Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 174

A messy piece of prose, found by Dr Faustus:

Link: Julia H. Chang, ‘In Defense of Theory’, The Chronicle of Higher Education (5 September, 2014)

The substitution of a preposition for a conjunction in the middle sentence shows that the writing has not been adequately proofread; but there are problems with the syntax in the opening sentence too. As it stands, the way the first sentence is phrased — ‘As a student, I recall feeling empowered when reading’ — implies that the writer is presently a student, looking back on the effect of recent reading. However, the final sentence, with its reference to ‘many of my own students’, indicates that this is not the case, and the writer is later identified as an ‘assistant professor’. The opening phrase that modifies the ‘I’ and the present participle both need to be altered, and the sentence reordered, to represent the facts accurately: ‘I recall feeling empowered when, as a student, I read’.

by for but; ‘As a student, I recall feeling empowered when reading’