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Friday, May 28, 2010
Criminal Sentence 396: Alma Mater Uh-Oh
From a Web site associated with my alma mater:
"We definitely came in knowing that Army was on a role."
Cringe!
"On a roll" means doing well.
"On a role" means you made a mistake!
3 comments:
Westley
said...
What threw me before I even got to the 'role' was the use of 'Army' as if it were a proper noun. I would have said, "We definitely came in knowing that _the_ Army was on a roll." (unless, of course, the rest of the paragraph set it up differently...I can't imagine how, though :-)
In 2009 and 2010, The Writer published 20 online columns and one print article of mine. These essays covered everything from semicolons to wordiness. The full text of all 21 are here on my blog!
I'm a copy editor and writer. I wrote The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier: How to Solve the Mysteries of Weak Writing, published in 2006 and now available in paperback. In 2007-2008, I wrote "The Sentence Sleuth" column for Writer's Digest magazine.
3 comments:
What threw me before I even got to the 'role' was the use of 'Army' as if it were a proper noun. I would have said, "We definitely came in knowing that _the_ Army was on a roll." (unless, of course, the rest of the paragraph set it up differently...I can't imagine how, though :-)
In this case Army is correct because Cornell played Army. I guess they play Navy, too. I guess I should have said this was a sporting contest.
Ah! Yes, that does make sense. Thanks for the clarification!
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