Friday, December 20, 2019

How to improve writing (no. 85)

An odd sentence from The New Yorker :

No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk his or her opponents quite like Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
I understand why the writer chose “his or her”: because both men and women are running for the nomination. But Pete Buttigieg doesn’t irk “his or her” opponents. “His or her” is an unnecessary complication. It makes me think Wait, what?  Follow the logic of the syntax:
No one irks his or her opponents like Pete Buttigieg [irks his or her opponents.]
See? Better:
No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk opponents quite like Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Maybe better still:
No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk opponents the way Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, does.
I’m not crazy about the gap between Buttigieg’s name and “does.” It might be better still to save the identifying phrase for a later sentence:
No one running for the Democratic Presidential nomination seems to irk opponents the way Pete Buttigieg does.
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 85 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

comments: 5

Fresca said...

I enjoy how you stick with the original structure--the idea being to improve an awkward sentence.
But departing from that, I would go with a short punch:
"Pete Buttigieg bugs his opponents."

Michael Leddy said...

Ha! But these days you don’t want to be accused of bugging your opponents. :)

Michael Leddy said...

FBI, Deep State, all that.

Fresca said...

Oh, yes, and the original word is "irks", which is better anyway.

Michael Leddy said...

I can think of at least one other alternative to irk, but it wouldn’t suit The New Yorker.