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Danglers
Memoirs Don't Write
By Evan Jenkins
This construction, called a dangler, is as common as the flowers that bloom in the spring: “A first-time author at age 66, McCourt’s memoir has topped best-seller lists and won critical acclaim.” What that says, literally, is that the memoir is a first-time author. That’s because the first clause describes the subject of the second, and the subject is “memoir.” (The possessive “McCourt’s” functions as an adjective here, not a noun.) The sentence needs to be reworked. Maybe “McCourt, a first-time author at age 66, finds his memoir atop...” Or “McCourt, etc., has written a memoir that...” However we work it out, we can’t make the opus its own writer.
CJR
