Good Grief!

I thought it would be a good idea to have some ongoing commentary about the importance of expressing ideas clearly. Not to keep picking on the radio folks (see my Conjunction Function post), but I heard another strange thing on NPR this morning:

David Kay, former Iraq weapons inspector, is going to Capitol Hill today to testify before the Senate. He does not expect any weapons of mass destruction to be found there.

Let’s hope not. This is obviously wrong, though I can’t pinpoint the exact rule of grammar that’s been broken. If the quote was all one sentence, it would probably exemplify some kind of misplaced relative clause or dangling something-or-other. The word there is being used as a noun in this case, and the definition is as follows: “that place or point.” The next step is to investigate the word that: “used to refer to the event, action, or time just mentioned.” We can conclude, then, that the word there as used above actually refers to Capitol Hill. Therefore, David Kay is confident that Capitol Hill does not contain weapons of mass destruction.

This example of miscommunication is obvious and absurd, but it’s a good start for beginning to think about honing your “writing intuition.” Even if you don’t remember all of the dangling speech parts from school, you can work wonders by applying a little logic.

And just to be fair, next week I’ll pull some examples of poor grammar and style right from Good Grief! Hard to believe, I know….