This is a sad excuse for a sentence

How many mistakes can you find in this teaser from the Yahoo! front page?

fp either

Traditionally, either…or can be used to join only two things. And those two things must be parallel elements. So this use of either…or is ugly for more than one reason. First, the writer tries to join three items. Then, the writer doesn’t make any attempt to see that they’re parallel.

One solution is to remove the either and recast the sentence so that the items are parallel:

This little pup is really lazy, is really tired, or just doesn’t like swimming.

This little pup is really lazy or tired, or just doesn’t like swimming.

2 Responses to “This is a sad excuse for a sentence”

  1. ericjbaker Says:

    I’m glad Yahoo! continues to bring us the hard-hitting stories other news organizations are afraid to talk about.

    • Laura Says:

      Some things are just more important that the trivia covered by other news outlets. Do we really need to know what’s happening in the Middle East? Or who’s reading our email? Or where the latest flood, wildfire, tornado, earthquake, monsoon, or hurricane is? Yahoo! covers the stories Americans what to read about.


What do you think?