Dinky Problems with Parallels

 

Here’s a dinky problem that comes up a lot in my editing work. See if you can find the (did I mention it’s dinky?) error in this sentence.

“The island boasts a sprawling water park, large boating marina, a seaplane harbor and a golf course with views of Abu Dhabi's futuristic skyline.”

Technically, if you want the coordinated objects of the verb “boast” to be parallel, you need the word “a” before “large boating marina.” So you’d write: “The island boasts a sprawling water park, A large boating marina, a seaplane harbor and a golf course.”

Or, of course, you could let all the coordinated noun phrases “share” an indefinite article the same way they “share” the verb: “The artificial island boasts a sprawling water park, large boating marina, seaplane harbor and golf course.”

That seems the better choice. But the truth is that I tweaked the original sentence for simplicity’s sake. The real sentence read, “boasts a sprawling water park, large boating marina, a seaplane harbor and an 18-hole golf course.”

The addition of “18-hole” complicates things. This term would be preceded not by “a” but by “an” because its pronunciation begins with a vowel sound. 

So could you drop all but the first indefinite article -- “a water park, boating marina, seaplane harbor and 18-hole golf course”? Here, all the items share the word “a” in a way that implies that, really, each gets its own “a.” But “18-hole” doesn’t take “a.” It takes “an.”

I’ve asked other copy editors over the years how they feel about this. They’re decidedly undecided. Technically, it seems wrong. But is it worth all those extra “a’s” just to give one an “an”? No one knows for sure.

The structure reminds me of transitive properties in math, so I feel like a mathematical precision is required. That’s why I would give each item its own article in a sentence like this. But who’s to say whether the alternative is wrong?

 

Tags: ,

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2014 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.