Missing Words Change Everything

Posted: September 11, 2012

[caption id="attachment_10514" align="alignright" width="300"]© Texelart - Fotolia.com[/caption]Be very careful when you're writing, a missing word can change everything.

Empires, fortunes, and people rise and fall and fall on the insertion or omission of a word or two. OK, so the stakes are usually not so high, but misunderstandings and embarrassment are bad enough. Here are sentences that suffer (in increasing order of significance) because they are each missing one or more words.

1. “The game was created by Jane Roe and John Doe, an actress and former ad man.”
When one person, place, or thing is described with two or more words or phrases, the template is “a/an (blank) and (blank).” When two or more nouns are described in tandem, however, the respective descriptions must be separated not only by a conjunction but also by an additional indefinite article: “The game was created by Jane Roe and John Doe, an actress and a former ad man.” (Otherwise, the sentence reads as if only John Doe is being described — as an actress and former ad man.)

Read entire article Missing Words Change Everything

Biz Tip from Daily Writing Tips