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The following is NOT a copy of a letter I received yesterday: ... rather, I received the following: This was the appalling letter I received, where I have added not one faggot to the fire, other than falsifying the company name and contact info. As you see, the letter opens with an egregious grammatical blunder, and the unctuous "reaching out" and then thrashes around in long exculpatory maunderings before it finally lets leach dribs and drabs of information about what the letter is actually written for. A heinous example of a letter to a customer, don't you think? "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | ||
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I think I'd have included a short sentence with more about the battery, to try to reassure you that they'd taken effective action to prevent a repeat. Something along the lines of 'We have changed our battery supplier because of this problem.' Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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Where? | |||
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Oh, Goofy!  Look again:The opening phrase, "As a valued Persiflage customer", indisputably modifies "we", and "we" is not a customer; the "you" later in the sentence is the intended target of that phrase! This blatant misplaced modifier error is among the most common I see/hear in advertising.This message has been edited. Last edited by: WeeWilly, "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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Arnie, I agree; your suggestion about the battery is an excellent one. Indeed, when I was constructing the proposed simplifying letter I first included such a remark, but felt that the letter had said enough by including "correcting" in the sentence that begins "Inspecting and correcting matters ...". Your suggestion quite legitimately make a bit more "marketing hay" out of this, which may be worthwhile; after all, it is worth recalling that this is a business, and so, wants to highlight its good points, and its customer vigilance! "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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...wanting to be alone with his family, the presence of a stranger superior to Mr. Yates must have been irksome - Jane Austen, Mansfield Park | |||
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Really ... do you think this is a good parallel? Anyway, Jane Austen has written many words, and I doubt that even she was 100% error-free. In fact, apparently she wasn't! Sorry, but nope, Goofy, it won't do! ... the modifier in the original letter was sadly out of place, it was wrong - ludicrously so - and no wriggling around, or resorting to academic sophistry or its equivalent, will ever make it anything else. It is an all-too-common misconstruction, however.  The following construction, while it may be rather uninspired diction, has the advantage of being correct.... Cheers. "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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Sounds like special pleading. The Austen quote is the same sort of construction as the one you're talking about, is it not? I'm saying it's a common part of English. I present this information for your interest only. No endorsement is intended or implied. | |||
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I have to agree with goofy. Calling that an egregious error is going a bit overboard. I'd rather have that than connecting two complete sentences with commas. But then the latter is a stickler for me, just as the former must be for you.This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh, | |||
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Calling it a "grammatical blunder" is incorrect. Your problem has little to do with grammar and more to do with rhetoric or pragmatics. As goofy points out the sentence is perfectly grammatical, although there may be other problems with it. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Oh, and just to be clear, I know that my complaint is not grammatical, but one of punctuation - and I am sure, to most, it is minor. Also, I do agree, WeeWilly, that your version provided clarity and decreased some of the wordiness of the other. | |||
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It is a severe blunder, but you're quite right in noting that the construction is not, per se, incorrect grammatically! Nonetheless, I still claim it is grammatically incorrect - and spectacularly so - because Garrulous, with this opening sentence, was trying to describe not "we", but "you" (the poor schmuck "we are reaching out to") only to fail so signally because of his, Garrulous', grammatical shortcomings! But the poor chap I feel so much sympathy for here is Goofy, for he must be in utter agony. After all, he has three choices in this instance: (a) to agree with me (and he would rather go a week without breakfast!); (b) to disagree with me (and then he would be abysmally incorrect); or (c) to remain silent. These are all grim choices, but the last probably chafes the least!  Sorry for the irreverence, but I am, as usual, just having fun! For all of that, the opening sentence of the letter is still an egregious grammatical blunder! Anyway, I am sorry that this abysmal letter did not raise more comment, for I find it a model of modern customer service mush! Cheers. "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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Goofy answered you, and z agreed with him. I sensed no agony. I consider both of them to be Wordcraft's in-house linguists. The problem I'd see with that original message you posted is that it is wordy (which I can be, as can others on this site ), thereby taking too long to get to the point. | |||
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The danger here is that the original letter was so badly written it bordered on parody. Apart from noting that it was badly written it wasn't worth wasting time on, although I suggested an improvement to the version Ww provided. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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I'm confused by Wee Willie's last post. First he says "it's not grammatically incorrect, but it is grammaticay incorrect." Then he says I must be in agony because I don't want to agree with him. I think we've agreed about some things in the past. The thing is, I don't know enough about it. I know that's it's a longstanding part of English, and that it often goes unnoticed. This suggests that it is grammatical. But I need to do more reading about it. Wee Willie's example sounds sillier, and the Austen example sounds less sillier. But they're the same sort of construction. | |||
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Egad, Kalleh, too long?!!! My post was 4 lines long PLUS THE ORIGINAL LETTER AS IT WAS RECEIVED, and a corrected version of it. Thus it was basically as short as it could be. Arne, your point is well taken, but that letter is very typical of modern business correspondence, and that is why I posted it. Cheerio. "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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Arne, Goofy; I am never sure just how such a business letter IS viewed in today's world. Do we all see letter as bad as I think it is? Fighting this sort of [atrocious?] writing and language usage is a major reason I participate in a language forum, and why I posted this entire letter "as is", without adding one faggot to the fire! Goofy, what is the "it" that is the long-standing part of English that you refer to? That opening sentence is outright wrong (and not just "silly") if its intention was to describe "you" with the phrase "As a valued Persiflage customer". If the phrase is aimed at describing "we", it is 100% [grammatically] correct, but do you really think this was the intention? Anyway, there is the letter, as I received it, and we can all wonder at it! Or not, apparently. Cheers. "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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The "it" is a misplaced modifier. The Austen quote also has a misplaced modifier, where the intended subject of the modifier is not the subject that the grammar suggests it should be. | |||
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Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage has an entry on dangling modifiers: where the subject of the participle phrase, infinitive clause, prepositional phrase, is omitted when it would have been different from that of the main clause. Here are some more examples: Happening to meet Sir Adam Ferguson, I presented him to Dr Johnson - James Boswell Born and raised in city apartments, it was always a marvel to me - Arthur Miller The patience of the all the founders of the Society was at last exhausted, except me and Roebuck - John Stuart Mill Vice is a creature of such frightful mien As, to be hated, needs but to be seen. But seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace. - Pope Dangling modifiers are old, common, and well-established. When the meaning is not ambiguous, some usage writers allow them. I'm inclined to say that they are grammatical. The main problem with them is that the juxtaposition can be silly or humorous: After being crushed to predetermined particle size Babcock's fluidized bed combustor can be fired with any solid, liquid, or gas fuel | |||
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Fulfilling one of the Rules of the Internet - 'Whatever the subject, someone's produced a site for it', there is Funny dangling and misplaced modifiers.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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Or Groucho Marx: --
"The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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Sorry to be confusing, WeeWilly. I meant that the company's (thus "original letter") letter was wordy - not yours. Yours was much shorter, got to the point and was more readable. | |||
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No problem, and no offense taken. I thought the original letter was enough "fun" (hilarious even) to deserve being posted "as is", particularly as it is a stellar example of modern business writing! "The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying" - Grahame | |||
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