DailyAfirmation (dailyafirmation) wrote,
DailyAfirmation
dailyafirmation

Faulty parallelism or the hobgoblin of little minds...

~Thursday~
Screen capture of my Scrabble games log

I'm probably about the only person I know who would notice this, much less complain about it, but here it goes: I don't like how the first game says, "You lost..." but the second game says, "You win!"

It should either be: "You lost!" and "You won!" or "You lose!" and "You win!" [or "You lost..." and "You won..." or "You lose..." and "You win..."]

So, two faulty parallelism (a.k.a., parallel construction or parallel structure) issues: 1) the punctuation, and 2) the verb tense.

Not to be a total curmudgeon, however; there is something I like about this display, although it has nothing to do with the presentation of the data by the app: I like that it has an example of a win, lose, and tie, especially since ties are so rare in my games.

And with that said, speaking of ties, I liked this recent story: The American Way: Winners and Losers, And No Ties. (A 4-minute audio version or the text version of the story.)
Tags: grammar
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