Sunday, June 5, 2016

NPR, sheesh

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday :

“Like a good Chinese son, Bob Hung’s parents expected him to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant.”
“Like a good Chinese son”: a dangling modifier. Because it compares parents to a son, it’s a distracting dangler, so distracting that Elaine and I both said “What?” before the sentence ended. A smaller problem: him lacks a genuine referent. How to make things right:
Like a good Chinese son, Bob Hung was supposed to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant.
Or better:
As a good Chinese son, Bob Hung was supposed to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant.
That the expectations are parental seems clear from context. But if not:
Bob Hung’s parents expected their son to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant — a good Chinese son.
Related reading
All OCA NPR posts (Pinboard)

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