Sentence:
New nests then become either self-sufficient or are abandoned.
Do you see the problem?
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Wednesday, April 18, 2012
spot the error
Do you see the problem?
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5 comments:
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Yeah, the problem is that "sentence" should be two words spelled differently: sin tense.
ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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For a start, I'd transpose "become" and "either." This allows "become" to pair with self-sufficient without then attaching to "are abandoned."
ReplyDeleteAnother possible fix would be to delete the word "are," giving us the sentence "New nests then become either self-sufficient or abandoned."
I think a 'nest' whatever that is in the broader context, could be both self-sufficient and abandoned. A harsh way to describe animal parenting would be to say that when offspring is self-sufficient, parents will abandon it.
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteThis is from a really cool article about social spiders, and the possibility of advanced arachnid life on other planets. See here.
Steve,
Yes: faulty parallelism in the "either/or" construction is the problem. I like your first solution to the problem a lot.
Jeff,
Sometimes your sense of humor is as mysterious as JK's.
You mean . . . I was wrong?
ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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