All posts by Meggyn Watkins

We Don’t Know: What Does it Mean to be a Good Roommate?

I recently stumbled across the awesome How To Adult video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNI1fWTlGwY

To sum up their seven tips for being a highly effective roommate:

Tip #1: Set the rules early on.

Tip #2: Have a monthly status meeting.

Tip #3: Be consistent.

Tip #4: Be generous.

Tip #5: Remember that this isn’t “your apartment.” It’s “your and your roommate’s apartment.”

Tip #6: Keep the lines of communication open.

Tip #7: Prepare in advance for possibly parting ways with your roommate.

I think these are awesome rules for living in peace with a non-related human being.  I’ve somewhat successfully lived in my four-bedroom house with a fairly consistent cast of characters for almost three years now, and I think Tip #6 is pretty much the savior of our lives.

But sometimes I wonder if being neat and tidy and nice and polite is good enough to be considered a “good roommate.”  Certainly it makes you an unobtrusive cohabitant.  But if cohabitant is really as far as the relationship goes: there’s no feeling of family or relationship.  So what exactly is the definition of good roommate?

The reason I wonder about this is probably borne from my own insecurity of being a bad roomie.  On a typical night, my fiancé and I come home from a long day at work and go straight upstairs to my bedroom, where I do some UE maintenance for a bit, he finishes up some remaining work, then I pass out without remembering to take out my contacts, and he plays video games for a couple hours before shutting off the light.

Other than occasionally running into my fellow house-dwellers in the kitchen or living room, my main interaction is the somewhat-daily photo that I spam them of our kitchen sink.  I call it the #NagPic, and they’re unusually nice about my insane neuroticism.  (In my defense, it’s incredibly effective at reminding people of their ice cream dish from 3 am last night, but I really don’t recommend it for households of not-incredibly-chill people.)

On the other side of the spectrum, UE writer Emily Knight used to live in this fabulous house where each roommate made dinner once per week and they all sat down and ate together.  This absolutely blows my mind.  How quaint!  How tight-knit!  How envy-inducing!  Just hearing about it inspired fantasies in my head of 1950s-esque hairdos and someone wearing a cute apron from Modcloth.  (I’m not even going to go into all the bike rides, pumpkin carving, and Christmas tree decorating that went on in that utopia of friendship.)

Admirable as it is, it’s just not feasible in my life.  Does that make me a bad roommate?  Probably not.  Does walking upstairs with no acknowledgement of my cohabitants other than “hey” make me a bad roommate?  Probably.  I think it depends on your definition.

While I’m still deciding whether I’m okay with my definition, what’s yours—and are you okay with it? Share your enlightenment in the comments.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

The Cost of Squeamishness

Damn, waking up in the morning is hard. And with this weird, non-stop buzzing noise.

There’s like… static… and voices? …I’m not in bed.

I’m face down. On a very hard, very cold floor.

My face is wet? Oh… it’s blood. My blood.

My mother was born with a heart defect. Just a small flutter in her heart… it was something she had lived with her entire life. Then, last summer, “atrial fibrillation” became a noun in our world, “stroke” was a concern, things like “end of life” documentation arrived, and I was signing papers about being her “medical advocate.”

It was terrifying. But open-heart surgery could not only avoid worst-case scenarios for the future, but also give her a better quality of life in the here-and-now.

I tried not to cry. I tried to be brave. I encouraged her to be optimistic, to sit down and talk through the pros and cons of pig versus bovine versus mechanical valves, to consider whether she should go on the trip of a lifetime overseas before surgery and risk an atrial fibrillation attack away from hospitals or wait until after the surgery when she was possibly relearning how to live with a valve.

There was a lot of talk, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, and a lot of love.

…I wasn’t expecting a lot of debt from my own trip to the ER.

The day of my mom’s surgery, my sister and I woke up before dawn, picked my mom up, and brought her into the pre-surgery prep wing. The entire morning was ramping up to be pretty anticlimactic overall: my sister and I were treated to an hour and a half of sitting in the waiting room with mom, without mom, with paperwork, without anything to do except browse reddit and play mobile apps.

Finally, the monotony broke: a nurse at the hospital found us in the waiting room and invited us to come back to say goodbye before my mom went under!

She led us back to our Mom’s room and the other pre-op nurses ran to find us a couple chairs in the otherwise-empty room. The first nurse jovially chit-chatted with us, and then proceeded to shove the most massive catheter into my mother’s forearm. No warning.

As possibly the most squeamish person alive, it only took about 1.5 seconds for me to hit the floor.

I woke up on the floor next to my mother’s pre-op bed.  Through the forest of swarming nurses’ appendages, I could just barely see her over the edge of the bed but she kept looking away from me.  The nurses wheeled me away on a stretcher to the emergency room, as I deliriously screamed how sorry I was… over and over and over.  At the time, I was terrified that my accident had stressed her out and caused her to undergo life-threatening surgery in a poor physical and mental state.

My sister stayed behind with our mom until she was wheeled into surgery, and then Sara joined me in the ER: laughingly, she reassured me that our mom was on so much morphine that she probably didn’t realize I was gone.  I was glad to know I wasn’t going to be the cause of her hypothetical death, but seriously distraught that I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye.  My mother was unconscious for the next 26 hours: I alternated between pacing the waiting room with tears in my eyes and curling up in an exhausted heap on the floor, as her initial surgery dragged to an interminable seven hours.  The post-op offered no respite, as it devolved into eight hours of platelets platelets more platelets until I made the decision to sign the authorization papers for an emergency find-the-leaking-hole-in-her-heart surgery.

She made it through the night.  A week later, she made it home.  She was alive, and she was healthy.  Everything was finally okay.

It was at this point when I stopped focusing all my energy on my mom and started considering my bank account.  I entered this optimistic state of denial: the hospital wouldn’t possibly send me a bill for an ER visit they caused themselves! They know the nurse brought me to an off-limits area. I am definitely not liable for this.

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when the bill finally materialized in my mailbox: approximately $3000 for the hospital, $300 for the doctor, and $200 for various labs and tests. As a recent college grad sans-benefits, my measly $100-bucks-a-month health insurance wasn’t doing me any favors.  My friends and family encouraged me to pursue litigation. So, I scoured the firms in my area, called some malpractice numbers, and waited for someone to deliver me from this obviously unfair burden. I’m definitely not a litigiously minded individual, but I just couldn’t afford that bill. So I waited. And waited. No one was calling me back.

Finally, a lawyer took pity on me. Not that he swooped in and won my case: he took just enough pity on me to spend 20 minutes explaining why the legal system was not on my side, and explained my alternative options. After drowning in anxiety for two weeks, the dose of transparency was a very welcome breath of fresh air.

What he explained was that, thankfully, the half-inch lightning-bolt scar newly gracing my browline could not be considered “disfigurement.” That was the good news. The bad news was that, without disfigurement, there was no way that I would be awarded a settlement large enough for a lawyer’s cut to be worth his or her time (not including the thousands it would cost to hire an expert witness to testify about nurses’ standard of care). The numbers simply didn’t crunch.

He did encourage me to keep looking for lawyers. My friends even suggested finding a pro bono lawyer just to get the bill waived. Or maybe someone appointed to me through my local community. But by this point, I was so overwhelmed and disheartened, I just couldn’t bother. In the space of two weeks, I received three or four new copies of my bill. You know: just in case I had forgotten. Thanks, hospital!

With yet more encouragement from friends and family, I looked into the last-ditch attempt the lawyer had suggested on the phone—only to be used if I could not find any other legal representation. I called the hospital’s main line and asked for the Risk Management department.  This is how I met Tim.

Tim was so kind… so sympathetic… so absolutely impotent.  For three weeks, I was talking with Tim every few days or so, with him updating my files and forwarding my messages to the Billing office, awaiting the verdict that never seemed to come.  Finally, frustrated, but not wanting to sacrifice the “pity me” persona that I’d developed with Tim, I asked if perhaps I could call this mysterious Beatrix woman from Billing who never seemed to receive Tim’s messages on my behalf.

Magically, everything changed.

Later that afternoon, Beatrix called me.  Something, something, something, no indication of malpractice in my records, something, something, 20% discount.  “Hold up,” I said.  “I appreciate any discount possible… But, obviously there is no indication of malpractice in my records: my doctors in the ER were wonderful.  You know it was my mother’s nurse who did this to me, right?”

Nope, she had no idea.  Thanks for passing along the story, Tim.

My BFF from Billing called me back the very next morning: the hospital wasn’t admitting fault, but Beatrix verbally tiptoed her way through an explanation that the hospital bill would be waived ($0 owed), the physician bill would be discounted 50% ($150 owed), and the lab costs were the only things I had to pay in full ($200 owed).

In the end, the check I wrote was only 10% of the cost of my original bill (not including the price of the tears, sweat, and undiluted stress that emanated from me during those months).  But finally, there were no more Tims to fight, no more Beatrixes to convince.  And my faith in the goodness of human nature was not completely destroyed.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Micromanaging My Engagement

I’ve never believed that real proposals are like the ones in the movies.  Raise your hand if Billy Idol helped your significant other propose to you. See? That like hardly ever happens.

It’s all about what fits you best as a couple.  Personally, I’m on the practical side.  My fiancé and I discussed it beforehand, came to a mutual decision, and agreed that we wanted to get married.  I wasn’t caught off-guard with crowds of strangers and loud megaphones like those viral videos you see these days—knowing that the question was coming was a mixture of anticipation and excitement, culminating in a night that was sweet and relaxed and perfect for us.

When my then-boyfriend popped the question to me, it had been a while in the making. I had already known him for ten years (hel-lo, middle school), and we had been dating for five. But we were (and are) young: so how did we know? How could I be sure he was good for me? How could he know that I would want to marry him? How certain were we that we would be compatible forever?

Seventeen-year-old me thought I would never get married. My parents finally ended their unhappy marriage in an angry, years-long divorce when I was 12. In the years that followed, my significant others in high school simply reinforced my belief that committed relationships were a melange of manipulation and selfishness—the behavior that I had seen in my dad for years.  To me, “compatibility” was a temporary mode: a person could fill a place in your heart for a little over a year and, when the laughing inevitably stopped, it was time to move on.

What changed my mind? Honestly, I have no clue.  I dated Mike for three years and realized at some point that I didn’t want to ever let him go.  Gradually, we started talking what the future held for us (a somewhat inevitable conversation, considering we were in college preparing for that future).  We planned our careers, talked about how we both loved our city, dreamed about vacations and whether either of us would ever be able to afford a house in the insanely expensive Silicon Valley.  And those conversations occasionally, jokingly, included one another.

Our joking continued for over a year—laughing about how our hypothetical children would be insanely smart but with horrible unibrows (from both of us), horrible teeth (from both of us), horrible eyesight (from me), and horrible scoliosis (from him).  Those poor things.

And then, at some point, I started wondering.  Graduation inched closer, and as a forward-thinker I had to know whether or not to plan to keep him in my life.  I decided I didn’t want to ever lose him, but guys get freaked out by commitment, right?  I broached the subject a few times (with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop): “So, uh, I love you a lot and stuff.  Do you think we could, like, be happy forever?”  Somewhat infuriatingly, I couldn’t tell if Mike was catching my hint: his adorable, easy-going nature led to the ever-so-helpful responses such as “Of course, darling, I will love you forever!”  I had no idea if he was engaging in stereotypical romantic hyperbole, or if he actually was down with this whole marriage thing.

Today, I can’t recall exactly how I first introduced the M-word, but I do remember a period of a few months where I alternated between swells of blissful happiness and deflating dread that I was “pushing him” toward an engagement because “men are afraid of commitment” so obviously he’s just saying these wonderful things to “appease me.”  (I’m obviously neurotic.)  It only took Mike reassuring me approximately fifty thousand times before I started to believe that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

These now-serious conversations sweetened into sappy heart-to-hearts and continued for almost a year, until the practical side of my brain just couldn’t take it anymore.  I pulled up Google Calendar and we blocked out a general plan: my graduation in spring 2012, a summer engagement, his fall graduation, next year’s wedding, some crappy entry-level jobs, living abroad in 2014, then coming home and getting real jobs.  It was getting real, you guys.

In the end, the plan didn’t work out.  Mike’s counselors had steered him wrong and he ended up taking summer courses in order to avoid delaying graduation: this caused a very stressful summer where he was too overloaded to plan a proposal.  In the meantime, I landed an actual, real job right off the bat, thus ruining our plans of living abroad anytime soon (oops).

After Mike finished school in fall 2012, I sat him down, opened up gCal, and we tried to plan our lives again.  The year abroad was put on indefinite hiatus, and the proposal was moved to the following spring so that Mike could focus on training at his new job.  But after waiting a couple months into 2013, I got impatient and finally just picked the day for him to propose: our five-year anniversary.

It was nothing like the movies.  While that’s perfect for some, it would have been all wrong for us.  We’re of a practical ilk, and that works well for us.  When the chosen day rolled around, I knowingly let Mike drag me around to all the spots that meant so much to us: cavorting around all day at the museum we love to visit, changing into fancy clothes at the hotel where we had stayed when I got home after my semester abroad, indulging in a champagne dinner at the restaurant from our third anniversary.

And when stage fright caused him to forget everything he had planned on saying, I laughed, wiped the tears from my eyes, said yes and kissed him.

Photo by Sara Slattery

The Job I Love & the Job I Lust

I love my 8-to-5. Seriously! I work at one of the coolest companies in California, and my coworkers are hilarious, genuine, brilliant people. I’ve been nothing short than excited and thrilled to be going steady with my job (even though it didn’t get me flowers or chocolate on our recent anniversary). I can’t believe how lucky I am to be 23 and recently graduated with such a great place to work every weekday.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

But I’m having an affair on the side.

It started with wandering eyes; a dangling participle would catch my gaze and pique my interest, a misplaced comma could so easily distract and entice me. Editing has always been my passion and, without my fix, I start to go into withdrawal. My obsession with grammar was born from my love of organization, mathematics, and rules—the sheer act of breaking down something as complex and nebulous as language and literature practically makes my mouth water. It’s like math with words!

When I started my day job, however, I was not tasked with meticulously grooming the text in a document but rather shaping its look and feel instead. This focus on document design has taught me so much in the areas of layout and graphic design (an area I’d previously only dabbled in, buried somewhere in an elective I took for my degree). But while my design skills flourished, my editing chops lagged, and I found myself missing semicolons and subordinate clauses.

And then I found the UNDERenlightened.

Our editor-in-chief, Anastasia, recently published an article chronicling our pitfalls and successes since we started operating UE a year ago. She was a complete stranger to me back then: a friend-of-a-friend who was cashing in enough favors to get an idea off the ground. I emailed her and set up a phone interview, eventually signing away my evenings and weekends in order to get a hit of that sweet, sweet grammar.

My original commitment of editing one article a week instantly exploded when I stepped up to managing editor at the beginning of this year. Our editing team dwindled to two: I edited every article twice, with Anastasia doing a final read before posting. Thankfully, our staff is expanding once again (though we always love more help).

It’s a lot of work and even more time, but teaching myself the professional skills that I want is a priceless opportunity. I’ve maintained and improved my concrete skills: I haven’t forgotten the important bits from my grammar courses though I still have my textbooks handy (I wish the same could be said for my French minor), I’m developing my ability to edit for tone and content, and Anastasia has guilted me into writing more articles than I ever would have volunteered. I’ve also discovered some invaluable resources: for example, the Chicago Manual of Style allows a free trial, which is quote/unquote unlimited (as long as you don’t mind making tons of fake email addresses—I’ll pay for a real subscription eventually, I swear!).

When my friends complain about their struggle to find fulfillment at work, I ask them why they don’t just make opportunity for themselves. However, I realize how tough that can be. I have to remind myself that my schedule is not for everyone: it is literally a job on top of a job. But if you’re committed to learning a new craft, I believe that you will make the time, even if you’re not a self-admitted workaholic like I am.

I’m incredibly lucky to have this outlet for my passions. I have the benefit of a day job that supports me enough to devote my evenings and weekends to editing. I even have family, friends, and strangers on the Internet who help this blog run, allowing me to fulfill my personal interests.

For now, I get to keep both the job I lust and the job I love. It’s exasperating sometimes, but it leaves me energized and optimistic for the future. I am confident that I can sow the seeds of personal development now, and reap the rewards of a grammar-filled 8-to-5 at a great company later.

A Newb at NERF

“Hey, you wanna go kill some zombies?”

Excuse me, what?

This über nerdy and physically intense activity is called a NERF war, and I have only recently stumbled across its thriving subculture in my neighborhood.  In Humans vs. Zombies you split into two teams: a team of Humans and a team of Zombies.  The zombies’ mission is to tag the humans and turn them into zombies; the humans’ only chance at “survival” is to mow down as many zombies as possible with NERF darts and get to a safe zone.

I’m a “newb” at NERF, but my fiancé and I have a growing arsenal of NERF automatics, rifles, pistols, and melee weapons that is slowing taking over our limited closet space.  It’s a never-ending stream of Facebook event invites and strangers geeking out online over NERF’s latest gun releases (“I just got the RapidStrike!  You can borrow it next round”).

Don’t Go Alone: Equipment

Photo by Meggyn Watkins

NERF veterans are very welcoming to newbs, and are also typically very trusting with their equipment.  My roommate goes to more NERF events than my fiancé and I do, but he doesn’t own a single gun.  Vets love to share their guns and strategy, huddling up into bands-o’-brothers of mixed experience to fight back the zombie horde.

My first Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ) game was at San Francisco State University with a high school friend who loaded me up with a rifle to carry and as many baby pistols as I could fit in my (super-trendy) cargo pants.  After loading up with darts (specially marked to distinguish from everyone else’s), all I needed was a bandolier of backup dart cartridges and a bandana around my arm (to distinguish me as Human)—I was good to go!

In that first game, there were a couple things I learned.  First of all, no matter how uniquely you mark your darts, you will not get them all back.  Just resign yourself to that fact from the get-go.  Though your opponents are often incentivized to pick them up (either to take them out of the game or to reuse them against you), some will get lost in the arena and some will be picked up but never returned to you.  Organized games usually have a dart box where you can at least take home a portion of the darts you contributed.

Another lesson for a newb is to moderate the amount of gear you carry.  Running from zombies gets tricky if you’re holding onto three pistols to keep them from falling out your pockets and a bandolier of ammo is weighing you down.  Now, I pretty much only carry my rifle (on a shoestring around my neck in case I need to free my hands fast), with one small pistol.  I’m no good at melée, so I don’t bother touting around a foam sword as my fiancé prefers.  I’m also not the best shot, so I’m fairly conservative with my darts.  This means that I don’t even have to carry more than one backup cartridge, because I can refill between rounds before I run out of ammo.

Last lesson learned: don’t be afraid to ask questions!  Especially back at your start point before the game or between rounds, veterans have a bunch of advice to share.  One lady showed me how to duct tape two 18-dart cartridges together for quick reload.  A zombie guy helped me retie my bandana so it wouldn’t keep falling down when running.  Everyone’s there to have a great time and shoot each other with little foam darts: they’ll help you out!

Veteran players usually also have the most visually impressive guns.  Modifying is huge in the NERF community, and it’s not uncommon to find a vet wielding a behemoth double semi-automatic with a shotgun zip-tied underneath!  The versatility of NERF’s stocks and barrels allow for some easy basic modifications, and it’s also quite simple to throw in some overvolted batteries or custom-tension springs to get your NERF darts flying faster and farther.  Some of the more artsy types will even paint and weather their guns for a kickass realistic look.

Competition: Capture the Flag

Not all NERF events are all-day HvZ games.  There are tons of different, classic competition games, just like in paintball and airsoft.  Most are competitive team games: VIP (protecting the president), King of the Hill (protecting a defensive zone), or Capture the Flag (invading the opponents’ base); however, there’s always Deathmatch (individual elimination games) to spice things up a bit and destroy all friendships, Hunger Games style.

The closest NERF organization (B.U.R.N.) to me plays a lot of Capture the Flag tournaments, with rounds of teams competing.  As a newb, I really enjoy these for practice: team games normally include a spawn point, so getting shot just means that I have to run back to a spawn point and count to ten, rather than in HvZ where “dying” involves hanging up my rifle for the rest of the game and playing as a zombie.

Survival of the Fittest: Humans vs. Zombies

HvZ games typically start out with a group of dedicated zombies, decked out in fake blood, decomposing makeup and running shoes.  Zombies don’t carry guns, but must instead be able to use their numbers to overwhelm and two-hand touch to infect humans.  The humans are released first into the arena to spread out, camp up, and get started on their mission.  Missions are typically survival-related, such as finding and moving “food” (a wrapped bundle or cardboard box) from the arena into a human safe zone.  Sometimes, the missions are as unstructured as “create and defend a base.”

My first HvZ game had a twist: there were 20 antidotes and 10 passports.  Not only did humans have to find the little index cards taped around campus, but they also had to compete for them!  Humans without antidotes at the end of round one would die and become zombies, and those without passports at the end of round two would not make it off the infected island.  This was a pretty harsh start for a newb like me when my little merry band was mowed down with darts in round one by a group of fellow humans, as we ran past their safe zone in an escape attempt from the zombie horde.  Pretty sucky!

Yet, being a zombie isn’t half bad!  Yeah, you have to put your gun away, but then the pressure of surviving isn’t constantly freaking you out, and the arena basically becomes a giant playground game of tag.  If you’re shot as a zombie, your game rules will either require you to walk out of sight (behind a corner or tree) or just crouch down where you are and then count to the predetermined wait time.  Then you’re quickly back in the game, hunting down those delicious, delicious brains.

NERF games are constantly being moderated by very dedicated groups!  The organizers are usually college kids, and they appreciate and respond to feedback from NERF enthusiasts.  The mods do a great job of participating and keeping everyone honest during the game.  They also keep the community up-to-date with events and news, typically via Facebook or their own websites.

Put Your Goddamn Shoes Back On

Every summer, hundreds take to the parks and beaches, ditch their shoes, wiggle their toes in the grass and the sand—and with every step, I cringe.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Just in case you were raised by wolves, allow me to educate you: you need to wear your goddamn shoes. You should not run about willy-nilly in public places like beaches, forests, or parks without wearing some protection! I say this from personal experiencing the perils of ignoring common sense and my mother’s advice (but more on that later).

Cuts, Stings, Bites

There is a whole world of things that typically pass beneath your soles with no event: bent nails, flattened snails, and even those little pokey balls of death. But without shoes, the ick has no sympathy for your feet.

On the beach, sea glass is lovely stuff—smooth, pastel, beautiful. But do you know how it got that way? By rolling around, broken, in the water or through the sand for quite some time. And when you’re just walking innocently along the waterline, that newly donated (read: littered) glass will take no mercy on your unshod feet. Since water shoes are some of the dorkiest things to hit department stores since fanny packs, I typically go with some ol’ fashioned flip flops. They protect my feet from the bad stuff, while still allowing me to enjoy the water and sand.

Walking on soil in forests or fields can also expose you to a much livelier problem: hookworms. If you step on hookworm larvae, they can enter your body through your skin, causing rashes, allergic reactions, and infections. The hookworms will take up shop in your intestine, and requires some seriously nasty meds to flush out. What were you thinking, taking off your hiking boots like that?!

Last but not least, bees reign supreme as that minor annoyance that will completely ruin your picnic (and discomfort you for the next two weeks). Even with the generous assumption that you have been blessed without a bee allergy, tromping across a grassy field has never inspired as much regret as that moment when bee stinger meets squishy inter-toe flesh. If only you had slipped on some tennis shoes…

Broken Bones

So what makes me so passionate about pedal protection? Running around barefoot landed me with four broken bones.

Once upon a time, I attended a lovely beginning-of-summer BBQ, pumped to catch some rays and eat some burgers. Obviously, I decked myself in the quintessential California summer uniform: jean shorts, a tank top, and my comfiest sandals. After our second round of gooey, semi-charcoal’d cheeseburgers with a side of sour-cream-and-onion Lays, one of my compatriots whipped out a disc and challenged us all to a cut-throat game of Ultimate Frisbee.

Game on!

Of course, my similarly shod friends and I chucked off our sandals and commandeered the largest patch of grass we could: running, laughing, overthrowing the Frisbee.

My team—currently in the lead—was just about to thump our opponents with yet another landmark goal, when a defenseman ran up to block my catch. I turned, trying to thwart his attempt, and three of my toes twisted in the grass and folded under my foot. As my weight shifted onto my toes, they broke, and I fell to the ground. Instinctively, I brought up my forearm to protect myself—but instead of my arm breaking my fall, my fall broke my wrist.

It took all of my summer break for my wrist to heal, overlapping with a vacation to New York (in which I schlepped around in a bootie and sling and had to explain the game of Ultimate Frisbee to every single New Yorker in town) and my university orientation days (when I broke down in tears because I couldn’t write all the information being thrown at me).

So listen up, kids. You do not want to deal with all that. Put on your damn shoes.

Grammar 101

The first step in understanding grammar is realizing punctuation does not make English work all by itself. Clarity comes from the structure of the sentence; punctuation just acts as the signage to make the roadway safer. To know where to put all those yield signs and stop lights, one must first understand how to break down a sentence.

Sentence Structure

We’ve all heard the words noun, verb, adjective, and object. But you may not have spared a thought for your sentence structure in over a decade!

Sentence structure centers on the action, just like a novel centers on the climax. If you can locate the verb (the action) of the sentence, you’re doing pretty well:

The highly sophisticated man hesitated to buy more champagne.

Wait, “hesitated” is a verb, but isn’t “to buy” also a verb? True, but since “to buy” is does not agree with the subject, we know it’s not the main action verb of the sentence. “Buying” is not what happened; what happened was the man “hesitating.”

In this example, “to buy” is a noun (the object of the sentence) and “to buy more champagne” is the full noun phrase. “Man” is also a noun in the full noun phrase, “the highly sophisticated man.”

A full noun phrase includes smaller units (articles, like “the,” and adjectives, like “highly sophisticated”). “Highly sophisticated” is a compound adjective composed of an adverb and an adjective. Many different combinations exist for compound adjectives; to better understand them we need to talk a bit about hyphens.

Hyphens

Hyphens are great for connecting words to achieve more precise meanings:

the “miniature dog competition” or

the “miniature-dog competition”

In the first example, we have a miniature competition for dogs; in the second, we have a competition for miniature dogs. The hyphen tells us that “miniature” modifies “dog,” making a compound adjective that modifies “competition.”

Compound adjectives come in different combinations that require hyphens, and here are just a few examples:

  • Adverb & Adjective (requires a hyphen, unless ending in –ly): well-known businesswoman or highly sophisticated man
  • Noun & Adjective (requires a hyphen): waste-free container or wild-goose chase
  • Noun & Noun (requires a hyphen): Blue-green eyes or Salt-and-pepper hair
  • Noun & Verb (requires a hyphen): Mind-blowing hypothesis

En-Dashes vs. Em-Dashes

En-dashes (–) work as super-duper hyphens: they can create compound adjectives by connecting other compounds, dates, times, etc.:

  • White House–like mansion
  • United Kingdom–United States relations
  • 1856–1943
  • 7:30–8:45

However, unlike hyphens and en-dashes, em-dashes () work to connect parts of a sentence instead of words.  Em-dashes are one of three punctuation options for parentheticals: commas, em-dashes, and parentheses. (More on parentheticals below.)

Visually these dashes can be deceiving but they are actually each different lengths. The hyphen is a short dash, while the en-dash is the length of a capital N and the em-dash is the length of a capital M. Since typewriters wrote in a monospaced typeface (like the font “Courier”), en-dashes and em-dashes were mimicked by using two hyphens in a row. Because of this tradition of typing, word processors on computers (like Microsoft Word) will translate two hyphens and automatically replace them with the en-dash and em-dash characters.

  • Between two words, type a space, two hyphens, and a space to create an en-dash
  • Between two words, type two hyphens without spaces to create an em-dash

Your word processor will replace the punctuation as you continue typing your sentence.

Parentheticals (Parentheses vs. Commas vs. Em-Dashes)

Parentheticals in sentences are like asides in a play: they’re inserted when you have extra information that the audience needs, even though the information doesn’t explicitly affect the action.

In the examples below, the sentence still centers on the action: what is being done (“hesitating to buy champagne”) and who is doing it (“the highly sophisticated man”).  All other information is extraneous, and it should be set apart in parentheticals.

The three types of parenthetical punctuation determine whether your actors will whisper, speak, or shout the aside.

Parentheses: “whispering,” or suppressing the information.

The highly sophisticated man hesitated to buy more champagne (even though it was on sale).

Commas: “speaking,” or providing no emphasis on the information.

The highly sophisticated man, because it was an unfamiliar brand, hesitated to buy more champagne.

Em-dashes: “shouting,” or drawing attention to the information.

The highly sophisticated man—who recently lost his fortune—hesitated to buy more champagne.

But what happens if we relocate the parenthetical in the second example?

The highly sophisticated man hesitated to buy more champagne, because it was an unfamiliar brand.

Because it was an unfamiliar brand, the highly sophisticated man hesitated to buy more champagne.

Oh, no!  “Because” at the beginning of a sentence!? Don’t worry: it’s okay! The entire parenthetical is acting as an introductory phrase, which is totally legit. (I promise that your elementary school teacher isn’t going to come after you in your sleep tonight.) Notice that there is only one comma in each of these sentences. This is because commas and en-dashes do not need to come in pairs the way parentheses do: think of them like bookends, which can hold up a stack of books against a wall to the left or right.

Terminal Punctuation in Parentheticals

One final punctuation tip: terminal punctuation (periods, exclamation points, and question marks) sometimes go within parentheses and sometimes don’t. So how do you know where to put them?

A terminal punctuation mark will go on the outside when it applies to a larger sentence, but when an entire sentence is enclosed in parentheses, the punctuation will stay with its sentence.

An easy way to figure it out is to locate your verb: if the verb is inside, so is the period; if the verb is outside, the period is too.

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Photo by Meaghan Morrison