. Sloppy thinking, sure, maybe. But it's also unambiguous communication, and there's more information present than if the word hadn't been repeated. That information is: This is emphasized.
"And" and "then" may be literally redundant--but when a circle of kids leans in around the campfire, wide-eyed, and asks the storyteller, "And then!? And then!?" it means more than just "And?" or "Then?" I think that's the result of both rhythmic and emphatic functions.
Now--that doesn't mean that when "and then" occurs, it's usually for reasons of emphasis. Usually, it's probably for reasons of not having thought about it. But since we're discussing it (and since the day gig is really dead today)... I think it's got its uses.