no fun with pronouns

Barbara Need bhneed at GMAIL.COM
Fri Dec 10 01:23:36 UTC 2010


Neal,

Would that have been better with commas?

"Dillinger's sometimes hands out fliers at Broad and High streets
reminding people [that] the restaurant[,] on the 16th floor of the
LeVeque Tower[,] has a patio just for smokers."

Barbara

Barbara Need
Ithaca

On 9 Dec 2010, at 12:24 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:

> The journalistic squeezing in of additional information in the wrong
> place
> gave me trouble in interpreting an anaphoric relation in this
> sentence:
>
> "Dillinger's sometimes hands out fliers at Broad and High streets
> reminding
> people [that] the restaurant on the 16th floor of the LeVeque Tower
> has a
> patio just for smokers."
>
> Dillinger's and the restaurant on the 16th floor are the same entity.
> Instead of just saying "it", the writer tried to use a more elaborate
> anaphoric device that didn't work.
> http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2005/08/01/anaphoric-epithets-gone-wrong/
>
> Neal

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