Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Scalpel in the patient

This looks like an editing error, producing a cousin of the McCartney preposition, which I suppose we should call the McCartney pronoun: "Including four of whom who had experience running airports."

"Including four who had experience running airports" would have been fine. So would "four of whom had experience running airports." (And either would have left the lede a line shorter.) But somebody apparently couldn't leave well enough alone.

Remember the basic rule of editing: When you undertake surgery on someone else's prose, close things up correctly and count the instruments when you're finished. Don't leave a scalpel in the patient. It looks awful on the X-rays.

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1 Comments:

Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

I don't think that "she beat out five candidates, including four of whom had experience" works. It's the "including". You need to axe that too if you want "of whom".

That's just ugly.

11:25 PM, August 08, 2011  

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