HI and thanks for reading this post.

I wrote a short piece on a pov character, John, who was attending a funeral; here is a line from it which i would love some advice on:

John heard the preacher's voice carried on the cold wind, but in a far off, disconnected manner from his own world.

I was trying to say that John felt disconnected, but was told that gramatically speaking the sentence states it is the preacher who is disconnected.

Can anyone please let me know the rule which applies to this. I picked up one of my harry potter books, but am non the wiser. Is it anything to do with nouns or pronouns, does the rule apply if the word before the comma is a pronoun.

Many thanks in advance. Richard.

Firstly this isn't the place for critique. It's best to join one of the writing forums and post a longer section of the story in there c.1000-2000 words. 
Secondly don't try to micromanage the prose. This is taken out of context from the rest of the passage. In context it may or may not work. 
Edited by NMott at 21:38:00 on 08 November 2014

Hi. Thanks for the reply.

I am not asking for a critique.

I am asking for help with grammer.

Any more input please.

Thank you. Richard.

Hi Richard,

Hello Richard.

The person who gave you that advice about your sentence was correct.

This is a Subject and Object issue. Find a good grammar book or site and look up those terms.

And T.Devil is right - if you want to keep a sentence more or less as you have written it, it's usually possible to re-phrase it slightly in order to avoid this sort of problem. My take on yours would be:

John heard the preacher's voice carried on the cold wind, but he heard it as if it were far away, and disconnected from his own world.

 

Hi. Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

I am trying to find the absolute grammatical english rule for this situation. I do appreciate being told to go away and read books but i have already done this and each has its own style,

The reason i feel it is the preacher who is disconnected, is that his name is the last one to be mentioned before the comma, this is what i was told, something about pre-tag, that he is the last one mentioned before the pre-tag, i think pre-tag means comma in this case.

Here is a quick example i have knocked up on the spur of the moment.

Tarzan saw Jane walking through the jungle.  "Hi. How are you doing?"

In this instance it is Jane who is talking as she is the last mentioned before the full stop. This should be correct, i think is is the rule i am looking for, but when i read books the rule is not being applied, some authors choose to apply it some don't.

@  Catkin   You have written: John heard the preacher's voice carried on the cold wind, but he heard it as if it were far away, and disconnected from his own world.

You are stating it is the preacher who feels disconnected, not John.

Many thanks. Richard.

 
Edited by richard123 at 06:14:00 on 10 November 2014

Hi Richard, and welcome to WW.  If in doubt, always make it clear by tweaking the sentence - after all, you're the one in control, and it's up to you to use punctuation to make sure the reader knows your intention. So in the latter example, even if what you say is right (I'm not an expert on grammar!), You would simply add 'said Jane' to it.
 

Tarzan saw Jane walking through the jungle. "Hi. How are you doing?"

This is a POV issue. You start by telling us Tarzan is watching Jane, i.e. we’re in Tarzan’s head/POV. Therefore, if you give us dialogue without an indication of who’s talking we will automatically assume you mean Tarzan.
 

John heard the preacher's voice carried on the cold wind, but he heard it as if it were far away, and disconnected from his own world.

 

You are stating it is the preacher who feels disconnected, not John.
 

Again, this is a POV issue. We are in John’s POV/head because it’s he who’s doing the listening, etc. Therefore, what follows is John’s interpretation of the preacher’s voice, and adding ‘he heard it as if’ simply emphasises this.

Yes, important to get grammar right but it’s not quite as simple as following the rules. What’s more important, I’d say, is to get inside of what feels right/wrong, then check it against the rules. You want to be writing from instinct as much as possible, not constantly worrying about the rules – but you need to know what they are.
 

Edited by Terry Edge at 12:58:00 on 11 November 2014

What books tell you about correct grammar can only ever take you so far in creative writing, partly because there are always more ways to write a sentence to make, or not-quite-make sense, than the books can cover, and also because in creative writing you're always trying to work with how real people say real things, which is often not correct in formal grammar....

John heard the preacher's voice carried on the cold wind, but in a far off, disconnected manner from his own world.

There are various different issues of grammar going on here, which I think is what's is resulting in confusion.

John + heard is the grammatical subject + main verb of the sentence, and it's perfectly good English to build a second clause in the same way, and leave out the  subject

Jane raised her eyes and then Jane raised Austria's flag
tidies down into:
Jane raised her eyes and then Austria's flag 

In grammar terms, the subject of the second clause is assumed to be the same as the subject of the first clause: John. And if the verb's the same, you can leave that out too. So, leaving out the extra bits for clarity's sake, we read it that way in something like this:

John heard the voice, but in a disconnected manner.
reads to us as meaning
John heard the voice, but [he heard it] in a disconnected manner.

So as you have it, what we read that you're saying is that it is his manner of hearing the voice which is far-off and disconnected: "in a disconnected manner" describes the way in which he hears it, not the quality of what he hears. And you don't mean that.

(For example, if I said: I told her I was dying, and she looked at me in a disconnected manner , it would mean that she was refusing to connect with me about my terminal illness: she was cutting herself off.)

 If you want to say that the voice seems far-off and disconnected from him, you need to make that second clause into something with its own subject and verb. For example:

John heard the voice, but the voice seemed disconnected.
Which tidies down into
John heard the voice, but it seemed disconnected.

and expands into, for example:

John heard the voice, carried to him on the cold wind, but the voice seemed far-off and disconnected from his own world.

NB: you have to watch it with the "it", because you're right, the normal rule is that it refers back to the immediately preceding noun, which in this case is "wind". (Although it's a rule that common sense breaks all the time. Still...) That's why I've repeated "the voice seemed", but it's not ideal. How about

The voice carried to John on the cold wind as if from far off, disconnected from his own world.

or about twenty other possible versions, depending on things like how much you want the sense of a two-part sentence hinging on the "but" or not, and so on...

ETA:

I realise that I'd left out the preacher. That's because the preacher isn't in this sentence, only the voice is. If you're trying to say that the preacher is far-off and disconnected, not the voice, then you have to use the preacher as the noun:

The voice carried to John on the cold wind as if the preacher was far off, disconnected from his own world.*

although that "his" technically refers to the preacher (see rule above, but also my comment about common sense, because we often read pronouns as refering to the noun which is the subject of the previous clause, even if it's not immediately preceding. The "own" in particular, encourages us to read as "John's own world")

And everything depends on its surrounding sentences. So actually you could do something like:

John peered towards where the crowd clustered round the pulpit. The voice carried on the cold wind, as if the preacher was far off, disconnected from John's own world.
-------------------------------------------
*(Or to keep the older-fashioned grammar pedants among us happy, it needs a subjunctive "were":
The voice carried to John on the cold wind as if the preacher were far off, disconnected from his own world.)
Edited by EmmaD at 18:40:00 on 12 November 2014
Edited by EmmaD at 18:44:00 on 12 November 2014

Hi. Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated.

@ Emma In your last sentence you state:

(Or to keep the older-fashioned grammar pedants among us happy, it needs a subjunctive "were":
The voice carried to John on the cold wind as if the preacher were far off, disconnected from his own world.)

This states the preacher is far off and disconnected from his own world; i am trying to say it is John who feels disconnected from the preacher. I don't quite understand , can you please expand or explain a little. Where am i going wrong? You have dropped the comma which i would have put before " as " which confuses me further.

Thank you. Richard.

I missed out the comma before "as" by mistake, but I think it is correct not to have it, because really the first two units of that sentence are a single unit: the "as if" qualifies the main verb. Compare:

I sang as if my life depended on it. - makes sense
I sang, as if my life depended on it. - but this doesn't feel right

similarly:

The voice carried to John as if the preacher were far off - is all one unit, whereas
The voice carried to John, as if the preacher were far off. - doesn't quite work.

On the other question (and maybe I mis-copied some of the permutations, sorry), because the middle bit is about the preacher, the last bit reads as if it's about also the preacher and his disconnection, because the preacher is the immediately preceeding noun, even if you make it clear it's John's own world:

The voice carried to John on the cold wind as if the preacher was/were far off,
disconnected from John's own world.

If you want to make sure it's John who is disconnected from the world which has the preacher in it, then you'd have to re-draft, perhaps with John as the subject of the overall sentence. There are dozens of ways; this is only one, and a bit awkward, but makes the point:

The preacher's words were carried by the cold wind; John heard the voice as if he were disconnected from it all and far away.