kitchen table math, the sequel: dangling modifiers at the Fed

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

dangling modifiers at the Fed

Despite having cut interest rates by 100 basis points in January, layoffs were increasing, inventories were up, and consumer confidence had fallen to its lowest level in more than four years.

A Term at the Fed: An Insider's View
Laurence H. Meyer
A Term at the Fed : An Insider's View

7 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

I am going to venture a hypothesis that if Laurence Meyer had been taught sentence diagramming (or sentence combining) he wouldn't have written this sentence.

Ditto for the editor and copy editor who didn't catch it.

Debbie Stier said...

I keep having this urge to get up on the roof and scream on the top of my lungs, I KNOW WHAT A DANGLING MODIFIER IS! DO YOU?

momof4 said...

My younger kids (HS grads 01 & 03) had a sixth-grade teacher who admitted that she didn't know how to diagram sentences and that she thought it was a waste of time. She wasn't unusual at that time and is probably the norm now.

Fortunately, they had a (very elderly) 7th-grade teacher who did know how and did teach it. Teachers like her are probably as rare as hen's teeth now.

Catherine Johnson said...

Rare as hen's teeth - definitely.

Catherine Johnson said...

btw, Meyers' book is quite good -

Anonymous said...

He should have to try to diagram his sentence.

SusanS

Catherine Johnson said...

He sure should have!

I gotta find that David Mulroy passage about using sentene diagramming to translate ancient Greek texts....