Call me pedantic, but I think that "primarily" attaches itself strongly to "written", instead of to "for people who...etc".
To put things in proper perspective, the passage concerned is the second paragraph of the preface of my book,
Give Your English the Winning Edge:
“It was primarily written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.”
In your little exercise of pedantry, maxsims, you say that “‘primarily’ attaches itself strongly to ‘written’, instead of to ‘for people who...etc.’” In that case, I presume that you would rather that “primarily” be positioned after “written,” as follows:
“
It was written primarily for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.”
Here, the adverb “primarily” now specifically modifies the verb “written” alone. It’s a perfectly valid construction, but it so happens that it wasn’t my intention for “primarily” to modify only “written.” My intention was for “primarily” to modify the whole statement that follows it, in the same sense as the following construction of that sentence:
“
Primarily, it was written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.”
I would have done it that way, making the adverb “primarily” lead off the whole sentence, but I was unhappy about that construction from a stylistic and articulation standpoint. This was because the preceding sentence also started with a modifying phrase, “As with the first book,” which serves as a transitional device linking the first paragraph of the preface to the second. For that purpose, of course, that modifying phrase absolutely must be positioned right at the beginning of that sentence and nowhere else.
Now, my writing and editing experience tells me that in an exposition, it’s unwise to start off two or more consecutive sentences with prepositional phrases, whether infinitive, prepositional, participial, or adverbial. This is because they tend to give expositions or narratives a choppy sound and a disjointed feel. To see what I mean, take a look at the following reconstruction of the second paragraph of my preface:
“
As with the first book, this volume is meant to help nonnative English speakers demonstrably improve their written English without having to go back to the classroom.
Primarily, it was written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.
Thus, after a quick survey of the problems most often encountered in the use of English, the book goes straight to the heart of the matter: how to construct clearer, livelier, and more readable sentences and how to keep the grammar, usage, and style of one’s writing aboveboard at all times.”
We now have all three consecutive sentences starting off with a prepositional phrase (“as with the first book”), an adverb (“primarily”), and another adverb (“thus”). To break that undesirable stylistic and structural pattern, I saw fit to reconstruct the second sentence by taking out the adverb “primarily” from up front and making it integral to the sentence. I positioned it right after the expletive “it was” to indicate the same sense that that sentence would have if the adverb were positioned as an adverbial modifier up front. Please reread that sentence now to get that sense; it may take some doing if you have strongly conditioned yourself to think that the sense should be otherwise, but that intended sense should eventually dawn on you if you open up your mind wide enough.
I realize that this has been a lengthy, highly involved explanation, but I hope that my own exercise of pedantry has satisfied your own exercise of it. Of course, I also hope that it has been instructive as well to Forum members about how the mind of pedants and advertising copywriters work.
While Joe is composing an answer to the above post, he may like to take a 1002nd look at the front cover of "Give Your English the Winning Edge".
Over the title is the kicker "This time, excellent English is now within your reach".
We are entitled to ask: "What happened last time?"
Logically, "this time" should be "now", but there already is a "now" in the sentence.
My guess is that this kicker was written by an advertising copywriter.
Regarding this kicker, “This time, excellent English is now within your reach,” you asked: “What happened last time?” You also suggested that logically, “this time” should be “now,” but there already is a “now” in the sentence, implying that “now” is redundant. And lastly, you guessed that the kicker was written by an advertising copywriter.
Well, maxsims, you probably already know that I came out with an earlier book,
English Plain and Simple, before I came out with
Give Your English the Winning Edge. Now that you ask me what happened that time when I came out with that first book, I will try to satisfy your curiosity by now taking the liberty of coining this belated, retroactive kicker for you: “Last time,
good English
came to be within your reach.” Focus very well on the word “good” so you won’t lose your way. Now, I ask you to segue to the present and to my other book, which now makes this claim apropos to that first claim: “
This time, excellent English is
now within your reach.” This is really how the advertising copywriter’s mind worked in me to come up with that kicker.
As for the grammar of that kicker, the adverbial phrase “this time” is meant to be “today”—the present time—modifying the entire statement “excellent English is now within your reach.” But why did I use “now” if I already used “this time” in the same sentence? It was to convey the idea of the continuing availability of excellent English (the book’s advertising promise) as well as to achieve creative repetition or stickiness. In that sense, maxsims, that kicker was indeed written by an advertising copywriter harnessing grammar for a specific marketing objective—the prescriptivist urge of grammar pedants notwithstanding!
