What's wrong with this sentence (found here)?
With razor-toothed suckers and eyes the size of dinner plates, tales of this creature have been around since ancient times.
You get only one guess.
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Wednesday, January 09, 2013
spot the error
You get only one guess.
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8 comments:
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That's an easy one: dangling modifier. The tales do not have "razor-toothed suckers and eyes the size of dinner plates."
ReplyDeleteCharles beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteToo easy, man. I knew it at the midpoint of the sentence.
ReplyDeleteJournalists never cease to amaze me with their writing acumen.
ReplyDeleteEasy. As noted above, it's a dangling modifier, so it needs to be attached to a subject that dangles. Tales don't dangle, or shouldn't, though they can leave the reader dangling.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, obviously, is the spelling of the subject: "tales." It ought to be "tails." Now, the subject also dangles, and therefore fits the dangling modifier.
The sentence describes a prehistoric monster with a nondecomposable, regenerating tail armed with razor-toothed suckers and littered with eyes the size of dinner plates! Not the sort of critter to sneak up on . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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aye. Yeah the 'tales' :) easy mistake.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness to USA Today, that particular sentence is in a quote pulled from Discovery News.
ReplyDeleteCharles,
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, but it wasn't at Discovery that I found the sentence. In fact, I never followed that link back to the original source.
BTW, I did sneak a peek at the first two paragraphs of Black Flower.