This sentence is the start of a Spectator USA article (no link because there's a paywall of sorts), and it contains a rather embarrassing grammatical error:
While a successful politician in many ways, Joe Biden’s attempts to become president are marked by quite a severe flaw — he cannot enter a town hall without saying something stupid.Did you spot it? Write it in the comments, along with a suggested rewrite of the sentence. Hint: the error is not that the writer should have used a colon instead of an em dash, nor is it that the writer inserted spaces before and after his em dash. Those would be errors of mechanics (punctuation, spelling, and capitalization), not errors of grammar. Besides, the whole "space before/after an em dash" thing is very much a matter of debate, and I'd never put up a question that didn't have a clear and obvious answer.
The error looks like a dangling modifier to me:
ReplyDelete"While a successful politician in many ways, Joe Biden's attempts to become president are marked by quite a severe flaw — he cannot enter a town hall without saying something stupid."
A "politician" cannot be an "attempt" (or a series of "attempts"). Here's a correction:
"While a successful politician in many ways, Joe Biden, in his attempts to become president, is marked by quite a severe flaw — he cannot enter a town hall without saying something stupid."
I hope that's correct now. Or perhaps this is better:
"While Joe Biden is a successful politician in many ways, his attempt to become president is marked by quite a severe flaw — he cannot enter a town hall without saying something stupid."
Jeffery Hodges
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Well spotted! A thousand points to Gryffindor!
ReplyDeleteI came back to see the answer as I didn't have a clue (shuddup!). Well done, Mr. Hodges!
ReplyDeleteMr. Hodges? Mr. Hodges? That's Dr. Hodges, thank you very much. I didn't study eight years in Evil Grammatical School, just to be called Mr. Hodges!
ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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Psst, John! It's actually "Dr. Doom" if you want to be precise.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, Herr Doctor! :)
ReplyDeleteJust remember, the word "doom" means "judgement." Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uphareson!
ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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