Timeline for What's wrong with this sentence? ("which should have made" vs. "making") [closed]
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11 events
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| Sep 23, 2017 at 16:08 | history | closed |
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| Sep 23, 2017 at 14:19 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Dropping the parenthetical from the second sentence leaves 'Hiram Bingham first crossed the Andes Mountains in February 1909, making his travels difficult.' Though I'd agree that it's silly to claim that the use of misplaced modifiers is always scandalous, I'd say that 'I made my travels difficult' sounds unidiomatic and so I'd avoid this rendering. I'd probably use 'Hiram Bingham first crossed the Andes Mountains (in 1909) in February – the wettest month of the year, which should have made his travels difficult.' | |
| Sep 23, 2017 at 4:12 | comment | added | Sven Yargs | ...a parenthetical, it seems to me that the original sentence can be read in exactly the same way as the version with parentheses. And since there is nothing wrong with the version with parentheses, the assertion that the original sentence is incorrect in some fundamental way seems to me to be false. Is there more context to the assignment, such as a description of the basis upon which you are supposed to determine that one version is better than the other? | |
| Sep 23, 2017 at 4:09 | comment | added | Sven Yargs | Suppose that instead of commas, we used parentheses to set of the "the wettest month of the year." That would give us this: "Hiram Bingham first crossed the Andes Mountains in February 1909 (the wettest month of the year), which should have made his travels difficult." It seems to me that the sense of the sentence is "Hiram Bingham first crossed the Andes Mountains in February 1909, which should have made his travels difficult" with an added parenthetical about why February was a particularly problematic month for travel. Since commas are interchangeable with parentheses for setting off... | |
| Sep 23, 2017 at 0:51 | answer | added | Jeff Morrow | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 22, 2017 at 23:37 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited tags; edited title
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| Sep 22, 2017 at 23:29 | answer | added | psosuna | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 22, 2017 at 23:19 | history | edited | Kevin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 6 characters in body
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| Sep 22, 2017 at 22:38 | review | Close votes | |||
| Sep 23, 2017 at 16:08 | |||||
| Sep 22, 2017 at 22:22 | comment | added | Hot Licks | Who says the first is wrong? He crossed by ornithopter, so the wetness didn't really bother him. | |
| Sep 22, 2017 at 22:17 | history | asked | Megan Walsh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |