Tuesday, September 20, 2016

spot the error

A blockquote from over at Matt's fine blog provides us with this beauty:

Widely assumed to be a “gay disease,” even by some of the country’s most influential doctors, AIDS patients are often disowned by family, thrown out of hospitals, and refused vital care.

Did you spot the problem? It is
a. a punctuation error.
b. a dangling modifier.
c. a tense error.
d. a participial error.

Highlight the area between the brackets below to reveal the answer.

[The correct answer is B: a dangling modifier. The sentence begins with the modifier "Widely assumed to be a 'gay disease,'" so the subject of the main clause ought to be "AIDS," but instead, the subject is the noun phrase "AIDS patients." As written, the sentence is saying that AIDS patients are widely assumed to be a gay disease. Very awkward, that.]



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