[Mark Trail, October 17, 2013. Click for a larger view.]
Given the tools available to me, I can’t do much to improve Mark Trail’s “cell phone,” which looks more like the battery from my old Sony Vaio. But I can improve writing. The last panel is the problem:
[Mark Trail, original.]
As Dusty Rhodes asks, what are you getting at, Mark? What’s on that phone of yours? The problem is the misplaced modifier “except us.” Garner’s Modern American Usage explains:
When modifying words are separated from the words they modify, readers have a hard time processing the information. Indeed, there likely to attach the modified language first to a nearby word or phrase.Garner offers a grimly comic example: “Both died in an apartment Dr. Kevorkian was leasing after inhaling carbon monoxide,” a sentence suggesting that Kervorkian inhaled before he leased. Here’s what Mark Trail should have said:
[Mark Trail, revised.]
Between today’s strip and tomorrow’s, Dusty will probably figure things out.
This post marks the second time I’ve improved writing in a Mark Trail strip. Here’s the first. I rely on the free Mac app Seashore when I make such improvements.
Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)
[This post is no. 46 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]
comments: 6
Fun teaching point!
But your solution has been bugging me since I read it this morning because the placement of the "except us" matters:
putting it at the end like Mark does really means "...if you don't tell." You lose Mark's subtle invitation to tell a lie when you move it.
How 'bout using a comma or ellipses before "except us" instead?
I see your point: a dash or an ellipsis could do the job. I think the invitation to lie is still there if “but us” falls earlier in the sentence.
Mark’s logic leaves me bewildered: no one knows that he was trying to record anything either. If he wants to bluff, he didn’t need to use a phone to begin with. Thinking about these things is part of the fun of reading Mark Trail. :)
:)
The Morally Ambiguous Mark Trail.
I've never gotten used to this speedy "new" Mark Trail--remember when nothing ever happened in the strip? (I guess that was 30-some years ago.
I’m a relative newcomer to the Trail. Maybe Mary Worth would offer the pace you recall. I followed it for a while and recall a phone conversation that took a couple of weeks. :)
Funny you should mention Mary Worth--I'd recently come across a (fond) blog about how hilarious it is:
maryworthandme.blogspot.com
(Um, btw, I stumbled on your blog a while ago, blog-hopping, found your Tweezerman post, and just kept coming back. Fun stuff here. Thanks!)
Thanks for the recommendation. My wife, who doesn't read comics, says that she knows that blog. I guess there’s something about Mary.
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