Mental_floss Messes Up Agreement

mental_floss is just about my favorite magazine. It offers short bits of useful and interesting information in a fun and funny format that has me reading page after page when I only meant to scan one paragraph. It's great to keep in the car for traffic jams or take along for your pedicure, not to mention putting a back issue in the bathroom for long and short visits.

That being said, I must take exception to a sentence that appears on page 67 in the current issue. It appears in a series of short articles about how restaurants became popular in the world.

One of the more distinctive aspects of restaurants in 19th-century France were their enormous menus.

Let's be logical here. If you are referring to ONE of the aspects of the restaurants, then the verb that goes with ONE would be the singular form WAS. ASPECTS, which is plural, is part of the prepositional phrase "of the more distinctive aspects" and does not affect the verb. MENUS, which is plural, comes after the verb and does not affect the verb because there is a subject at the beginning of the sentence. Therefore, the sentence should read as follows:

One of the more distinctive aspects of restaurants in 19th-century France was their enormous menus.

If you'd like to read more about the newspaper-size French cartes in the 19th century or about what the French Revolution had to do with the birth of the restaurant business or about how fast food was served in old Pompeii, pick up the current issue of mental_floss and turn to page 67.

Even though I love this magazine, I must point out one more sentence on this same page that did not please me. It is not an absolute rule, but I believe that an LY adverb, when used, is more effective if it does not separate a helping verb from the main verb. Consider this sentence from the short piece about fast food in Pompeii and on American train routes:

Hundreds of passengers would madly dash into cavernous dining halls on the platforms, where cadres of waiters in white aprons would splash meat and potatoes onto their plates and granular coffee into their cups.

I hope you will agree that this sentence would sound much better if the passengers WOULD DASH MADLY into the cavernous dining halls.

By the way, you can also check out the fascinating trivia by visiting http://www.mentalfloss.com/.

Incorrect use of INTO creates impossible magic situations.

• 
  
  ABRACADABRA! Criminal custodian turns herself into police!
  
  Be careful when using the word INTO. It should not be used in places where IN and TO should be separate. Look closely at this sentence, which appeared in The Birmingham News this week:
  
  XXXXX XXXXXX, a 28-year-old custodian at Bluff Park Elementary at the time of the burglary, turned herself into police Friday after being charged with theft....
  
  What the custodian actually did, I am sure, was to turn herself in to the police. In this case, IN is an adverb that describes the turning. TO is a preposition at the beginning of the prepositional phrase "to the police." It is not correct to substitute the word INTO in this instance.
  
  Here are some other examples:
  
  Abigail turned her co-worker in to the bank examiner. (NOT: Abigail turned her co-worker into the bank examiner. Do you think the co-worker wanted to be transformed into a bank examiner??)

John stepped in to fill his father's unexpired term as mayor.

Peter turned himself in to the authorities after the theft became public. (Peter might have wanted to turn himself into the authorities who would then not charge him!)

Placing "LY" Adverbs for Clarity

Workshop participants often ask about the appropriate place to locate "ly" adverbs in sentence structure. One good policy is to avoid placing an "ly" adverb between the subject and the verb. The sentence usually reads more smoothly if the "ly" adverb comes after the verb.

Here is an example I came across in a brochure this week while visiting in the Bay area near San Francisco:

Sunset's headquarters sits upon land that originally was part of a grant to Don Jose Arguello, governor of Spanish California in 1815.


This sentence reads more smoothly if the word "originally" is moved so it does not separate "that" from "was." (This is not a rule--just a preference.)

Sunset's headquarters sits upon land that was originally part of a grant to....

It is interesting to note that, in this same brochure, the suggestion about placement of the "ly" adverb is followed in this later sentence:

Flower color comes primarily from blooming shrubs and perennials.

In the sentence above, "primarily" does not separate "color" from "comes," as it would in the wording: "Flower color primarily comes from...."