Question sent in by e-mail by Swapna Dasgupta (September 6, 2011):
Dear Jose,
I came across your article on an old webpage of The Manila Times. Thanks for enlightening the readers.
Please help me understand the following sentence published on a website:
“GM has brought out of retirement Bob Lutz, one of Detroit’s most colourful if sometimes controversial executives, to advise it senior management team.”
In this sentence, the placement of the object (“Bob Lutz”) has been delayed to insert information at its end. Is it permissible in English grammar? If so, will it affect the readability?
Thanks.
My reply to Swapna:
Let’s closely examine and read that sentence aloud:
“GM has brought out of retirement Bob Lutz, one of Detroit’s most colourful if sometimes controversial executives, to advise its senior management team.”
This sentence pattern delays the verb’s direct object and strands it at the tail end of the main clause so it can be modified by an appositive (as in this case) or by a phrase or relative clause. As we can see, this pattern grammatically fractures the main clause and makes the sentence sound so awful. I don’t think it’s advisable to use this pattern, but the reality is that some news reporters and editors tend to use it not just occasionally these days for immediacy’s sake. It’s actually just another manifestation of the general tendency of news journalism in English to forcibly combine and compress too much information and too many details of the news story in the lead sentence, often making it so convoluted and so confusing to read.
But the bigger question here is this: Can’t news reporters and editors avoid such awful-sounding sentences when they really need to fracture the main clause and strand its operative verb? I think they can by using a verb or phrasal verb that’s more congenial to such disruptions of the natural grammatical order. In that particular sentence, for instance, it’s the phrasal verb “brought out of retirement” that causes the problem. See how the phrasal verb “taken out of retirement” works better grammatically and structurally for that sentence pattern:
“GM has taken Bob Lutz, one of Detroit’s most colourful if sometimes controversial executives, out of retirement to advise its senior management team.”
In this form, the verb “has taken” is able to fully act on its direct object “Bob Lutz”—unlike “has brought out of retirement,” the verb phrase “has taken” doesn’t “hang”—and is properly modified later by the adverbial phrase “out of retirement” after the obligatory appositive had done its job of modifying “Bob Lutz.”
But an even better and trouble-free way, regardless of the verb or phrasal verb used, is to use the passive voice construction for such sentences:
“Bob Lutz, one of Detroit’s most colourful if sometimes controversial executives, was brought out of retirement by GM to advise its senior management team.”
“Bob Lutz, one of Detroit’s most colourful if sometimes controversial executives, was taken out of retirement by GM to advise its senior management team.”
I know that some journalists will stand firm on using the active voice even in this particular case, but I think this is one of those rare instances when the passive voice obviously outperforms the active voice in clarity and readability.
