Youth culture workarounds - "it's giving"
Imagine you are at a clarinet concert and the clarinet player is playing the clarinet in an unmelodious manner. Is the music bad or just disagreeable? Could they be musically inept, or could they be a musical genius? Andd then you have it: the perfect witticism. You cup your hands to your lover's ear and whisper very slowly ~ its giving squidward ~
Now while this comment would be mildly amusing in the spoken word, Mouthguard is a written publication for a relatively serious audience, so while playful jests are all very welcome, one must remember the rules of the submission guide: writers should avoid any unnecessary references to memes, slang or general youth culture.
While the best course of action might be to rewrite this phrase as "it reminds me of Squidward", you might think the verb "to give" is important if you wish to communicate the selfless and generous actions of the musicians who have given their time to learning a beautiful craft. They could have studied engineering and got a big paying job in the mines. So you must include the verb "to give", then the second best workaround would be to change the form of the sentence from active to passive.
"It's giving Squidward" is a present continuous sentence in the active voice. We would represent it in grammatically as:
Subject + is/are + verb-ing + object
However, in a passive voice, we would swap the subject and object to make the object be the subject. The verb would also be shifted to the past participle form.
We would represent a present continuous sentence in the passive voice as:
Object + is/are + being + past participle + subject
So, what would "It's giving Squidward" be in the passive voice?
No Jaden, serious answers please. Yes?
Thats right!
Squidward is being given by it.
Now, does this sentence sound correct to you? We have followed all our rules, so why does the sentence still sound wrong?
Thats right. It sounds wrong because the original sentence was grammatically incorrect.
Well, I had to consult my english usage manual for this, but the verb to give is actually "ditransitive", meaning that it needs to have a recipient. We cannot just "give something". We have to give it to someone or something.
How would we fix this?
Correct! You really should say:
It's giving me Squidward or It's giving Squidward to me.
And once again we have followed all the rules - why does "it's giving me Squidward" still sound wrong?
Several reasons:
Assuming that Squidward can be given despite this being a breach of humanoid animal trafficking laws¹, the present-continuous is still the wrong tense for the scenario. Unless an object is difficult to move or the giver is travelling from the other side of the city, to give something to someone is a relatively quick action: "here you go", "oh, thank you". Considering Squidward is canonically the size of an ikea pencil, and the clarinet player is only a few metres from the audience, you should receive your "Squidward" faster than you can whisper "its giving". Therefore, it is better to wait until the action of giving has been completed and then whisper to your lover "it gave me squidward".
The pronoun "it" is very unclear as you have not pre-established the referent. Are you speaking of the clarinet itself, or the sound it produces? Someone may think you are referring to the clarinet player as "it", in which case you will run into trouble. Rather, on the first mention of a subject, be specific. "The sound of the clarinet gave me Squidward".
Make sure the subject is one with the capacity to give. A sound cannot give anything except a headache or tinnitus. Rather, say "The clarinet player gave me Squidward".
The natural question that would follow is "why?" or "for what reason?". If you are someone who rarely explains themselves, people may get sick of talking to you. They don't want the puzzle. One way to avoid social-rejection is to provide a reason:
"The clarinet player gave me Squidward so that I could hear another example of bad clarinet playing"
Wonderful! We have just worked out the perfect active sentence.
Now I will give you a challenge. I'd like you to have a go at converting the above sentence into the passive voice. (And remember, the past simple "gave" will need to become "was given"). I will give you a few minutes.
Okay, check with your partner. Jaden, I hope you that wasn't ChatGPT... Haha okay! What do we have?
Thats right! The passive form is:
"Squidward was given to me by the clarinet player so I could hear another example of bad clarinet playing."
Great. I know it's a little wordy, but the sentence is correct, clear, and avoids any unwanted connotations with the dreadful stock phrases of youth culture.
And there you have it! Our very first youth culture work around session.
Join me next week where we will discuss how to get around the contemporary misusage of the verb "to eat".
- Squidward is a manlike creature, not a thing. Although he is technically a squid, I argue that if he can play a clarinet, work a job and pay his mortgage as an autonomous being, then he should be afforded the same rights as a human-human and not an animal-thing.