Thursday, July 20, 2006
good grammar
Not that any of us is perfect. (See, right away, depending on where you live, "any" is a singular subject taking "is" for the verb or it's a plural subject taking "are".) And not that I'm lying in wait to pounce on the NY Times. But mistakenly-referenced dependent clauses are always fodder for such jollity, aren't they? This morning's quick-take review of Kate Muir's Left Bank begins with the phrase "In this first novel by a columnist for The Times of London, . . . " which is fine except, of course, I am fairly sure it is not the first novel by a columnist for The Times of London. I imagine that there have been many others, considering how old The Times is and how many fabulous writers have appeared in its pages, but if I'm wrong, I'll be glad to eat my words (mmm, yum). The correct wording would be, "In this first novel by Kate Muir, a columnist for The Times of London," or "In London Times columnist Kate Muir's first foray into fiction," or something like that. (Should we assume that every story is wrong about something? Why is accuracy so hard?)
Labels: writing
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