Antecedent Joke

rogersgeorge on December 12th, 2019

I often complain about questionable antecedents being the bugbear of pronouns. Well, it can happen with prepositional phrases, too.

The Skin Doctor — https://www.buttersafe.com/2019/11/05/the-skin-doctor/

A part of good writing is thinking how you might be misunderstood, then preventing the misunderstanding. So how would you rewrite the statement in the first panel so the person with the mole wasn’t ambiguous?

Humor, Lesson Add to del.icio.us Digg This Subscribe to RSS feed

Leave a Reply

Free!

Discover five critical techniques for good writing, no charge. These are foundational to my philosophy of writing. Drop me a line at curmudgeon@writing-rag.com asking for the article, and I'll send it to you.

I don't get enough traffic to justify using an auto-responder, so you'll get the article directly from me.

I happen to have another article with some good tips. I'll send you both.

Bio

Rogers George has been a technical writer for more than 20 years. He has written on subjects as diverse as outhouse assembly, restaurant reviews, software, information security, and scientific equipment. He has his own writing consultancy and is always happy to discuss writing and grammar. Drop him a line at curmudgeon@writing-rag.com.

Meta

Tags