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To: x_plus_one

A few commas might make the sentence understandable:

Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history, of illicitly targeting innocent people, that is a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence.


67 posted on 04/25/2018 11:20:23 PM PDT by jonrick46 (Trump continues to have all the right enemies.)
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To: jonrick46; Paladin2; x_plus_one; alexander_busek; Mamzelle; AndyJackson; egfowler3; Windflier; ...

“Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly targeting innocent people that is a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence.”


I generally try to avoid comments on grammar, but since FReepers have made it a cause celebre herein, I opine:

The sentence is perfectly well written. As it is written, neither the addition of commas nor the word substitution (i.e., which for that) would improve it; rather, either would disimprove it.

Rewriting it with both the commas and the word substitution would make it less elegant, even if grammatically correct.

I am not a lifelong editor, but I am also old school; I scored well within the top half of the top one percentile in Standard English aptitude tests.

This sentence is written the way well-educated writers were taught to write. Grammar is no longer highly valued or well taught.


77 posted on 04/26/2018 1:09:10 AM PDT by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
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