From Mark T.
Just a few quick items from today's WDH that caught my attention and could provide reminders or lessons:
* Engulfed means to "swallow up, overwhelm," according to Webster's. Fully engulfed also means to "swallow up, overwhelm." When you see that phrase, as in the first sentence of the Rothschild fire story on the front page, get rid of "fully." It's a redundant word.
* "On the home's driveway," in the same front-page story, looked wrong to me. Does anyone else think it should have been "in the home's driveway"?
* Just how big are state officials? That's what I wondered after I read this sentence on the front page: "Despite their size, state officials aren't taking beetles lightly. " Strunk and White would have issued this reminder from "The Elements of Style": "A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject."
To make "beetles" the grammatical subject of this sentence, it should have been written this way: "Despite their size, the beetles are not being taken lightly by state officials." But even better: "State officials are taking the invasion seriously despite the beetles' size."
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When you have questions, the copy desk has stylistically correct answers.
3 comments:
Well, for the car:
Technically, you park a car on a driveway -- much as you stand on line. "In" would imply it's embedded. Anyone else? — Sirena
I've always thought I parked a car in a driveway and definitely stood in line and not on in either case. There is some merit to the embedded conotation, but nevertheless, I think the preposition we're looking for in both cases is in.
— Kerry
From Mark T.
I have never heard someone say they stood "on line" unless they were perhaps referring to waiting for something on the Internet. Let's use "in line," "in the driveway" and "in the 400 block of Third Street (for example)."
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