All too often editors and staff writers of the Times Daily reveal themselves to be participially challenged.
The participial phrase is a legitimate grammatical device. Alas, when used improperly, it produces a bastardized, often ludicrous result. Two examples follow, both from very recent issues, and illustrate the point nicely:
First, from the predictably folksy Sunday column by Executive Editor Wayne Mitchell (Page 1D, May 27,2007):
"While driving around town, the oil light flickered on Kathy's minivan"
This would be an extraordinary "oil light' indeed, if it were able to mount the driver's seat and steer itself, Kathy, and the remainder of the minivan about the public roads. Of course it was NOT the oil light behind the wheel, but a human driver. Read literally, however, the sentence places the oil light behind the wheel.
At the other end of the seniority spectrum, Staff Writer Trevor Stokes portrays these improbable actions on the part of a local health care worker (Page 4B, May 28, 2007):
"At ECM, struggling to get off the gurney, a nurse sensed Hollander's erratic behavior and asked him where he was."
As you might surmise, the struggle was not on the part of the attending nurse. The struggling person here was the patient lying on the gurney, namely a Mr. Hollander, described earlier in the article as having been "strapped to a gurney" by paramedics assisting him during an unfortunate bout with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Mr. Stokes might also be said to suffer from PTSD, that being, in his case, "Participles Taking Strange Directions."
These are not isolated examples of the Times Daily's misuse of the participial phrase. Such assaults on the Mother Tongue have become commonplace, both in our local paper and in the media generally, including the electronic variety.
I am advised that the Times Daily provides gratis copies of the paper to local schools, to be used, one would suppose, in the study of current events and other subject matter, to which I can only say, "HORRORS!" Those of you who are principals, teachers or parents of students in the local school systems will do well to caution young minds within your charge NOT to rely on the Times Daily as in any way a model of good English usage.
Not all is lost, however. The grammatical and syntactical errors in those free issues might provide instructional material for an exercise in which students are rewarded for ferreting out such semi-literate uses as are described above. Extra credit could be awarded to those students whose language skills rise above the rudimentary levels practiced by professional journalists who for too long have allowed their copies of Fowler's "Modern English Usage" and Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" to gather dust.
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