File this under the topic parallelogrammar, because clear and elegantly balanced writing calls for what is termed parallel construction, wherein you stay consistent with grammatical structures.
So, if you start one part of a sentence with the present tense of a verb, don't shift tenses -- just to cite one pretty freaking vague example.
Well, maybe this is best illustrated by the practice of not observing parallel construction.
On the front page of The Post-Standard of Syracuse, New York, on July 24, 2008, we find this sentence:
"Corn was flattened by wind and soybeans shredded by hail in the Cato-Meridian area of Cayuga County."
I did a little extra chewing on my Special K Protein Plus cornflakes when I read that.
The wind and the soybeans shredded by hail conspired to flatten corn? Some soybeans!
This former copyeditor of that journal would have insisted on:
"Corn was flattened by wind and soybeans were shredded by hail . . . "
That's just me.
Also, alarmingly, the same newspaper has taken to using ME in headlines, for Medical Examiner. Poor. Poor. Poor.
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1 comment:
I could never be a journalist because me not write pretty.
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