Grammar Rodeo
Last semester, my favorite class was called Advanced Exposition. We studied the nuts and bolts of expository writing, including sophisticated punctuation, major essay models, and the various types of sentences. I love grammar, so, naturally, I found all of this fascinating.
A consequence of taking this Advanced Exposition course has been that I am more finicky when it comes to others’ writing. I frequently find myself mentally rewriting poorly composed sentences. Take this one from a New York Times article about Jay Leno’s new prime-time show:
The advantage of a show like that is it’s easy to join, DVR-proof due to its topicality and different.
I should note that this was a quote, not something the journalist wrote. But, still, it’s bad. The problem lies in the parallel section. It’s always better to place the longest element of the parallel last. Plus, the lack of a comma before the last element in the series leads to ambiguity. Working only with what’s there, here’s how I would rewrite it:
The advantage of a show like that is that it’s different, easy to join, and DVR-proof due to its topicality.
(Important note: I love grammar, but I do not claim to be a perfect writer. I am just a guy with a webpage. Still, I make no apologies for my use of the passive voice, or for adopting the British method of placing periods and commas outside of quotation marks.)
Filed under: School on May 26th, 2009 | 3 Comments »