Dodgers Broadcaster Watching Grammar After Fall

Here's a little fun with grammar for a Monday morning: Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully fell recently at his home and was knocked unconscious. When reporters asked how this would affect his spring training workload, Scully answered as follows:

"I'm supposed to cut back on dangling participles, and I'm not allowed to split any infinitives for at least another week."


I hope Scully has no other complications from his fall, and I hope all of you have a great week. By the way, cutting back on dangling participles and split infinitives is good advice for your grammar health in ANY week!

Here are a couple of reminders:

DANGLING PARTICIPLE:

While eating lunch yesterday, my cell phone died. (Really? Does your cell phone eat lunch every day?) This sentence should read as follows:


While I was eating lunch yesterday, my cell phone died.


SPLIT INFINITIVE:

I like to occasionally walk to work.

This sentence reads much more smoothly if OCCASIONALLY does not come between TO and WALK. (TO WALK is an infinitive; that is, TO + VERB.)
It should read this way:


I like to walk to work occasionally.

An ING verb cannot be the main verb by itself.

When proofreading what you write, always check to make sure you are creating complete sentences. If you move words around, it is easy to have a sentence fragment without a complete verb. Notice in the first sentence of this paragraph that "are" is used as a helping verb with "creating" to create the complete sentence.



Here is a sentence that appeared Monday in an article in The Birmingham News. The reporter was writing about behavioral health issues found in soldiers returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan:



The screenings, which are required for all U. S. service members, including members of Guard and Reserve units, who return from combat tours.



There are three verb groups in this long sentence, but what the reporter ended up with was simply three verb phrases and no main statement in the sentence. I suspect this happened when he tried to combine ideas and then forgot to go back and proofread what he put together.



It is simple to fix this goof by simply eliminating the word "which" and turning "are required" into the main verb:



The screenings are required for all U. S. service members, including members of Guard and Reserve units who return from combat tours.



Notice that this sentence reads more smoothly if the comma between "units" and "who" is removed. The reason? The writer is using "who return from combat tours" to QUALIFY which units he is talking about. The comma would only be used if the "who" part is nice to know but does not QUALIFY the particular units.