22.4.09

LINK: As someone who's not a language prescriptivist, I appreciate churlishness about people who give pointless rules, especially when they don't follow them:

"Keep related words together" is further explained in these terms: "The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning." That is a negative passive, containing an adjective, with the subject separated from the principal verb by a phrase ("as a rule") that could easily have been transferred to the beginning. Another quadruple violation.

1 comment:

rosebriar said...

Yay for this post.