Tuesday, July 31, 2012

MISPLACED ANTECEDENT

I was reading the morning paper the other day when I read this sentence:

“Since June, when he came to the former cattle ranch from New Jersey, he’s been recording the birds.”

It struck me funny, as I recognized a misplaced antecedent.  So I emailed the columnist and said,

“Gee, I learn something new every day.
For instance, I never knew that cattle ranches came from New Jersey.
I never even knew there were any cattle ranches in New Jersey!”

He emailed back:

“This sounds ominously as if you've discovered some poor grammatical construction. I will investigate. Congratulations on the excellent sarcasm.
BN”

I had to respond to that, so I emailed back:

“Me?  Sarcastic?  Yeah, I s'pose so.
Actually I burst out laughing when I read it.  Aha!  A misplaced antecedent!  Easily fixed.  Switch the 'to' and 'from', thus:
"Since June, when he came from New Jersey to the former cattle ranch, he's been recording 
the birds."
No, I am not now, nor have I ever been an English teacher.  I'm a retired accountant.  But I do appreciate good writing.
Here are a couple of juicy ones from Google:

“Breathe in through your nose, hold it for a few seconds, then breathe out through your mouth”
or
“The room contained a chair, a desk, and a lone light bulb. It was twenty-six feet long by seventeen feet wide.

Don Meyer”

Then he emailed back --

Thank you for that very entertaining reply. At first I thought I had an "aha" moment of my own when I spotted your "nor" without a corresponding "neither," but apparently this isn't a hard and fast rule, and the preceding "not" will suffice. Language is a supple thing; not always easy to get it just right. I'm always pleased when someone with an eye for its suppleness wants to discuss it.
Cheers,
bruce


Fun of a different kind --



Oh, goody!  my favorite medicine!



Who you lookin' at?
Who you looking at?






2 comments:

  1. One of these days I'm going to read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, the one with the panda on the cover.

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  2. Funny you should mention that Alison, I loaned my copy to a neighbor last week!

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