The other day, my fine friend John Baxindine1 forwarded to me a link to an online article, plus a screenshotted bit. (“I attach a screengrab,” he noted, “just in case they fix it too quickly.”2 Five days since the article was posted, you will perhaps not be flabbergasted to learn, they have done no such thing, too quickly or otherwise.)
And this is the bit:
Now, Houdyshell is back on Broadway, this time in the highly anticipated revival of Uncle Vanya. Playing the doting Maria, Vanya’s mother (who is played by Steve Carrell), the piece offers Houdyshell the rare opportunity to work on a classic that had not already entered her repertoire. She isn’t taking the experience for granted.
Oh dear, what a trainwreck.3
Where do we begin?, I wonder, rolling up my sleeves.
Let’s begin with the bit that’s quite likely shrieking at you most loudly:
Playing the doting Maria, Vanya’s mother (who is played by Steven Carrell),
I have it on good authority that in this particular production, Steve Carell4 is playing not Vanya’s mother but Vanya himself, and it’s Jayne Houdyshell5 who’s playing the doting Maria.
Now, what’s a problem without a solution?
Let’s try this:
In the role of the doting Maria, the mother of the drama’s eponymous protagonist (played by Steve [Name Correctly Spelled] Carell),…
Sure, it’s getting to be a bit prolix,6 but I’ve managed to make it make sense, plus I’ve eliminated the doubling of “Vanya” in two consecutive sentences, to say nothing of the original text’s repetitive “Playing”/“played.” And I’ve had the chance to use “eponymous,” which is always a treat (for me, at least).
Moving on, then.
In the role of the doting Maria, the mother of the drama’s eponymous protagonist (played by Steve Carell), the piece offers Houdyshell the rare opportunity to work on a classic that had not already entered her repertoire.
Cissy Houston, we still have a problem.
Do you see it?
Well, first (just for the purposes of this tutorial), let’s cut the Carellian parenthetical, so that what remains is:
In the role of the doting Maria, the mother of the drama’s eponymous protagonist, the piece offers Houdyshell the rare opportunity [etc.]
Keep going? OK. Then let’s keep provisionally cutting, and:
In the role of the doting Maria, the piece offers Houdyshell the rare opportunity [etc.]
No, no, no. “In the role of the doting Maria” must, must, must be followed by a sentence subject that “In the role of the doting Maria” might properly modify: “she,” for instance, or “the actress,” or of course “Houdyshell.”
So here is what we call a dangling modifier, also known, when the modifier is a participle (as in the original “Playing the doting Maria”), as, indeed, a dangling participle, and generally known among copy editors as, simply, a dangler. And it is what occurs when, to use the technical terms, the little thingie part at the beginning of a sentence doesn’t properly attach itself to the main thingie part of the sentence.
Danglers are perilously easy to commit, and perilously easy for a copy editor to overlook, because they fall under the heading Text That Looks Enough Like It Makes Sense That You Zip Right Past It.
So one more time, here’s your full fix, finale ultimo:
In the role of the doting Maria, the mother of the drama’s eponymous protagonist (played by Steve Carell),7 Houdyshell is enjoying the rare opportunity to work on a classic that had not already entered her repertoire.
Anything else? Well, I might quibble with the implied assertion that the excellent and prolific Ms. Houdyshell has so thoroughly exhausted the works of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, O’Neill, and Williams, to say nothing of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Clyde Fitch, that playing some Russian’s mom qualifies as a rare addition to her repertoire, but at this point, if Ms. Houdyshell is not exhausted, I certainly am.8
[I deleted the usual “Hey, please consider subscribing” thing because it planted itself in an inopportune place up toward the top of this piece and I’m not smart enough to figure out how to reset it somewhere else, but, hey, please consider subscribing, and if you’re of a mind to pay for your subscription—a little or a lot—I’m extra special with sprinkles grateful.]
Not everything, I suppose, needs to be a copyediting lesson, but the copyediting is why we are here, I also suppose. John is indeed my fine friend, but he is not my only fine friend, and thus he is not “my fine friend, John Baxindine.” Please see that fine volume Dreyer’s English for more on what I tend to refer to as “the ‘only’ comma,” in part because I can never remember which is “restrictive” and which is “nonrestrictive.”
To date, “screenshot” (as well as “screenshotted” and “screenshotting”) has made its way into the online version of my dictionary of choice, Merriam-Webster. “Screengrab” has not, but it’s our job to help these things along, and “screengrab” is the way John wrote it, and I like it, and of course we don’t follow such things with [sic].
I note that “trainwreck” is also not yet a dictionary-approved (or even -included) word, but we can make it happen if we’re so inclined. (I’m so inclined.) And a trainwreck, to be sure, is not the same thing as a train wreck. (Or, as a friend commented when “restroom” finally supplanted “rest room” in the dictionary: “After all, it’s not a room you rest in, is it.”)
It’s indeed Carell, by the way, and not Carrell [sic], though amid everything else that’s going on here, I didn’t even notice the misspelling till someone pointed it out to me. Always look up people’s names, I urge every fledgling or experienced copy editor. (And, yes, writers too. It’s nice when you folk do your own work.) Always.
Had I wanted to insert Ms. Houdyshell’s first name into the quoted material above (I didn’t), I would have done this: “Now, [Jayne] Houdyshell is back on Broadway,” etc. It is one’s sacred honor not to insert material into someone else’s quotation-mark-encased writing without encasing the inserted material in brackets, just as one does not delete anything from someone else’s quotation-mark-encased writing without the use of ellipses. For the record, though: You are allowed, in quoting someone else’s material, to change a quote-opening uppercase letter to a lowercase letter, or vicey versey, as your own overall text demands without the use of brackets, because, outside direly academic and/or legal writing, no one needs to see me or anyone else note that “[y]ou are allowed, in quoting material,” etc.
Or as we say nowadays: tl;dr.
To be honest, I’m shocked that the original piece has the mandatory comma properly set here; it’s just the sort of thing that lax writers (and often unlax ones, to be fair) tend to overlook after an interrupting phrase that concludes with a parenthetical.
I’m so exhausted, in fact, that I don’t have the energy to address the original text’s original opening: “Now, Houdyshell is back on Broadway.” The comma, I note before I faint dead away, is not called for, though it was perfectly appropriate in my own “Now, what’s a problem without a solution?” More on that another time. Or you’ll ask below, and I’ll probably tell. I usually do.
The nerve!
Footnote three: "It's nice when you folk [writers] do your own work."
When there's a perfectly good copy editor Right There!
That thingie part gets me every time. But, whoa, watching this turn into a perfect capture? Wonderful!