Sunday, May 15, 2011

Thrown Away a Better Intro

Christopher Hitchens with advice to writers in a recent Vanity Fair article:
“Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro.”
I am currently reading The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White...
Rule 7. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject. Participial phrases preceded by a conjunction or by a preposition, nouns in apposition, adjectives, and adjective phrases come under the same rule if they begin a sentence.

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