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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Criminal Sentence 159: Verb, Verb Verb; Parallel, Parallel, Parallel

From a book I am reading:

"He was in his eighties, quite deaf, and seemed in poor health."

This is a classic unparallel sentence. He was description, description, and description; not he was description, description, and verb. Or, he was verb, verb, verb.

You can fix this sentence in various ways:

"He was in his eighties, was quite deaf, and seemed in poor health."
"He was in his eighties, quite deaf, and seemingly in poor health."
"In his eighties, he was quite deaf and seemed in poor health."
And so on...

1 comment:

Liza said...

Parallel sentences can be so tricky at times!