Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/141

Rh chairs, the very brokers, attorneys, and congressmen would see the error of their ways, and flock to them.—.

Here by sitting breaks the rule, though the subject of sitting is the same as that of the main verb sit, because the subject of the clause in which sitting comes is not the good, but brokers, &c. The right way to mend this is not to insert their before sitting—which after all is clumsy, though correct—but to make the good the subject of the clause also, by writing as if they thought that by sitting...they would make the brokers...see the error.

And sometimes subject of the sentence is to be interpreted still more freely as the word grammatically dominant in the part of the sentence that contains the gerund. For instance:

From the Bible alone was she taught the duties of morality, but familiarized to her taste by hearing its stories and precepts from the lips she best loved.—S..

Here the dominant word is Bible, to which familiarized belongs. So, though she does happen to be the main subject, her must be inserted because the familiarized phrase removes the gerund from the reach of the main subject.

After these explanations we add miscellaneous instances. It will be seen that transgression of the rule, though it seldom makes a sentence ambiguous enough to deceive, easily makes it ambiguous enough to amuse the reader at wrong moments, or gives an impression of amateurish work. Mistakes are mended, sometimes by inserting the subject of the gerund (or infinitive), sometimes by changing the main subject to make it the same as that of the gerund, sometimes by other recasting.

...an excellent arrangement for a breeching, which, when released, remains with the carriage, so that lead or centre horses can be put in the wheel without having to affix a new breeching.—Times.

Lucky, reflects the reader, since horses are not good at affixing breechings. Write the drivers can put...horses...without having to affix.

I cultivated a passionless and cold exterior, for I discovered that by