Tuesday, October 03, 2006

"Compared with"

"Schizophrenia patients do as well, or perhaps even better, on old
psychiatric drugs compared with newer and far costlier medications"

(Oct 3, 2006 - The Olympian).


Here the writer has compared schizophrenia patients with newer medications. The repair is simple: "Schizophrenia patients do as well, or perhaps even better, on old psychiatric drugs compared with patients taking newer and far costlier medications"

Monday, October 02, 2006

In the example below, the writer has lost track of the subject of the first sentence. The pronoun "it" can only refer to the fact, and this makes the second sentence say that the fact is of benefit, which is nonsense; the writer means that the model is a benefit.

The fact this model is jurisdiction-led is both a benefit and challenge to
the system . It is
of benefit because the provider registry systems can be adopted in a staged and
customized approach.

The fact this model is jurisdiction-led is both a benefit and challenge
to the
system.
The model is of benefit because the provider registry systems can be adopted in
a staged and customized approach.


In the following sentence the writer gets lost in emotive language:


With this in mind, the following policies,
standards, and procedures
are intended to be a practical implementation
of 'loving your neighbour' by taking measures to significantly reduce the
chances of a 'perceived' or (worse) 'real' incident of sexual misconduct
within the parish community and the attendant "after the fact" disruptive,
destructive events and activities which prevent the parishes' important
business of fully and lovingly worshiping God and supporting one another.

The noun here "the following policies, standards, and procedures" is forgotten
by the time the writer reaches "by taking measures". There is no subject that
"by taking measures" can refer to. In addition to this problem, the emotive language does not make the writer's intent clear. The sentence must be rewritten :

"The following policies, standards and procedures are intended to be a practical implementation of "loving your neighbour". If followed, they will reduce the chances of sexual misconduct."

Introduction

I'm using this site to record examples of technical English that illustrate errors.