Correspondence with editors of Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Dear Sir / Madam
Browsing through your dictionary while preparing teaching material
for my GMAT class on “faults in parallel construction” I came across the
following sentence in your dictionary under the entry “academic’:
“He was offered a teaching job and decided to return to academic
life.”
As in the first clause “he” has been used in the passive voice
whereas in the second clause in the active voice, I wonder if the above
sentence is elegant enough and conforms to the rules of parallel construction.
With all humility at my command I suggest the following alternatives:
1. When he
was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic life.
2. Soon
after he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic
life.
3. On being
offered a teaching job he decided to return to academic life.
4. With the
offer of a teaching job he decided to return to academic life.
In order to avoid violating the rules of parallelism the simplest
solution is inserting an extra “he” after and, before decided:
“He was offered a teaching job, and he decided to return to
academic life”
I look forward to hearing from you.
Warm regards
Hareshwar P Singh
Reply from the associate editor of Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Dear Hareshwar P Singh,
Yes, technically the sentence "He
was offered a teaching job and decided to return to academic life"
provides an example of faulty parallelism. This kind of construction is,
however, quite common, even in published, edited prose. You can certainly make
the sentence more technically correct by adding "he" after
"and" if you like, but in all but the most formal writing the
sentence as it is will be fine.
Your first three suggestions all
continue the use of the passive voice, so they will not correct the faulty
parallelism. The fourth might be made workable in a sentence like "With
the offer of a teaching job on the table, he decided to return to academic
life."
Sincerely,
Emily Brewster
My Reply to Ms. Brewster
Dear Ms. Brewster
Thank you very much for your kind response. Please forgive me for
claiming a little more of your valuable time.
You write, “Your first three suggestions all continue the use
of the passive voice, so they will not correct the faulty parallelism.” My
position is that my first three suggestions, in spite of using the passive
voice, don’t contain the faults of parallelism.
You have apparently contradicted yourself in your letter. You
write “You can certainly make the sentence more technically correct by
adding "he" after "and" if you like”—in which case the
revised sentence will read as “He was offered a teaching job, and he decided to
return to academic life.” For all practical purposes, the first part / clause
is in the passive voice while the second one is in the active voice. If it is
acceptable to you, then why do you object to the first of my suggested
solutions, “When he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic
life”? Please note that conforming to the rules of parallelism I have used the
conjunction “when” to separate one “he” in the passive voice and another “he”
in the active voice. Needless to say, my above sentence can also be written as
“He decided to return to academic life when he was offered a teaching
job.”
Now let me take up my other two suggested solutions. The first is:
“Soon after he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to
academic life.”
Please note that just like my first sentence, I have here
separated the two he’s by using the conjunction “after”.
My next suggested solution is:
“On being offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic
life.” This is a standard English construction which starts with a participle
clause. Let me quote the following sentence from Michael Swan’s Oxford
Practical English Usage (411.6):
“On being introduced, British people often shake hands.”
Let me quote another sentence from John Eastwood’s Oxford Guide to
English Grammar (135.6)
“Not having been informed, we were completely in the dark.” Such
constructions using a participle clause are grammatically correct and don’t
involve the violation of the rules of parallelism.
I do not claim to be a scholar of English. Only, I want to learn
correct English to be an English teacher worth my salt.
With regards
Hareshwar P Singh
Reply from Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Dear Hareshwar Singh,
I apologize: I'm afraid I answered your previous e-mail too
hastily. The alternate sentences you propose do indeed correct the faulty
parallelism in the original sentence.
For your interest I include below an article from our usage
dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage.
Sincerely,
Emily Brewster
_______________________________
Emily A. Brewster
Associate Editor
Merriam-Webster, Inc.
www.merriam-webster.com
www.wordcentral.com
www.learnersdictionary.com
www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com
www.merriam-websterunabridged.com
Yet
Another Issue with editor of Merriam-Webster Dictionaries
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Cislo
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 8:30 AM
To: Michael Belanger
Subject: FW: [Copy of E-mail sent to mwsales@m-w.com]
New Inquiry Submitted
My
Original Letter
Please refer to 'tone' in your online thesaurus.
Why not include 'note' as one of the synonyms of 'tone' as the vice versa has
been done in your entry 'note'?
Your own example is:
<spoke with a note of irritation in her voice>
Another example: "There was a note of irony in his voice."--Oxford
Dictionary
Thanks
HP Singh
Their Reply to Me
Dear
Mr. Singh:
Your query was forwarded to me, and I am happy to respond. Sorry about the
delayed response.
Your suggestion has merit, as the word groups to which "tone" and
"note" belong certainly have some overlapping of meaning. For reasons
that are too complicated to go into right now, I am going to present the two
word groups as they appear in the print version of the thesaurus. In an effort
to spare the online user the burden of clicking on links, the online version
splices information that would force the book user to flip between pages. In
the book edition of the thesaurus the word groups are at the entries for
"aura" and "style":
Aura
a special quality or impression associated with something <the monastery
perched high on a mountaintop had an aura of unreality and mystery about it>
Synonyms: air, ambience (or ambiance), aroma, atmosphere, climate, flavor,
halo, karma, mood, nimbus, note, odor, patina, smell, temper, vibration(s)
Related Words: aureole (or aureola), mystique, romance; genius loci; feel,
feeling, sensation, sense, spirit; attribute, character, characteristic, image,
mark, notion, peculiarity, picture, property, trait; color, illusion, overtone,
semblance, suggestion, tone
Style
a distinctive way of putting ideas into words <I correctly identified the
quotation because I recognized Mark Twain's inimitable style>
Synonyms: fashion, locution, manner, mode, phraseology, tone, vein
Related Words: address, delivery, elocution; archaism, colloquialism,
regionalism; acceptation, connotation, denotation, expression, idiom
Thesaurus entries are individually crafted by real people (in so far as an
editor can be called a real person). How to shape an entry and what to include
in the list of "Related Words" is always a subjective decision. As
editors we always try to keep in mind the meaning shared by the listed
synonyms. In this case, the meanings are "a special quality or impression
associated with something" and "a distinctive way of putting ideas
into words." I think that if one looks at the meaning given at the "style"
word group, one might see why the editor did not conclude that the synonyms at
"aura" were particularly relevant. On the other hand, with each new
revision of the thesaurus, we are always prepared to rethink an entry. We will
certainly keep your revision in mind for the next edition.
Thanks for your interest.
Sent to me by Ms. Brewster
(From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:)
Faulty Parallelism
Faulty parallelism is a term used by
composition teachers for the placement of different structures in coordination
with each other. Very often such faulty parallelism occurs with the
conjunctions "and" and "or" with such other coordinators as
"either" and "neither." Here are a couple of made-up
examples for illustrative purposes:
The old car was a relic and rusty.
To drink heavily and taking too many drugs are bad for your
health.
These examples--one from the teacher's
guide to an English text and the other from a text reported in a technical
journal--show the vice in a plain and simple form. In the first a noun and an
adjective are coordinated; in the second, an infinitive phrase and a
participial phrase. Those who teach composition in high school or in college
are necessarily very fierce on such constructions.
But when we get away from the writing of
the tyro and into the world of the professional and presumably polished writer,
we have a different problem. Faulty parallelisms still occur, but they tend to
be almost invisible. This new invisibility would suggest that in edited prose
faulty parallelism may generally be accounted a venial sin--if the writer
doesn't notice it and the editor doesn't notice it and the reader doesn't
notice it, how serious can it be?
Moreover, what if the usage writer
doesn't notice it? In Strunk & White 1959 we find this rule (printed in
boldface italics in the book):
15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form.
This is followed by numerous examples of
faulty parallelism, complete with corrected versions. We assume that E. B.
White, who presumably polished this up from Strunk's original, believed in the
rule. E. B. White the grammarian, at least. What about E. B. White the
essayist? Joseph M. Williams, in "The Phenomenology of Error,"
(College Composition and Communications, May 1981) quotes this passage:
I have written this account in penitence and in grief, as a man
who failed to raise his pig, and to explain my deviation from the classic
course of so many raised pigs. The grave in the woods is unmarked, but Fred can
direct the mourner to it unerringly and with immense good will ...
--"Death of a Pig," Essays of E. B. White, 1977
Did you notice any faulty parallelisms there? (Williams says there
are two.) But White presumably didn't notice any, and neither have most of his
readers.
Here are a few more examples:
The award, which carries a $1,000 cash prize with it, goes to a
trade-book editor under 40 who has shown special talent in discovering and/or
getting the best work out of his authors--Victor S. Navasky, N.Y. Times Book
Rev., 15 Apr. 1973
... the stripes are either plainer or appear more commonly in the
young-- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
1859
In the Warrington
family, and to distinguish them from other personages of that respectable race,
these effigies have always gone by the name of `The Virginians.'--W. M.
Thackeray, The Virginians, 1857 (in A. S. Hill 1895)
... a lady very learned in stones, ferns, plants, and vermin, and
who had written a book about petals--Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers,
1857 (in Hill)
... before I was capable, either of Understanding my Case, or how
to Amend it--Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, 1722
You could probably find such examples by the dozen, if you were to
sharpen your eye so as to be able to detect them readily. These are, as we
said, venial sins; they are not ornaments or nice turns of phrase to be
imitated. We think you should try to avoid them in your writing. But if you
slip, no one may notice.
