"Not only do candidates of both major parties in the United States have starkly different views on the pressing issues of the day, including climate change, war, taxes, abortion, education, gender and sexual identity, immigration, crime and the role of government in American life." Is this not a sentence fragment, not a sentence? Am I just peeving, or should the New York Times know better?

NYT should DEFINITELY know better.

You are right. Additionally the word "both" sounds wrong because it would be quite impossible for one party to have a starkly different view while the other party agreed with them. A clunker of a sentence all round.

Seeing it in context:

quote:

Not only do candidates of both major parties in the United States have starkly different views on the pressing issues of the day, including climate change, war, taxes, abortion, education, gender and sexual identity, immigration, crime and the role of government in American life. They also disagree on democracy itself, especially one of its essential pillars — willingness to accept defeat at the polls.

It seems a simple punctuational mishap. Most newspapers and other periodicals have long since made their editors redundant. Such is life.

Perhaps reality is also redundant. I'm reading "How The Mind Changed" by Joseph Jibelli, wherein he quoted a French sociologist of the 19th Century who noted that charismatic types can make groups dismiss morality and logic in order to be a part of a group. Stalin to Hitler to Trump to ??? Does current groupthink make us believe that sentence structure is irrelevant because some guru says so?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Geoff,

...and that the Oxford comma is unnecessary?

quote:

Does current groupthink make us believe that sentence structure is irrelevant because some guru says so?

Which group? On this forum I always seem to be the minority opinion. All I am saying is given the sentence fragment that comes after the cited mistaken sentence, the intended meaning is perfectly understandable. It's a simple mishap in punctuation.

I tend to use the serial comma in my writing, but even I know that most of the dire examples given in its defense are horribly overwrought examples that would never be found in the wild. But as god and Ayn Rand are my witnesses they can be funny.

Is it just me or are folks getting way too sensitive over these flyblown zombie peeves?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Sorry, Jim, it's the ghost of James J. Kilpatrick haunting me.

Hah! The first time I glanced at that I read it as "James T Kirk"

quote:

Originally posted by haberdasher:
Hah! The first time I glanced at that I read it as "James T Kirk"

I'd rather be haunted by Uhura.

Back to the NYT, the context definitely helps. It seems that the first sentence should be connected to the second with a simple "but." I do agree with Bob's comment about "both." So often people use "both" wrong.