POSTSCRIPT TO AND MY TAKE ON THE FORUM GRAMMAR JOUST
Here's the sentence construction problem presented by fellow good-English advocate Gerry T. Galacio to the Forum last February 27, 2019:
From time to time, I receive email notifications from a company known as “powermaxph.com” on various business-related seminars. Today, the notification that I received contains this sentence:
“It is imperative that all BUSINESS OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES, ALL EMPLOYERS, EMPLOYEES, HR MANAGERS AND HR PROFESSIONALS, LINE MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS, AS WELL AS UNION LEADERS, EVEN THE LABOR ARBITERS, VOLUNTARY ARBITRATORS and all those involve in labor dispute settlement, and resolution of conflicts concerning human behavior in business and other organizations, as well as the legal and behavioral implications of such behavior to productivity, quality and profitability, competitiveness and continuing survival of businesses in a globalized economy.”
My take on this grammar problem:
Answers to Questions:
1. Can you find the verb in the sentence above?
Yes, that verb is already in the original sentence construction. It's "is," and it only needs to be followed by an appropriate noun complement to make the entire statement grammatically and structurally complete and--more important--make sense as an effective sales pitch for that seminar offering.
2. Can you find the error in the sentence that could either be a typo or a grammatical error?
What makes the original sentence dysfunctional is its grammatically flawed use of the conjunction "that" to introduce a subordinate clause that's anticipated by the expletive "it" occurring as subject of the verb "is." The big problem: that subordinate clause has no operative at all. The obvious (but not necessarily best) choice for that verb is "attend," but without doing major surgery to that long, long subordinate clause, it would have to be positioned at the end of that long clause as a breathtakingly nasty dangling verb in this manner:
“It is imperative that all BUSINESS OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES, ALL EMPLOYERS, EMPLOYEES, HR MANAGERS AND HR PROFESSIONALS, LINE MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS, AS WELL AS UNION LEADERS, EVEN THE LABOR ARBITERS, VOLUNTARY ARBITRATORS and all those involve in labor dispute settlement, and resolution of conflicts concerning human behavior in business and other organizations, as well as the legal and behavioral implications of such behavior to productivity, quality and profitability, competitiveness and continuing survival of businesses in a globalized economy attend this seminar.”
That's no way to structure that sales pitch, of course. It's a cliffhanger that's sure to infuriate prospective targets of that sales pitch.
3. Bryan Garner (editor-in-chief of Black’s law Dictionary) says that enumerations must be placed at the last part of a sentence or a paragraph. How would you rewrite this sentence to comply with Garner’s guideline?
Bryan Garner makes a lot of sense in recommending that "enumerations must be placed at the last part of a sentence or a paragraph." That's precisely what needs to be done to make the original sentence make sense without causing aggravation to its readers.
4. How else would you rewrite this sentence to achieve clarity and concision?
To achieve clarity and concision while remaining as faithful as possible to the spirit and intent of the original statement, I'll just replace the cantankerously demanding adjective "imperative" with the simpler and less prepossessing noun complement "must," then make a slight tweak immediately afterwards using the preposition "for" to change the "that"-clause into a much simpler and readable prepositional phrase. This will allow getting rid of that cliffhanger "attend this seminar" verb phrase at end-sentence.
This brings us to my best-effort, least intrusive, but I think definitely more readable reconstruction of that original sentence:
“It is a must for all BUSINESS OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES, ALL EMPLOYERS, EMPLOYEES, HR MANAGERS AND HR PROFESSIONALS, LINE MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS, AS WELL AS UNION LEADERS, EVEN THE LABOR ARBITERS, VOLUNTARY ARBITRATORS and all those involved in labor dispute settlement and resolution of conflicts concerning human behavior in business and other organizations as well as the legal and behavioral implications of such behavior to productivity, quality and profitability, competitiveness and continuing survival of businesses in a globalized economy.”
Here's a stand-alone version of that statement that won't depend on the antecedent paragraph introducing that statement:
“This seminar is a must for all BUSINESS OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES, ALL EMPLOYERS, EMPLOYEES, HR MANAGERS AND HR PROFESSIONALS, LINE MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS, AS WELL AS UNION LEADERS, EVEN THE LABOR ARBITERS, VOLUNTARY ARBITRATORS and all those involved in labor dispute settlement and resolution of conflicts concerning human behavior in business and other organizations as well as the legal and behavioral implications of such behavior to productivity, quality and profitability, competitiveness and continuing survival of businesses in a globalized economy.”
We're done with the grammar joust.
(I'm sorry to say that there was no winning entry to this joust, so I'm treating myself and my wife to the prize dinner instead.)
Comments and feedback about this grammar joust welcome.
