Wednesday, April 18, 2012

spot the error

Sentence:

New nests then become either self-sufficient or are abandoned.

Do you see the problem?


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5 comments:

Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Yeah, the problem is that "sentence" should be two words spelled differently: sin tense.

Jeffery Hodges

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SJHoneywell said...

For a start, I'd transpose "become" and "either." This allows "become" to pair with self-sufficient without then attaching to "are abandoned."

Another possible fix would be to delete the word "are," giving us the sentence "New nests then become either self-sufficient or abandoned."

Surprises Aplenty said...

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.

Kevin Kim said...

Brian,

This 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.

Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

You mean . . . I was wrong?

Jeffery Hodges

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