Month: May 2021

A guide to gerunds

Grammar is confusing. That was my first thought in my editing class at university, and now it’s pretty much my mantra.

Every editing class I attended was like unlearning all the things I learnt at school – things that I thought were grammatical rules and if I broke them the grammar police would lock me up for treason. I learnt that you don’t always have to say my friend and I, contrary to what my primary school teachers taught me. Depending on the sentence, my friend and me is acceptable too. I learnt that you can split an infinitive (sorry, Strunk and White). And that the world won’t explode if you end a sentence with a preposition. Anyway, we’ve got things to get on with. (See what I did there?)

Today I wanted to write about gerunds. Specifically, using possessives with gerunds. Before I started my degree in professional writing and editing, I had no idea what a gerund was.

Here’s how Grammar Girl describes them:

It’s a verb form that resembles an adjective or adverb but is actually a noun. In other words, it’s a noun that’s trying to trick you into thinking it’s a verb.

You can usually spot these cheeky gerunds by looking for words ending in -ing. All gerunds end in -ing, but not every -ing word you see is a gerund. Sometimes, an -ing word is a participle instead. Ah, grammar, you’re a cruel mistress.

So, how do we spot gerunds?

I like to think of a verb going to a costume party, dressing up as a noun. Let’s have a look at an example:

I like swimming.

I am swimming away from the shark.

In the first example, ‘swimming’ is acting as a noun. Gerund!

In the second, ‘swimming’ is still a part of the verb. It helps to complete the action.

A good tactic to use is the noun test. If you can swap out the verb-noun imposter for a regular noun, it’s a gerund or a gerund phrase. Let’s try it with the examples above, using the noun ‘pants’:

I like pants.

I am pants away from the shark.

Okay, great. Gerunds. Got it.

Now, what about the rule on using a possessive with a gerund? To simplify it: nouns often naturally team with possessives. Whenever we mean ‘the x of y’, we can naturally rephrase that as possessive: ‘y’s x’.

I admire the cat of my sister.

I admire my sister’s cat.

The same goes for gerunds.

I admire the singing of my sister.

I admire my sister’s singing.

‘Singing’ is being used as a noun here. It’s a gerund, and it belongs to ‘my sister’ – so we use a possessive to indicate this. I feel it’s necessary to mention here that this is all down to style. Sometimes you’ll see a gerund without a possessive:

1. I’m tired of my sister’s swimming.
2. I’m tired of my sister swimming.

The second example isn’t wrong, and it certainly has its use. As the world moves to favour more colloquial language, the second example pops up more and more often. So please, don’t go correcting people’s gerunds on Facebook. Still, it’s good to be aware of this stuff so you can make choices in your writing. Want to write a fancy, primp and proper sounding character? You could always throw a few possessive gerunds in their dialogue for some extra spice. If you’re writing a YA novel, don’t be afraid to throw those possessives to the wind.

To end my grammar lesson, I’d like to use my favourite example of a man who knows his possessive + gerund equation better than us all.

Yep, Fagin from Oliver Twist.

There’s a scene where Fagin instructs Oliver to pick a handkerchief from his pocket using his deft little fingers. Right before launching into song, Fagin instructs him, ‘See if you can take it from me without my noticing.’

A lovely use of possessive with gerund. Perhaps Fagin should have become an editor. Oliver Twist would’ve been a very different story if Fagin ran a publishing house instead of a band of junior thieves.

Fagin after being interrupted editing some possessive gerund issues, probably. Source: BritishTheatre.com

Katrina Burge – Publishing Intern

The Rise of Audiobooks

Is listening to a book the same as reading it?

No, not quite.

Does it mean it hasn’t really been ‘read’?

No, I wouldn’t say that either.

I am one of 55 million who reportedly consume at least one audiobook a year. In fact, I listened to six. It’s an industry that, like it’s podcasting counterpart, has boomed in recent years, and rather more so since the global pandemic that kept a lot of us inside our homes for a large part of 2020.

Despite the growth of the industry and its rising popularity, enjoying audiobooks can be a polarising concept. The ‘great reading debate’, which discusses the legitimacy of consuming books in this format, argues that the two are not the same, often accompanied with disdain for the audio counterpart. This attitude is demonstrated mostly by ‘traditional’ print-copy readers, often the same individuals who take umbrage with the steady rise of the e-book and wish to preserve the original art of reading and storytelling.

If you really consider human history, the audiobook may be the closest to replicating the earliest forms of storytelling and have a rightful place in the book publishing market. Visual and oral storytelling were our first forms of communication, and tales of life, hunting and rituals were our first ‘stories’ back before 30,000 BC. It is hard to deliberate on the first ‘printed’ form of stories. When does a symbol more closely represent a written word than an image? The Egyptian hieroglyphs come to mind here. The distinction between depictions of stories in a physical form makes it hard to determine when the first story was written. What can be sure though, is that audio consumption is by no means a new concept in the experience of stories.

I get it, though. Listening to an audiobook is not for everyone. I had a great deal of trouble incorporating audiobooks to my metaphorical bookshelf. It’s not easy to hear the narration of a novel if you’re so used to your own internal vocalisation of text in your head. That, and the absence of a physical copy to hold and turn each page are not easy things to forget.

So what are the favourable factors then?

Today you would be hard-pressed to find a novel that doesn’t have an audiobook version, and for good reason. Audiobook production has seen a similar boom as e-books, increasingly expanding as we head in a more digitally orientated direction. Similarly, the extent of podcasts has been an encouraging factor for the audiobook industry as the popularity of the format increases.

There are many benefits to an audiobook that account for this emerging popularity. For one, the hands-free practicality of audio narration sings to my multi-tasking sensibility and I’m sure of that in others too. Stephen Fry has followed me around the house performing menial tasks such as the hanging up of laundry and dish washing, as well as down the street to the shops, and even – after a particularly engrossing cliff-hanger – accompanied me on a morning run when I just couldn’t put him down.

There have been times that my experience of a book has been greatly added to by narration and – dare I say it – even better than reading it in a physical form. The recognition of the popularity of this format has given way to the emergence of truly captivating voice actors to adapt to the platform. I grew up with the Harry Potter audiobooks on repeat so it’s no wonder that to this day Stephen Fry comes top of my list here. Additionally, collaborations between narrators to perform with a full cast of voices is not unheard of in ‘ensemble’ novels these days. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is an example of this, boasting the talents of Benjamin Bratt and Judy Greer among a well-rounded cast to bring an added element of personalisation to Reid’s characters.

You don’t have to take my word for it though, there are awards for this line of work. It’s called the Audie Awards and it is well worth checking out for some excellent recommendations from the past year if you wanted a guaranteed good place to start.

If memoirs or biographies are your thing then I can’t recommend considering the audiobook format more. Non-fiction and autobiographies lend themselves well to this medium. More often than not, the narration is provided by the author in these cases. After all, who better to read A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough to you than the man himself?

Audiobooks may not appeal to everyone, but they certainly have their place in the publishing industry, and rightfully so. It’s up to the individual to determine how they best and most enjoy consuming literature, whatever form that may take. Perhaps you need to hold a book in your hands and turn the page to really engage with it, perhaps you favour a more portable e-book and the flexibility that it provides. Maybe you have a headphone in your ear and prefer narration. I don’t think one experience is superior to another when it comes to appreciating the work of authors.

Even still, perhaps reading has become a hybrid mix of platforms. My bedside table could vouch for this: a Kindle, a tall stack of novels, and headphones dominating the surface space. I think variety is important and anything that keeps us reading and supporting the work of authors and publishers, well that’s even better.

Emma Fuelling – Publishing Intern