Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 5 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
JAMES J. KILPATRICK
Unhenal Presa Syndicate
A reader in Denver just sent me the faded clipping of an ad that appeared in the Rocky Mountain News in June 1967. It was an ad for a three-piece set of Farberware mixing bowls: “Designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating.”
Now, the text of that ad must have gone across half a dozen desks before it wound up in print. How could everyone have missed the ad’s appeal to cooks with round bottoms? The answer, I suppose, is that too often writers and editors read copy without listening to it. Listening is vital.
The more we listen to our prose, the more likely we are to catch the mangled syntax and the dangling phrase. An AP correspondent in South Africa wasn’t listening in April when he wrote that fighting between rival factions “has left 100 persons dead a week.” A gruesome thought.
Another AP writer passed along recommendations by public health officials for rodent control: “Do not sweep an area where there have been rodents with a broom.” We should sweep the area where there have been rodents with vacuum cleaners instead.
Wandering antecendents can cause a heap of trouble. The San Antonio Express-News reported a manslaughter charge against a, 13year-old boy. “Defense attorney / Roberto Maldonado said the boy, whose father left home when he was a toddler, deeply regrets the accident.” (We remedy the confusion by writing, “whose father left home when Mark was a toddler.”
At the time ice skater Tonya Harding was in the news, the Daily Clintonian in Clinton, Ind., carried a photo caption: “Tonya Harding j^ets into her truck after running out from the apartment where she is staying to keep it from getting towed in Beaventon, Ore.” Unless trucks are towing apartments in Beaventon, the writer had the wrong antecedent for “it.” I
If we listen closely, we are likely to hear the dingle of a dangle. Here are a couple of fund-raising letters. From Citizens for a Sound Economy: “As one of CSE’s most valued members, I wanted to write you person- ' ally...” From Ronald Reagan: “As one of our party’s most dedicated
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