Friday, September 30, 2005

No, not really

Today's entry in the irritating analogy sweepstakes, shaken, not stirred, from a 1A feature:

She said she would take her driver’s license, Red Cross identification, debit card and sleeping bag when she boards a Mo-X shuttle and heads to St. Louis. Then, she will settle into a first-class seat for the first time and fly to Memphis. When she lands, she said she will receive her assignment and travel instructions.

Although this might sound like a James Bond plot, it is the way the Red Cross manages volunteers nationwide and sends help to the place where it is most needed.

OK, I might have missed a few of the middle-period movies, but I don't seem to recall James Bond taking his own sleeping bag along. Or riding Mo-X. It's hard to see how it sounds like a James Bond plot at all.

And while we're at it, don't shift from conditional to simple future to describe events in the same sequence ("would take" and "will settle"). And remember to set the attribution (graf 1, sentence 3) off with commas on both sides; otherwise, you're putting the wrong verb ("said," rather than "will receive") as the simple predicate of the main clause.

It'd be nice to lose the James Bond reference, but if you can't talk the writer into that, at least clean up the syntax.

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