Pet Peeve #40 - Confusing Phrases
(This was on the radio, but the woman was reading the headlines, so I say I still get to put it in my list of writing-related pet peeves.)
Coming home from a road trip with Mr. Scribe, we heard a news reporter on the radio say this:
“We are currently looking for people who left before they arrived.�
(People leaving before they’ve arrived? Now that’s something I’d like to see.)
What she should have said was, “We are currently looking for people who left before the ambulances arrived.� However, the ambulance drivers had been mentioned in previous sentence so she took for granted the listeners would know who ‘they’ are.
We did, but that doesn’t make for good writing.
Say what you mean to say clearly.
I’ve mentioned double meanings in the past, but I think this point needs to be mentioned again because of the more subtle double meaning. (The example I used was “Please submit a list of all employees broken down by sex� which is definitely a bit more obvious.)
This one is a bit tough and something I have also grumbled over.
“He glared at Adam until he sat down� may seem perfectly fine in context and/or in your mind, but who is doing the sitting? He or Adam? That’s the problem. Unfortunately, you can’t always reword things so you don’t double up on using a name. “He glared at Adam until Adam sat down� is the (simple) way to go with that one (unless you want to completely change it to something else).
You have to love language. Even if it is tough sometimes, pay attention to what you say. It’ll likely come through in what you write.
October 9th, 2007 at 3:03 am
[...] blog off of the ground (which should be some time in November *fingers crossed*) I’ll let JM know so that she can pass along the info. Thanks for all of your participation during Banned Book [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Pronouns need antecedents. Really.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:45 am
The sometimes long lost art of speaking correctly. Sigh and sigh more.