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.

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