Missing Words Change Everything

Missing Words Change Everything Missing Words Change Everything Missing Words Change Everything By Mark Nichol Empires, fortunes, and people rise and fall and fall on the insertion or omission of a word or two. OK, so the stakes are usually not so high, but misunderstandings and embarrassment are bad enough. Here are sentences that suffer (in increasing order of significance) because they are each missing one or more words. 1. â€Å"The game was created by Jane Roe and John Doe, an actress and former ad man.† When one person, place, or thing is described with two or more words or phrases, the template is â€Å"a/an (blank) and (blank).† When two or more nouns are described in tandem, however, the respective descriptions must be separated not only by a conjunction but also by an additional indefinite article: â€Å"The game was created by Jane Roe and John Doe, an actress and a former ad man.† (Otherwise, the sentence reads as if only John Doe is being described as an actress and former ad man.) 2. â€Å"Polling shows that social issues such as abortion represent perhaps Obama’s best opportunity to draw support from Romney.† This sentence, as written, implies that depending on Barack Obama’s position on abortion, he could obtain the support of his Republican challenger for the US presidency a significant writing (and/or editing) faux pas triggered by the absence of a word that might at first glance seem redundant to from. However, the phrase â€Å"away from,† rather than from alone, correctly indicates that the support would be derived not from Romney but from ambivalent or undecided voters encouraged not to vote for him: â€Å"Polling shows that social issues such as abortion represent perhaps Obama’s best opportunity to draw support away from Romney.† 3. â€Å"Prosecutors in the trial of a hockey mom accused of sex with her son’s teenage teammates gave the boys alcohol.† Although these errors two, not just one, in this example are not as significant in terms of import as the one in the previous example, they are more detrimental to the parties involved. For one thing, the hockey mom, not the prosecutors, allegedly provided alcohol to the youths. Second, the article later details that the woman had sex with two boys on her son’s team, not with â€Å"her son’s teenage teammates† an error of scope that implies that she serviced the entire team. The sentence, based on a reading of the entire article, should read â€Å"Prosecutors in the trial of a hockey mom accused of sex with two of her son’s teenage teammates say she gave the boys alcohol.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Business Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:36 Adjectives Describing Light3 Types of HeadingsHow Verbs Become Adjectives