Wrong Punctuation?

Readers will be confused or even annoyed reading sentences which are incorrectly punctuated.




Here at the Research Centre, innovation never stops. Because we need to continue unlocking all the secrets in food.

The above is taken from a full-page advertisement appearing in a popular national English daily.

Is is more discerning to separate the message into two parts, the second part being not a complete sentence?

It is obvious the two can be joined together into one complete and grammatical sentence conveying the same message: Here at the Research Centre, innovation never stops because we need to continue unlocking all the secrets in food.


It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle

Ambiguity will emerge if any writer (experienced or not) is not careful

Most people would like to have the favour of reading messages written straight to the point.





An office worker, who declined to be named, said the staff claimed that someone had illegally entered the building to try and commit suicide after two glass panes on the ground floor were found shattered by a security guard.

The above is a paragraph taken from a news item in a popular national English daily.

It appears from the paragraph that two glass panes on the ground floor were found shattered by a security guard. Obviously, this is not the intended meaning.

The paragraph needs to be recast to do away with ambiguity to show the intended meaning as follows:-

An office worker, who declined to be named, said the staff claimed that someone had illegally entered the building to try and commit suicide after a security guard found two glass panes on the ground floor shattered.

Here is another example : Learn how you can use design to drive business at The Design School. It is an advertisement inserted by a college in a newspaper.

Such construction can give you the meaning : Learn how you can use design to drive business at The Design School. You know for sure that this is not the intended meaning of the advertiser who actually wants the message to be understood as : At The Design School, learn how you can use design to drive business.

Vigilance is, therefore, the key to proper writing.

Chance favors only the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

Sentence without a subject

Apart from having an interesting subject matter, a piece of writing must be grammatically sound to be a good read for readers.




Many a time you have seen a sentence being written without a subject - a common error quite frequently committed by writers (experienced or otherwise).

Take for instance the sentence "Just because you've retired, doesn't mean your life and health have to go downhill" which appears on the front page of a pullout of a popular English daily.

If you hear the sentence in a speech, you may not find anything wrong with it.

On analysis, you will detect the error. 'Just because you've retired' is an adverb clause (expressing cause and effect). As you know, an adverb clause can be placed elsewhere in the sentence not necessarily at the beginning. Care, however, must be exercised not to misplace it or else, the sentence will become ungrammatical or a different meaning or ambiguity will emerge.

In this case, if you shift the adverb clause to the end of the sentence, its meaning will not be changed; but in doing so, you will realize that the sentence has no subject - doesn't mean (the main clause) your life and health have to go downhill just because you've retired.

A subject is, therefore, required to be added in front of the main clause to make the sentence complete. Such a subject should be in the form of a preparatory pronoun (it): "Just because you've retired, it doesn't mean your life and health have to go downhill."

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
-- Galileo Galilei

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

Typesetting errors?

Slips/errors still occur even though a lot of guards are in place.

The two adjoining sentences below are taken from the advice/solution provided for a reader’s problem in It’s her choice to make (which was among the TOP 5 MOST VIEWED STORIES ONLINE on its day of publication).

“The early months of romance are always more exciting and remarkable. Especially when the lady is in distress, seeks you out to the rescue.”

The second sentence has in its first part an adverb clause, ‘Especially when the lady is in distress’. What follows is the main clause, ‘seeks you out to the rescue’; but there is no subject in this main clause. The sentence is, hence, incomplete or ungrammatical. A subject (which is ‘the lady’ or a pronoun ‘she’) must be added before 'seeks'.

Alternatively, the two sentences can be merged into one as ‘The early months of romance are always more exciting and remarkable especially when the lady is in distress and seeks you out to the rescue.’

The above mistake/s may be due to a ‘mis-set’ in typesetting and may not be attributed to the writer, however.