I was going to quote a sentence from The New York Times this morning until I realized how awful it was:
The Republicans who blocked Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker on Tuesday include some of the most hard-right lawmakers in the House; most denied the 2020 election, are members of the Freedom Caucus, or both.The lack of parallelism in the sentence almost — almost — passes by unnoticed. But once you notice it, it’s, uh, noticeable: there’s no pair of elements for both to tie together. Here’s a simpler sentence to illustrate the problem, about members of an imaginary musical group:
Most studied piano, are guitarists, or both.A possible revision:
Most are proponents of the “Big Lie” or members of the Freedom Caucus or both.Elaine thinks that including numbers would help:
Nineteen of the twenty are members of the Freedom Caucus. Twelve are election deniers. Eleven are both.Both revisions improve on the original.
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[In news coverage, the Times typically uses quotation marks with Big Lie. This post is no. 106 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]
comments: 4
I especially like Elaine's solution. "Most" is vague--numbers are information.
I agree. I think the series of short sentences is more effective too. The numbers are in the article, with pictures, group by group — I think that’s why I didn’t think of a more drastic revision.
I just saw a reference to a book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air by David MacKay that says, 'MacKay’s mantra is “numbers not adjectives”'.
Numbers not adjectives!
I like that.
I like that too. Immediately graspable.
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