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Thursday, May 13, 2010

Criminal Sentence 387: Clothes Make the Dandy

From a book I am reading (with British spelling):

"Compared to the cheap travelling clothes of these passengers, he was quite the dandy."

This sentence compares "cheap clothes" to "he." Uh-oh.

Here's a better version:

"He was quite the dandy compared to these cheaply clothed passengers."

The sentence makes the writer!

3 comments:

Westley said...

Possibly trying to keep the style of the author (ending the sentence with the declaration that he was a dandy), I would try something like this:

Compared to the passengers, who were wearing cheap travelling clothes, he was quite the dandy.

How’s that??


BTW which word is Brit-spelled? I can’t always remember which words are different in the two Englishes

The Sentence Sleuth said...

I like your rewrite. The British spelling is "travelling." Americans use one "L."

Guido Henkel said...

How about this one?

Compared to the passengers in their cheap traveling clothes, he was quite the dandy.