Concord Failures unnoticed by many a very experienced writer

When books do not provide anwsers readily, engaging in dicussion may.





“If we don’t take these opportunities now, the windows will close, others will seize it, and we will miss the opportunity.”

The above is the corrected sentence taken from the answers to Will + base form of verbs under This, next and the coming Monday appearing in your column on Thursday November 6, 2008.

Do the 'it' and 'opportunity' both stand for/represent 'taking these opportunities'? If so, is the sentence well constructed?

Or, should the sentence be “If we don’t take these opportunities now, the windows will close, others will seize, and we will miss the opportunities.”

The above sentences form the text of an e-mail written by me to the Editor of Mind Our English of The Star who has in reply provided the answer (reproduced below) given by the writer writing (or to be exact, recasting) the sentence in question:-

Fadzilah Amin answers your question(s):

Thank you for pointing out that the word "opportunities" should not have "it" as its pronoun. It was an oversight on my part. Another reader has also pointed this out to me and with the help of his suggestion for a better sentence, I formulated another sentence to replace the original reader’s. It reads:

"If we don't take these opportunities now, others will seize them, or the windows will close."

The editor may publish that correspondence together with this, to show the reasons for the changes, or let you have a copy of it at any rate.

You will note from the reply that the faulty sentence has been recast in a manner different from my suggested approach which is advocated in a good book teaching people to write and speak better English.

Much have I learned from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from my students.
-- Talmud