Part IV: Polishing Without Wax - The Finer Points of Grammar in Visual Studio .NET

Generate Code 128C in Visual Studio .NET Part IV: Polishing Without Wax - The Finer Points of Grammar

Try another set: NOT PARALLEL: Eggworthy, a gourmet cook and renowned for his delicious no-cholesterol omelets, thinks that French cooking is "overrated"

WHAT'S WRONG: The and joins two descriptions of Eggworthy One is a noun (cook) and one is a verb form (renowned for his delicious no cholesterolomelets)

PARALLEL: Eggworthy, a gourmet cook renowned for his delicious nocholesterol omelets, thinks that French cooking is "overrated" WHY IT'S PARALLEL: Once you remove the and, the problem is solved Now the descriptive verb form (renowned) describes the noun (cook) Which is correct A Ludwig found the honeymoon suite restful, exotic, tasteful, and in the less-populated section of his kingdom B Ludwig found the honeymoon suite restful, exotic, and tasteful It was located in the less-populated section of his kingdom C Ludwig found the honeymoon suite restful, exotic, tasteful, and remote Answer: Sentences Band C are correct If you list the qualities of Ludwig's honeymoon suite as expressed in sentence A, you have

The first three are adjectives, but the last is a prepositional phrase (For more information about prepositional phrases, see 9) Because they don't match, the sentence is not parallel In sentence B, the three adjectives are alone in one sentence The prepositional phrase is in its very own sentence Sentence C expresses all the characteristics of Ludwig's honeymoon suite as adjectives To avoid parallelism errors, you don't have to know the correct grammatical terms Even without the fancy grammatical names, the list shows you the odd man out Just use your common sense and listen A parallel sentence has balance A non-parallel sentence doesn't

If you've ever ridden in a car with a stick shift, you know that smooth transitions are rare (at least when I'm driving) If something is just a little off, the car bucks like a mule The same thing is true in sentences You can, at times, shift in tense, voice, or person, but even the slightest mistake stalls your sentence In this section, I explain how to avoid unnecessary shifts and how to check your sentence for consistency

Check out this sentence with multiple verbs: Ludwig begs Ludmilla to marry him, offers her a crown and a private room, and finally won her hand

The first two verbs are in present tense, but the third shifts into past for no valid reason Stall! If the verbs in this sentence were gears in a stick shift, your car would conk out All three verbs should be in present tense or all three should be in past tense Here are the corrected versions of the sentence: Ludwig begs Ludmilla to marry him, offers her a crown and a private room, and finally wins her hand (All three verbs are in present tense)

Ludwig begged Ludmilla to marry him, offered her a crown and a private room, and finally won her hand (All three verbs are in past tense) Sometimes in telling a story, you must shift tense because the action of the story requires a change in time For example: Felonia always practices for at least ten hours a day, unless she is giving a concert Last week she flew to Antarctica for a recital When she arrived, the piano was frozen Nevertheless, the show went on Next week Felonia will practice twelve hours a day to make up for the time she lost last week

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Felonia's story has present (practices), present progressive (is giving), past (flew, arrived, was frozen, went, lost), and future tenses (will practice) Each change of tense is justified by the information in the story (For more information on verb tense, see s 3 and 18) Here are some additional examples of justified and unjustified shifts in verb tense: WRONG: Ratrug slips on the ice, and after obsessively checking every inch of his skull in the mirror, decided that had hurt his head