Readability and Syntax

Readers really do need some level of awareness of syntax to get themselves out of fixes when things aren’t clicking, moments when sense-making is disrupted, confusing, disturbing our customary fluency and progress. But I’m not sure how often or how deeply typical readers make full use of this cueing system. Part of it is the bad rap grammar instruction out of context has gotten in research on composition. Nowadays it’s illegal to teach syntax as a cueing system in reading. Paradoxically, especially for microprocessing during comprehension, syntax can often be the last line of defense between helplessness and productivity during confusion.

I’m fully aware that not a lot of monolingual English readers on the streets of America have a conscious understanding of syntax, and those who do tend to be English majors. Why should the typical person spend time studying syntax? Diagramming sentences? Really? I’m comfortable saying that the same is true of grapho-phonics. One could live a rich and full life knowing nothing of the schwa, not to mention a diphthong. Semantics is the big ticket item. Vocabulary and meaning—we work hard to get to the meat, the knowledge, the science, the literature.

It’s pretty much settled. Teaching grammar in isolation doesn’t improve anyone’s writing. Teaching it gradually, methodically, and quickly at the point of need during an authentic writing project using the language of the writer transfers to other contexts. Even when situated in writing as a discipline, teaching “grammar” often happens in the context of conventions, usage, and editing to fix substandard expressions, not meaning and audience comprehension. Canned, decontextualized grammar exercises where students identify errors in grammar may increase a feeling of doing what’s right and necessary, eating your broccoli, even through the groans and disengagement.

One point to ponder: Syntax is to reading and writing as plumbing is to a building. In my view, specialists called plumbers are who to call when you have a problem, but knowing where to go and how to turn off the valve on the supply line coming into the house from the street when a bathtub is backing up is good. The early reading researchers who turned to syntax as one of two linguistic systems to measure the readability of a passage weren’t shooting in the dark. Syntax is critical in readability. Outlawing it during early reading instruction is counterproductive.

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Here are the two sentences from the most recent survey repeated for efficiency. I’m going to try to provide some feedback to evoke more responses from any of you still sitting on the fence re: chiming in.

Sentence 1: "Sunlight, piercing through the chaotic morning clouds—unexpected, laughter bubbles up, as if from nowhere, and the day, suddenly, isn't so daunting anymore."

Sentence 2: “In the hushed hallways of the once jubilant house, where memories, layered like dust on old photographs, hint at secrets too heavy for the heart to hold, shadows grow longer with each passing hour."

Here is an example response to question #1 on the Mood and Readability Survey: Which sentence poses fewer problems for you in terms of grasping the mood? Please discuss your thought process in making this assessment.

“It’s really hard to say, but I’ll go with number two- it feels like it gets to expressing the melancholy right away in using the adjective phrase ‘once jubilant’; the first sentence waits until the end to express joy. Also, the use of pictures made it harder for me to evaluate the sentences, since they made the mood so immediate.”

Comment: I infer that the opening clause of this survey response indicates that this reader either saw few ‘problems’ with either sentence or the sentences were equally weighted on the scale of problems. When I place the clause “it’s really hard to say” adjacent to the clause “the use of the picture made it harder,” I infer that the composition of the task itself created an obstacle. The instruction states “Which sentence” irrespective of the pictures, but the competition between data sources made a big difference. I’m curious about this effect since a huge part of the controversy in the Science of Reading is the hiding of pictures as an aid to comprehension. What do you think? Do pictures interfere with reading metalinguistically?

The respondent produces a strong argument grounded in syntax which explains clearly why sentence two poses fewer problems for them (is easier to read for mood) than sentence one. The adjective phrase modifies the logical if not syntactic subject “house” presented early in the sentence and shades the content to come in melancholy. Since the subject is shaded from the beginning, grasping the mood is much less of a problem than it is in the first sentence where placement of the adjectival “less daunting” in relation to both the logical and syntactic subject “day” appears in a late syntactic slot. Readers have no foreknowledge of the dominant mood in sentence 1 (except from the picture). Moreover, the subject of the first full clause (“the day”) is far more abstract than the subject of the second (“the house”). So reading the first sentence means postponing a decision about the mood until more information is processed. That poses a reading problem calling for metacognitive adjustment.

The final assessment from this respondent is that despite the pictures, which influenced the evocation of mood, sentence two is easier from a readability standpoint even though it is longer. Note that this final assessment is not the “right” assessment. The right assessment is being clear about and true to yourself.

Here is question 2 on the survey and the response from the same reader: Which sentence used syntax that supported the expression of mood? What problems did the sentence with less syntactic support for mood present?

Comment: That rhythmic quality is largely a function of syntax. In fact, this style of sentence even has a name: a cumulative sentence. Traditionally, rhetoricians employ this sentence scheme to establish a flow. The first sentence indeed remains ambiguous; double meanings are often the product of syntax rather than semantics, and ambiguity presents a big problem for readability.

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Here is an interesting comment from a different responder regarding the second survey question. The contrast with the first respondent is fascinating. How much of readability is subjective, depending on the reader? Is readability, like meaning, a “text potential” rather than an objective fact? What does it mean to quantify a potential. A lightbulb has varying units of wattage? Is a text like a lightbulb?

I provided Dalle-3 with this final response, plodding down steps. The bot “read” it and translated it into this image:

“The second sentence feels like plodding down steps, a sensation that can certainly add to the mood. However, I found it choppy and uninteresting. However, there were phrases in that sentence that made me want to try rewriting it as a free verse poem. In the first sentence, I feel as though there should be a period after unexpected, keeping the dash to create a pregnant pause. Turning it into two sentences seems to be the wiser choice, clearly setting up the mood.”

Here is an image drawn from the first respondent on this point:

“Again, the second sentence was better supported- there is even some rhythmic quality to how it progresses. The first sentence remains ambiguous a bit longer.”