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the Friend - Independent Quaker journalism since 1843
February 26, 2008
It's the syntax, stupid
We've had our wrists slapped by a reader from New Zealand for sloppy sentence construction in a news story (23 November 2007, page 4). She sends her critique by hand-written airmail ('my computer is defunct, as is – almost – its eighty-nine-year-old Quaker owner'). Eye looked at the offending passage and sees our reader's point. It was a story on a UN call to halt executions. The heading was fine, but the first paragraph began: 'The call last week for a global moratorium on executions by the UN General Assembly's Third Committee...'
An erudite reader has a complaint about Quaker grammar. We can't help her with syntax, but maybe one of you can? She writes: 'Can anyone explain the Quaker attachment to the conditional - in minute after minute it crops us - 'we would agree' 'we would encourage' 'we would hope'. Would needs to be followed by 'if' - 'if so and so agrees' 'if they want to go' 'if appropriate', but it never is. I am mystified. I don't know if any grammars refer to the suspended conditional, but it ought to be in the canon.'
The collaborative online diary of The Friend: independent Quaker journalism from the UK since 1843. Currently in test stage, featuring items from the magazine and other bloggable snippets
