Thursday, September 12, 2013

Criminal Sentence 659: Don't Pin People on Your Corkboard!

A sentence from something I'm editing:

"... a large corkboard with notes from clients pinned to it."

I had to chuckle at this, as I imagined some poor clients pinned to his corkboard. The phrase "pinned to it" goes with "notes," not "clients."

Let's unpin them:

"... a large corkboard on which I've pinned notes from clients."

That's a little more formal sounding but a lot less painful for those clients (and for picky editors).
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3 comments:

  1. MarySeptember 12, 2013 at 1:28 PM

    Gack! Being pinned to a corkboard must be worse than being put in the stocks! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 12, 2013 at 1:49 PM

    I richly deserved to be tacked to the Sentence Sleuth Corkboard of Shame for that one! Glad you caught it. But let's be honest, there *are* clients who deserve that treatment; just not the nice ones who send lovely notes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 9, 2015 at 10:23 PM

    What about "... a large corkboard on which I've pinned clients' notes."? Or do they no longer belong to the clients once sent?

    ReplyDelete

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