Multimangle, # 40

Today’s mangle of ‘appropriate’, which may be an unchecked error rather than a typographical slip, comes from a German university and brings for company some dubious syntax and grammar:

Link: CENIDE (Center for Nanointegration Duisburg-Essen), ‘PhD project’ breadcrumb

apropirate; candidates for PhD theses which have a master’s degree; syntax

Double-take, # 155

The inclusion of a few relative pronouns and some hyphens would mean that this piece of text could be grasped in a single reading:

Link: The Independent, ‘Soldiers told to move their wedding so Obama can play golf’

AP reports the White House sources said they were unaware the couple had been told they should relocate; no on the record comment

You Cannot Be Serious, # 43

This substitution of an adverb for a relative pronoun reads oddly:

Link: The Sunday Times, ‘Healthcare system is in need of a cure’

to where for to which

Double-take, # 137

Ugly grammar:

Link: The Guardian, ‘Police from several UK forces seek details of Charlie Hebdo readers’

Since the customer is deemed human (‘who’), why not the newsagent? (Compare butcher, baker, candlestick-maker &c.) The relative pronoun ‘that’ would be correct were the writer referring to the business, but in that case ‘newsagent’ would need to take the possessive form — ‘a newsagent’s that’ — in which the possession, ‘shop’, is idiomatically omitted.

a newsagent that

You Cannot Be Serious, # 38

Grammatical contradiction:

Link: The Guardian, ‘Police from several UK forces seek details of Charlie Hebdo readers’

The variation of relative pronouns here is nonsensical. Traditionally, who is used for human beings and that for inanimate objects. Although this distinction is not always maintained, the needs of clarity demand that there should be consistency in the usage chosen; but there isn’t here. Why is the customer’s humanity allowed, but not the newsagent’s? Perhaps the authors — there are two — meant to write newsagent’s, thus referring not to the person, but to the business, which would, of course, take that not who.

newsagent that, customer who

You Cannot Be Serious, # 25

This — another from Teach First — is an example of the kind of grammatical idiocy that ensues when logical relative clause formation is abandoned:

Link: Teach First, ‘Why we exist’

The writer clearly recognizes that using a zero relative clause has compromised coherence, but attempts to restore syntactical logic, and thus unambiguous meaning, by inserting a comma in the gap left by the omitted relative pronoun (that). In addition to being grammatically dubious (at best), the statement’s impact has been weakened since the comma interrupts the movement from the first clause to the second, thus disconnecting them, where the relative pronoun would underline the relationship between the clauses.

Zero relative clauses are occurring ever more frequently in various kinds of writing, and can even be found in formal scholarly compositions at various levels. However, it is apparent that clarity of expression and effective communication of sense are not their primary motivation; on the contrary, both are often undermined. It would seem that zero relative clauses have escaped from the world of journalism, where every word counts because it is counted. They have no place in education at any level.

Incidentally, it has taken me some days to work out that Teach First is called ‘Teach First’ —

— and not, as its prominent logo suggests, ‘TeachFirst’:

zero relative clause: so poor, providing; Teach First or TeachFirst