In English, Sentence Structure Makes a Difference

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.

At our college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences, we have a convenient email discussion list called FYI. (As you may know, the letters FYI stand for “for your information”.)

This email list is for information that is not college-related. People use it to sell things, announce local events, seek housing, and so forth.

Because FYI is informal, people sometimes write messages for it hurriedly and do not edit them. The results can be funny. Here’s an example from a while ago:

Looking for place to live: I’m . . . hoping to find somewhere 650$ or less for me, my two dogs and my rabbit that has a washer dryer.

This wording makes it sound as if the rabbit has a washer-dryer. (I can just imagine the teeny tiny washer-dryer!)

The problem is the sentence structure: In English, a relative clause refers to the noun shortly before it in the sentence. If the clause actually refers to something else, either the sentence should be restructured or more than one sentence should be used.

For the example from FYI, here’s one revised version that would avoid the problem:

Looking for place to live: I’m . . . hoping to find somewhere for $650 or less for me, my two dogs, and my rabbit. It should have a washer-dryer.

In editing your work, check placement of relative clauses. Don’t seem to have a rabbit with a washing machine!

Until the next post—

Barbara