What do the Marketing Director at the Rome Tourist Office, author of West with the Night Beryl Markham, and one of Prince William’s many unauthorized biographers have in common? Probably nothing. But if we had to guess, which ones would it be?
1. they all start the day with a bowl of Grape Nuts, Breakfast of Writers;
2. they all own designer cockerpoodles;
3. they all speak Pig Latin;
4. they all attended the Itwashewho Academy of Writing.
Time's up. The answers? Maybe #1, but I’m not sure about the biographer; no to #2, not in Italy or Africa; #3 is a given, what with Pig Latin now the universal language for all international treaties and contracts; and #4? Definitely. We have abundant evidence that all three attended the Itwashewho Academy.
At the academy, instructors teach students to begin each story with, “It was on a dark and stormy night that Lord Throckmorton padded the lonely halls of the castle in his stocking feet.” And end each story with, “It was from then on that they lived fairly happily ever after.” The academy is in London, just off Bond Street, next to that little shop with all the multi-colored macarons in the window.
Instructors at the academy, known locally as “The ‘It’ School,” pound into their students’ skulls how to lavish sentences with openings like:
It should be noted that . . . .
It will be remembered that . . . .
It must be said that . . . .
It is axiomatic that . . . .
and other word tripe. (See Tip: “The Windup Before the Pitch.”) (They’re all part of the WordRake patents, and the WordRake software will edit hundreds of these for you.)
Itwashewho instructors also teach their students to vary sentences by sometimes opening with a slightly different pattern, where we can delete only some of the words. Remember: little good happens between an it and a that or a who or a when.
Let's look at the evidence to support #4:
The Marketing Director at the Rome Tourist Office. After struggling to understand the girls in seventh grade who spoke conversational Pig Latin, I am ultra sensitive to anyone coming new to the English language. But I still cannot understand how anyone, especially in marketing, could consistently write:
It was Florence that Michelangelo always called his home. It was Rome however, that bent his will to create for the Eternal City the most important collection of work by any genius! [Then flip the first sentence: Michelangelo always called Florence his home.
It was Bramante (1444 –1514) who convinced Julius II to engage Michelangelo as a painter and to have him repair and decorate the vault of the Sistine Chapel.
It was early in the sculpting of the tomb that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel masterpiece was painted. [To remove the passive voice, flip this one, too: Early in the sculpting of the tomb, Michelangelo painted his Sistine Chapel masterpiece.] (See Tip: “Boring Is As Boring Writes.”)
