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2 Most Common Luxury Hotel Grammar Errors

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In July I wrote an article about phrasal verbs in response to a card in my hotel room that referred to an option to “workout” (one word – improper) instead of “work out” (2 words – proper) in the comfort of your own room.

Since then I have discovered that the Hilton Garden Inn is not the only hotel to make this error.  While considering a possible stay at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore, I found this sentence:

“For those who choose to workout in the privacy of their spacious guestroom, we offer YogaAwayTM.”

The Hyatt’s advertising team made the exact same error as the Hilton’s.  Coincidence?

Hotel Helter Skelter

Here’s a strange thing:  Just for fun, I Googled “Hyatt workout” and discovered that the Hyatt is not consistent across its websites.  The Sarasota Hyatt Regency offers:

“If you choose to work out in the privacy of your own hotel room or suite at Hyatt Regency Sarasota, we offer YogaAway™.”

Sarasota got it right!

I wonder who is responsible for this mismatched spelling?  Why is Hyatt messaging not consistent between Baltimore and Sarasota?  I’ve always thought the draw of a hotel chain is the reassurance that you will get the same consistent service no matter where in the world you go.  The discrepancies on the Hyatt’s websites make me think perhaps their other amenities are not consistent either.

More then [sic] words… marriott hotel grammar errors

In the meantime, I have ventured on to yet another institution of hospitality:  a Marriott resort in Palm Desert, California.  Marriott evidently cares about energy conservation and therefore put out the following request:

“In an effort to conserve water and energy, would you please consider using your towel more then once.”

I don’t know about you, but my grammar checker even caught this one!  The correct statement would have been:

“In an effort to conserve water and energy, would you please consider using your towel more than once.”

There are some other grammatical issues with this sentence, but I’ll let them be for now.  Do you see the other issue here?  If you do, please share in the comments.

I recall seeing a similar message in another hotel … I’m not sure which one, but I believe the word “than” was properly used or I probably would have blogged about it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if hotels could all get their grammar as straight and smooth as their bed sheets?

Judging a book by its blunders?

And by the way, even though this Marriott is a resort-level establishment, a level “6” which is pretty high in the Marriott pecking order, the round piece on the top of my bathroom sink drain was detached when I got to the room, and there was a stray peanut hiding under my very expensive flat screen TV.  Maybe grammar blunders really are an indication of deeper quality and performance issues?

What do you think?  Have you found a hotel grammar blunder of late?  What would you suggest to these institutions that would keep them consistent and grammatically correct?  And how much do you judge a service provider based on the consistency and correctness of its message?

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Posted in Articles by Brenda Bernstein, Grammar Tips, Grammar Tips | 5 Comments »

What makes you shudder? And what are your commitments?

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Grammar Geeks

I belong to a LinkedIn group called Grammar Geeks, where one of the most popular discussions right now, with 269 comments, is “What Makes You Shudder?”  Each of these 269 entries contains someone’s comment (or more often complaint) about a grammar gaffe.

At first I was interested in some of the conversations…  but quickly, the conversation itself was the thing making me shudder.  In fact, I began to shudder each time another member of the group posted a complaint.  Even the word “shudder” began to make me shudder!

from toonpool.com

My shuddering at the shuddering forced me to look at my own way of being around grammatical errors.  Do people shudder when I let them know I am shuddering?

A Turning Point for The Essay Expert

At Unleash the Power Within, the Tony Robbins seminar I attended recently, I discovered multiple errors in the handouts we were given.  Believing I could make a contribution, I brought some of these errors to the attention of one of the staff.  This man pointed out, quite correctly, that the errors certainly did not prevent people from signing up for programs – in particular the ones that cost $10,000.

“Why do you care so much about this?” he asked.  “Why is your focus on finding things that are wrong?” And “What would like be like if you started finding things right?”

I took his comment seriously, and perhaps it was the corresponding self-reflection that had me shuddering at the relentless list of grammar complaints populating the Grammar Geeks conversation.

A Shudder-Free Life?  Finding my Commitment

Have I stopped shuddering at the things that have traditionally made me shudder?  Well, no.  But I am putting more attention on my commitment to effective expression in the world.

I am also considering that there are bigger problems in the world to shudder about if I want to shudder – like the way we treat our environment, and the failures of our mental health system, and the hunger that still exists in the world side by side with opulence.

And I still care deeply about clarity in writing and other verbal expression.  My job is to help people and companies say what they want to say, powerfully and precisely.  When I write, or when I edit someone else’s writing, I care that the final result is moving, compelling, and result-producing.

Often grammatical correctness is required to produce an intended result.  An error in a resume, cover letter, or college application can be the difference between acceptance or rejection, an interview or no interview.  It can change someone’s life – maybe someone who is destined to find a cure for cancer, or discover new treatments for mental illness, or advocate for environmental issues (I have worked with people doing all of these things).

As for the shudderers, I believe there is something to be gained from acceptance.  Not everyone will write or speak perfectly all the time, and I can accept them for who they are rather than putting distance between us with a shudder.  I think I’ll listen for the meaning of their words instead.  Because even with a grammatical error or two, I can hear what people are saying loud and clear.

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Posted in Articles by Brenda Bernstein, Grammar Tips, Professional Writing, Writing Tips | 7 Comments »

Check out this Phrasal Verb Breakdown! Workout or Work Out? Signup or Sign Up? Your Questions Answered.

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This weekend, I had the pleasure of staying in the Hilton Garden Inn in Schaumburg, Illinois.  On the bedside table was a pamphlet entitled, “In-Room Comfort Guide.” I happily read about the superlatively comfy bed and pillow I was to sleep on and the ergonomic chair I would sit in while working on my laptop.  Then I turned to the back page of the pamphlet, where it said:

Workout in the comfort of your own room.Hotel Workout

“Do they mean for ‘workout’ to be a noun or a verb?” I asked myself.  “Do they mean, ‘Get a workout in the comfort of your own room’ or does the Hilton have editors who do not know that workout is a noun, not a verb?”

As I read on, I came to the conclusion that the Hilton’s editors have a few things to learn about grammar.  The first sentence of the paragraph under the headline says:

Workout in the comfort of your own guestroom when you check-out our complimentary Stay Fit Kit ® from the front desk.

Oh my!  Not only did the editors miss the fact that the verb to “work out” is TWO words (known as a PHRASAL VERB), but they also did not realize that “check out” should be TWO words!  You would think that editors working for a HOTEL would know that check-out is the noun for what you do when you check out (verb) of a hotel.

Gearing Up with More Phrasal Verbs!

“Work out” and “check out” are just two examples of phrasal verbs that many people get mixed up.  One of my pet peeves is a phrase you might see often on websites, “Signup Here” or “Sign-Up Here.”  “Sign up” (TWO words) is a PHRASAL VERB like “work out” and “check out.”  “Sign-up” or “Signup” is the noun for the act of signing up.  E.g., “The sign-up table is down the hall to your right.”

Other examples of PHRASAL VERBS are:

Break out (noun:  breakout)

Stand out (adjective:  standout)

Take off (noun:  takeoff or take-off)

Make up (noun:  make-up)

Count down (noun:  countdown)

Break down (noun:  breakdown)

Group on (noun:  Groupon) – Just Kidding!!!

Foul up (noun:  foul-up) – Get where I’m going here?

Dear readers, here’s the point:  Just because there is a word in existence that glues the two parts of a phrasal verb together does NOT mean that you can glue those two words together and have the result still be a verb!  If you want to use a verb plus a preposition (up, down, on, off, etc.) as a verb, keep a space between the two parts of the verb.  Do NOT stick them together or you will end up with a noun or possibly an adjective.  You can do better than those Hilton editors, can’t you?

If you have questions or more examples of phrasal verbs that people tend to get confused with their corresponding adjective or noun phrase, please share below!

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Posted in Articles by Brenda Bernstein, Grammar Tips, Grammar Tips, Grammar Tips, Writing Tips | 3 Comments »

If it was me, Mr. President, I’d Get a Grammar Lesson.

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I have been thinking for some time that I would like to write a blog on the subjunctive.  One of my blog followers, an astute man named Gabe, was kind enough to give me fodder for bringing this topic to the top of my list.

For the second time in The Essay Expert’s blogging history, I turn to President Obama’s grammar bloopers.  The first was his incorrect use of “tenant” when he meant “tenet” in his speech following the Tucson shootings (The President Makes Grammatical Errors Too!). This week I’m pointing to Obama’s statement about the texting transgressions of Congressman Weiner.

Obama’s Grammatical ErrorPresident Obama's Grammatical Errors

Said the President, according to many news sources, “If it was me, I’d resign.”

I won’t spend a lot of time explaining that a more proper structure of this sentence would have been, “If it were me, I’d resign.”  Put simply, this is a conditional statement, speaking about an event that is not sure to happen and that did not definitively happen.  Any time you see the word “if” in a sentence, watch out for the subjunctive.  The correct verb form is most likely “were.” A good explanation of the subjunctive can be found on EnglishClub.com.

I also won’t spend a lot of time harping on the fact that the President used the incorrect form of the pronoun “me.” The truly correct phrasing would have been, “If it were I, I would resign.” Note that “I” is a subject pronoun.  But who really talks like that?

Meet The Press:  To Quote or Not to Quote?

What interests me most is the way the press handled the situation.  You might remember that when the President said “tenant” instead of “tenet” in his Tucson shooting speech, the transcription of his speech corrected his error.  In the Weiner situation the press went to bat for Obama again — but not universally.  I’ve created a snapshot of press coverage of the issue below.

[Challenge to reader:  How many double entendres can you find in the body of this article? If you find one, report it in the comments!]

The New York Times

Michael Barbaro of The New York Times covered up (or worked around) the President’s grammatical errors as follows in his article, Obama Suggests Weiner Should Resign:

President Obama told NBC News that if he were in Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s position, “I would resign,” according to a senior network executive.

Fox

In contrast, Fox quoted Obama word for word in their article, Obama Says He Would Resign in Weiner’s Position:

“I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,” Obama told Ann Curry in an interview scheduled to air Tuesday on NBC’s “Today.”

How many times do you think that one got tweeted?

Youtube/Hollyscoop.com

Hollyscoop.com, in the midst of making references to porn star names, fixed the subjunctive issue on its youtube video report, but did not touch the improper pronoun:

Now the President is saying, “I can tell you that if it were me I’d resign…”

Maybe these folks need a grammar lesson too.

Pundit Press

Pundit Press left the error waving in the wind, both in the title and body of its article:

Title:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “If it was me, I would resign.”

Body:

Obama did not call for the resignation of Anthony Weiner, but did say, ”I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign.”

CNN

Finally, CNN’s article by Ashley Killough maintains picture perfect grammatical integrity in its headline, Obama On Weiner:  ‘I Would Resign’, but exposes Obama’s actual wording in the text:

(CNN) — President Barack Obama told NBC’s Ann Curry in an interview to air on Tuesday’s “Today,” that if he were in Rep. Anthony Weiner’s shoes, he would leave Congress.

 

“I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,” Obama said.

 

Grammatically correct or not, Obama’s opinion surely had an impact.  Weiner has stepped down, probably due to the uncovering of his lies more than anything else.

If you were a reporter, how would you have handled Obama’s grammatical error?  And why did Clinton survive his sex scandal, whereas Weiner was trampled?  The Christian Science Monitor has shed some light on this question in its article, Why Democrats turned on Anthony Weiner, but not Bill Clinton.

I suppose we can all be comforted that no one (even The Essay Expert) will push for politicians to step down due to grammatical transgressions.

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Posted in Articles by Brenda Bernstein, Grammar Tips, Grammar Tips, Grammar Tips, Writing Tips | 7 Comments »

3 Grammatical Errors and Funnies from DollarsandSense Coupon Flyer!

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Magazines and flyers are constant sources of grammatical errors and other interesting blog material for The Essay Expert.  This week I’m writing just a few examples of what I found in the ads populating a recent Madison’s DollarsandSense coupon flyer.  These examples are good reminders to pay attention to your writing!

1.  Ad for ChoreCare (www.ChoreCareMadison.com)

Original text:  “All jobs & work is customized to meet your needs.”

Commentary:  Jobs & work are two things and the verb should therefore be plural.

Correction:  All jobs & work are customized to meet your needs.

This error is very common and I find myself making it more often than I’d like to admit.  A few days ago, I wrote, regarding the improvement to one of my client’s resumes:  The other bullets show his success on both the artistic and strategic side of marketing.

I quickly caught my error and changed “side” to “sides,” since I was talking about two sides – plural!

What makes this one slippery is that in speech, we often do not distinguish between the singular and plural in situations such as the ones above.  I see this as another example of purist vs. progressive language (see Top 10 Obsolete Grammar Rules – by Steven Sawyer).

Whether you are a purist or a progressive on this one, I encourage you to pay attention and make a choice, rather than make a blind potential error.  Please share if you find yourself challenged by this issue!

2.  Ad for Mother Nature’s Diaper Service, Inc.


Original text:  “Reserve a Pre-birth Delivery Date Today!”

(click for full size ad)

Commentary:  Is this line an intentional joke?  It seems the writers might be unaware that they have made a pun on “Delivery Date.” How can there be a pre-birth delivery [of a baby]?  OH…  a *diaper* delivery.  I get it.

Is it just me, or does pre-birth remind you of afterbirth (the placenta and fetal membranes that are normally expelled from the uterus after the birth of the baby) — now that’s something I don’t want delivered to my door!  I just don’t like the phrase “Pre-birth Delivery” at all, even if it was intended to be clever, which I’m not convinced it was.

My suggested correction:  Reserve a Diaper Delivery Date Today!

Now that’s cute, and it plays well on the word “Delivery” without being downright perplexing.

3.  Ad for Sierra Concepts, LLC Basement Waterproofing Specialists

Original text:  “$50 OFF Crack Injections”

Commentary:  I realize “crack injection” is a trade term, but really!  Am I the only one who immediately calls up an image of desolate streets and needles and crazed looking drug addicts?

My suggested correction:  $50 OFF Basement Crack Repair.

Boring, maybe.  But it gets the point across safely.

 

What are your favorite examples of incorrect or funny ads?  Please share them here!

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Posted in Articles by Brenda Bernstein, Grammar Tips, Grammar Tips, Professional Writing, Writing Tips | 3 Comments »

Where Should I put my Quotation Marks? Slate Magazine and the Rise of “Logical Punctuation”.

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On May 12, 2011, not one, but TWO of my friends and colleagues pointed me toward an article in Slate Magazine entitled, “The Rise of Logical Punctuation”. In the article, author Ben Yagoda explores the nuances of where to place periods and commas within quotations (inside or outside the quotation marks?).  Not long ago, I wrote an article touching upon much the same topic:  The Quandary of Quotation Marks (“ “).  My conclusion was that the British are much more logical than we are in the U.S., following the rule that punctuation goes inside the quotation marks only when it is part of the quotation.  How simple is that?  And yet I continue to follow the U.S. protocol.Slate Magazine

Slate Magazine itself, as well as The New York Times and the Washington Post, follow AP guidelines and put periods and commas inside the quotation marks.  But Yagoda references a Twitter post by Conan O’Brien, a Wikipedia entry on Frank Sinatra, and the website Pitchfork, all of which follow the British way, with periods and commas lying outside the quotation marks.  He also relates that his students largely refuse to follow the traditional U.S. rules even when they know they will be penalized for doing so.  I highly recommend taking a look at his article for an interesting exploration of why we choose to punctuate the way we do.

Last week my blog explored the distinction between grammar purists and progressives in Steven Sawyer’s guest article, Top 10 Obsolete Grammar Rules.  It looks like we can add number 11.  According to Yagoda, despite the Chicago Manual of Style’s adherence to the traditional style, we may be fast on our way to an obsolete punctuation rule – another feast for progressives.  As Yagoda claims, “A punctuation paradigm is shifting.”  Note:  even under the “new” rules, or the “new normal,” the period belongs inside those quotation marks because it was indeed part of the original sentence in Yagoda’s article.  Crystal clear, right?

By the way, “new normal” was the phrase chosen as “Cliche of the Week” last week by Chris Pash in his blog.

Do you choose to follow the progressive “new normal” when it comes to quotation marks?  Or will you remain a purist?  So far I’m sticking with the old fashioned way, but I feel a possible change erupting.

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Top 10 Obsolete Grammar Rules – by Guest Blogger Steven Sawyer

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Article by Steven Sawyer. Edited by Brenda Bernstein, The Essay Expert

Following The Essay Expert’s post about using the “singular they,” some writers in one of my LinkedIn groups were talking about breaking English grammar rules. Several of us spent a few hours discussing the merits, or de-merits, of using “they” as a singular pronoun. We were essentially divided into two camps:  purists, who would never break a time-honored English grammar rule, and progressives, who know all the rules – and delight in breaking them.  By the end of the heated discussion, purists were still purists and progressives remained progressive.

Purists love the predictability of our language and the grammar rules that govern it. They still remember how to diagram a sentence.  They can spot a dangling modifier at 50 yards and pick out a subject-verb agreement error faster than you can say “comma splice.” If you went to their houses you might find that they iron their underwear and alphabetize the canned foods in their pantry. (I know a couple of purists who do that.)

Progressives, on the other hand, believe that breaking rules connects writers with the masses, who stopped thinking about grammar rules decades ago. (If you don’t believe me just ask any passerby to locate the verb in a sentence.)

Just last year, a group of Ivy League English language purists lobbied to have “Thou shalt not break English grammar rules” added as the 11th commandment. But language mavens, dictionary writers and even influential linguists are relaxing many writing standards. Some experts are equating this usage shift to the Great Vowel Shift that took place in England in the 15th century.

So, my Purist grammar friends, what will you do? Will you suck it up and go with the changes in the language as they evolve?  Or are you determined to maintain pristine prose? It’s really okay if purists remain purists. I believe they’ll dwindle over time until they become an extinct species, but they do have their place in our culture today.

Purists, here’s what you’re going to have to swallow if you want to keep pace with our ever changing language.

Top 10 Obsolete Or Seldom Enforced Grammar Rules

  1. Don’t split infinitives. Who would want to shamelessly do that anyway?
  2. Active voice verbs are preferable to passive voice verbs. I will never part with this one. I have encrypted this rule in my memory’s hard drive. Passive voice will forever be stricken from my writing. That makes me a purist for this rule only.
  3. Never start a sentence with “And” or “But.” And why not? It gets easier every time you do it. See 5th paragraph, second sentence.
  4. Never start a sentence with “There is” or “There are.” There are many occasions when starting a sentence with “There is” or “There are” is perfectly acceptable. Boring, perhaps, but acceptable. E.g., There is more Canadian bacon in the United States than in Canada. It would be difficult to change the wording in that sentence without starting with “There is”.
  5. Never end a sentence with a preposition. Now that’s a rule we can all live without.
  6. Always use “more than” instead of “over” with numbers. Okay. Whatever. Math’s not my gig. But truly, either one is acceptable use today. So, purists, get over it.
  7. Data is plural, so the verb must always be plural. So data is what data does? Or data are what data do? If they say so. Anyone with a good ear for English knows the answer to this one.
  8. Don’t start a sentence with “This.” The grammar gurus now say that you can start a sentence with “This.”  But (Ooops, there I go, breaking rule 3. See how easy that was?)  I believe that [practice] is okay and this [guideline] is perfectly acceptable.
  9. Don’t use “free” as an adjective.  E.g., “Can I get that laptop free?”  Nay, nay, writing comrades. That’s purist speak. Feel free to use “for free.” E.g., “Can I get that laptop for free?”
  10. Don’t use “fun” as an adjective.  You purists make me giddy.  You’ve always used “fun” as a noun.  E.g., “We had fun at the game today.” But we progressives like to use it as an adjective. “It was a fun weekend reunion with my family.”

English is an evolving language. A new word gets added to the language every 98 minutes, according to the Global Language Monitor. That’s 14.7 words per day.  As words get added, usage rules undergo changes as well. Will you adopt the new “rules” of grammar? Your answer determines which camp you’re in.

Steven Sawyer is a blogger, author, editor and online English teacher and writing consultant.  Read his blog at http://stevensawyer.wordpress.com/.

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Common Grammatical Errors: Passover Readings and the Singular “They”

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God and Grammar

This week I am spending Passover with my family.  Perhaps inspired by the season, I picked up the newsletter that comes from Kolot Chayeinu (“Voices of Our Lives), the synagogue I used to attend in Brooklyn, New York. I read it cover to cover for the first time in months.

It won’t surprise you that a grammatical issue leapt up at me from the pages of the newsletter.  Kathryn Conroy of Kolot Chayeinu writes about the open nature of this progressive congregation:Gender neutral language

“The person who prays because they believe that God will personally make a difference in their daily life is not the least bit threatened by the person standing next to them who does not believe in God at all.”

The Singular “They”

Did you spot the issue in Kathryn’s sentence?  It has become common for writers to refer to a single person, who could be of either gender, as a “they.” This “singular they” construction is grammatically problematic.  Clearly one person does not qualify as a “they,” “their” or “them” (all of which were used in Kathryn’s prose).  Yet we refer, perhaps lazily, or even sloppily, to singles as multiples – because it would be challenging or awkward to be grammatically rigorous.

My uncle once created a neutral pronoun for just this situation:  fub.  It didn’t catch on. So at least for now, we’re still stuck with a lack of a non-gendered singular personal pronoun in the English language.

Given the current state of affairs and my discomfort with the use of the singular “they,” I’ve decided to take on the challenge of improving upon the sentence from Kolot Chayeinu’s newsletter.  How would I write this sentence to avoid grammatical detention?

Rewriting the Sentence

One possibility is:

“The person who prays because he or she believes that God will personally make a difference in his or her daily life is not the least bit threatened by the person standing next to him or her who does not believe in God at all.”

Hmmm…  not so great. Stilted, right? This is exactly the type of sentence Ms. Conroy was avoiding.

Next option:  Gender the language.  Here’s what it looks like:

“The woman who prays because she believes that God will personally make a difference in her daily life is not the least bit threatened by the man standing next to her who does not believe in God at all.”

I was surprised to discover that this sentence is much more powerful than the original – poignant even — in addition to being grammatically sound.  An image is conjured of an actual woman and man standing next to each other praying, rather than of some vague or possible scenario.

Third option:  Make it Plural

“Congregation members who pray because they believe that God will personally make a difference in their daily lives are not the least bit threatened by those standing next to them who do not believe in God at all.”

This sentence is grammatically correct, though in my opinion it doesn’t pack the punch of the gendered option.

The Essay Expert is a Traditionalist

My vote for Kathryn’s sentence is to use a gendered version. And I prefer even the somewhat stilted language of the rigorously neutral option to the grammatically incorrect original. However, I am a traditionalist. The grammar books don’t necessarily agree with me.

Not every situation lends itself to gendered language as well as does Kathryn’s sentence. Sometimes our choice is between the “singular they” and a stilted “he/she” in order to avoid politically incorrect gendered language.  And sometimes making the subject plural does the trick quite gracefully.

My practice in these situations is to pluralized the subject or to use “he or she” rather than “they.” Or, if there are repeated references to a non-gendered “person” or “someone” in a piece of prose, I might alternate between the masculine and feminine pronouns.  When in doubt, I err on the side of feminine pronouns. After all, there are hundreds of years of usage of the traditional “he” to balance things out.

Wikipedia Speaks

Here’s what Wikipedia reports on the acceptability of the singular “they”:

There has been considerable debate as to the acceptability of singular they. Regarding usage, The Chicago Manual of Style notes:

On the one hand, it is unacceptable to a great many reasonable readers to use the generic masculine pronoun (he) in reference to no one in particular. On the other hand, it is unacceptable to a great many readers either to resort to nontraditional gimmicks to avoid the generic masculine (by using he/she or s/he, for example) or to use they as a kind of singular pronoun. Either way, credibility is lost with some readers.Wikipedia

With the 14th edition (1993), the Manual briefly revised its neutral stance to actually recommend “singular use of they and their“, noting a “revival” of this usage and citing “its venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare.” However, regret regarding that printing is expressed at its website; and with the current 15th edition (2003), it has returned to its original neutral position.

The 2011 translation of the New International Version Bible utilizes singular they instead of “he” or “he or she”, refelecting [sic] changes in English usage. The translators commissioned a study of modern English usage and determined that singular “‘they’ (‘them’/'their’) is by far the most common way that English-language speakers and writers today refer back to singular antecedents such as ‘whoever,anyone,somebody,a person,no one,’ and the like.”

Your Turn

What’s your opinion about how to handle the “singular they”?  Do you have any sample sentences to send me as a challenge?  Do you see any other ways to write Kathryn’s sentence?  And wouldn’t you love to be part of a community where the openness Kathryn describes is a reality?

 

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Common Writing Errors: Parallel Construction, Sentence Fragments

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In November 2010, InternsOver40, a popular job-search site for older job seekers, published an article entitled Bobby’s Rant, Rave & Whatever: “Less is More?” internsover40

The second paragraph begins as follows: “Over the years I have ranted  to many of my close friends ”that in my worst day I have more than 98% of the world.” Those people who live on less than $68 dollars a month(yes month).” [sic]

While I like the sentiment of this article, I am compelled to rant about its writing style.  First, there are small formatting issues like the extra space between “ranted” and “to,” and the lack of a space prior to “(yes month).”  That’s just a tiny little rant.

Did you Understand That Sentence?  Parallel Construction

More notably there’s the sentence, “In my worst day I have more than 98% of the world.”  Do you see the ambiguity here?  Honestly when I first read the sentence I did not understand it.  I thought the author was saying he had in his possession some percentage of the world.  Upon second or third reading, I realized he meant that he had more than does 98% of the world – or that he has more than 98% of the world has.

On a basic level, the problem here is parallel construction.  Lack of parallel construction is an issue that plagues many writers, and that takes the sense out of sentences.  In my article about correlative conjunctions, I addressed the issue of parallel construction when using conjunctions such as “both” and “and” in a sentence.  If you read that article, you learned that the phrases after the correlative conjunctions “both” and “and” must be the same part of speech, e.g. “He likes both running and swimming.”  The same idea applies here.

Take the following sentence.  How would you interpret its meaning?I like coffee more than my husband - parallel construction

I like coffee more than my husband.

Read grammatically, this sentence would imply that given a choice between coffee and her husband, the writer would choose coffee.  And although we might be able to cut corners in our spoken communications, it doesn’t work in writing.

Now read:

I like coffee more than does my husband.

OR

I like coffee more than my husband likes it.

OR

I like coffee more than my husband does.

These versions are looking much better for the husband.

To write an unambiguous sentence, we need to look at the two things being compared to ensure they are really the things we want to compare! “I like coffee more than my husband” has nouns (coffee, husband) as the compared objects, so “coffee” is compared against “my husband.”  “I like coffee more than does my husband” has verbs as the compared objects (like, does) so we are comparing degrees of the verb “like.”  And “I like coffee more than my husband likes it” again compares verbs (like, likes).

Sentence Fragments

You may also have noticed that the last sentence in the InternsOver40 paragraph is not a sentence.  It reads, “Those people who live on less than $68 dollars a month(yes month).”

You can probably spot a sentence fragment when you see one.  Sometimes sentence fragments can be used to stylistic advantage, but I don’t think this particular fragment was effective, especially considering the multitude of other errors in the paragraph.

If you are concerned, as I am, about what a major job seeking resource like InternsOver40 is teaching job seekers about how to write, please share your concern with them.  I personally would like to see InternsOver40 post well-written, well-edited articles that will give candidates tools to shine in their written presentation.

Do you have a question about how to keep your sentence structure parallel?  Or about whether a sentence is a sentence fragment?  I’d love to listen to and answer your questions.  Please share your comments below.

Image courtesy Damian Cugley CC BY-SA 2.0

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