Flora asks:
Hope that you can help with a burning question. Is the following sentence grammatically correct:
"As a rule, we at Time Inc., publisher of this and many other magazines, believe that we should report the news instead of making it."
In particular, should "making" be changed to "make"? Or "report" changed to "be reporting"? Or is the sentence acceptable as is?
The sentence is colloquially acceptable, but for strict parallelism—keeping parts of speech consistent—it should read: "we...believe that we should report the news instead of make it."
On style grounds, however, I find the "correct version" a little stiff. Most readers would pause and re-read it just because it doesn't sound quite right. And anything that slows readers down should be revised. So I might write:
"we...believe that we should report the news, not make the news."
Recent Comments