negation + "including" (dangling modifier for free)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 4, 2005, at 4:23 PM, Victoria Neufeldt wrote:

> Negation + 'including' doesn't work for me either.  But, man, that
> whole sentence needs to be recast: besides the negation-+-'including'
> and the dangling modifier, 'including' doesn't even make sense here,
> because there was only *one* 'no' vote.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> -----
>> Although touted by university officials and city staff as a historic
>> deal, not everyone was in favor of the agreement, including council
>> member Yoriko Kishimoto.  Of the six council members
>> eligible to vote
>> on the Mayfield agreement, Kishimoto cast the sole "no" vote.

i'm not sure we can criticize jason green so strongly on this one.
to be fair to green, the first reference class is university
officials and city staff, not just council members, so there's a
group (of more than one, potentially) for kishimoto to be included in.

but it's still inept.  the problem is that "university officials and
city staff" looks too universal; the "although" clause is probably
going to be understood as claiming that *all* members of this class
touted the agreement as a historic deal.  but then we learn that
kishimoto clearly was of another opinion.  then, if we're generous,
we go back and re-interpret "university officials and city staff" as
"some university officials and city staff".  *then* we're got the
larger reference class, which includes the touters and kishimoto too,
without any implicature that kishimoto was among the touters.

arnold