Find the Error 28
(Extract adapted from a news article on a website
published by a national broadcaster)
What kind of mistake do you see? (Choose one:)
- apostrophes
- articles
- doesn't make sense
- punctuation
- singular / plural
- spelling
Answer: doesn't make sense
The first sentence of this article simply doesn't make sense. Perhaps a subeditor
working on this top-ranking news website had hastily edited the article
and put it back online with a few vital phrases missing – without checking it
properly. Perhaps the intention of the author for the first sentence was
something like this (although other answers would fit as well): 'Historian
Daniel Parkinson has described his decision to take fifteen years to write a
new book about the Battle of Trafalgar as simply being one of artistic
integrity'. This fits because there is now an object to the sentence – 'his
decision' – which relates to 'one' later on in the sentence. Using 'one' is a
shorter way to write, because there is no need to repeat the abstract noun
'decision'. We wouldn't write: 'Historian Daniel Parkinson has described his
decision to take fifteen years to write a new book about the Battle of Trafalgar
as simply being a decision of artistic integrity'. We know that the author is
talking about the 'decision' when they write 'one'. But in the original example
there isn't a noun (any thing) earlier on in the sentence for the 'one' to relate
to.
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