2

I've been looking around for this, but all I can find is pretty basic stuff about desu. I've studied Japanese, but writing texts in Japanese still stumps me sometimes. Right now I'm wondering about the use of desu, as in this case:

「仕事場での高い生産性と楽しい1日は、使い心地が 良い道具を揃えることから。」というのは姉妹の口ぐせ。 機能的でかつインスピレーションあふれるワークプレイスを一緒に作ってみませんか。アンナのフェミニンでシンプルなデザインが、上品な印象を与えるコレクションの登場です.

The text is from a product page, which can be found here: https://sostrenegrene.com/ja/campaigns/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%82%B9%E3%81%A8%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB/

How do I know I can leave desu off the end of a sentence and still make it sound proper. Why is 'というのは姉妹の口ぐせ' without desu, but 'コレクションの登場です' is with desu? Is there a set of rules for this?

As of now, I've written texts filled with 'masu' and 'desu' at the end of all sentences, and it sounds a bit rigid. How do I write a more natural sounding text?

4
  • Hey, this is an interesting question, thanks for asking! My first question/clarification would be to ask, what is the context of your writing in です・ます style, and is there room to use だ・である instead (as might be the case in academic or newspaper reports)? That would obviously cut down on the repetitiveness in です・ます style.
    – henreetee
    Commented Jun 26, 2019 at 16:14
  • 1
    I'll leave a more in-depth explanation to a native speaker, but it's a relatively common stylistic choice to have [long qualifying phrase]+[noun] without a です at the time. It reminds me of how (in English) we'll sometimes have one word sentences to stress importance. e.g. "Godzilla. Its name alone struck terror in the hearts of millions of urbanites." I don't know if there are strict rules on when you can use it, but grammatically it functions nearly identically to sentences that end in です・ます.
    – vel
    Commented Jun 26, 2019 at 20:13
  • 2
    Related: what exactly is “体言止め”?
    – naruto
    Commented Jun 27, 2019 at 1:54
  • @henretee: It's not for academic or newspaper style, so no である. I'm basically trying to mimic the style on that product page the quote is from. They seem to stick to です・ます style, except for quotes which seem to be plain style. vel: Thanks, that makes sense. Feeling-wise, it does seem similar to that. I'm just unsure of any specific rules, yeah. Commented Jun 27, 2019 at 6:41

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .