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April 19th, 2026 (Permalink)

Dead Men Don't Review Books

Here's a puzzle for you: what's wrong with the following passage?

In The Making of the President 1964 (New York, 1965), Theodore White came to the conclusion that quotations had been utilized unfairly against the Republican candidate. … Harvard economist and former ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith sharply dissented from White's…view. … But Margaret L. Coit, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a biography of John C. Calhoun, who had reviewed the White book elsewhere, wrote the Times to take sharp exception to Galbraith's point of view.¹

When I first read this, I did a double-take: didn't Calhoun die in the nineteenth century? How could he have reviewed a book not published until 1965? In fact, Calhoun died in 1850², so he had been dead for over a century before the book he was supposed to have reviewed was even published. Of course, I soon realized―as I'm sure you have, too―that the phrase "who had reviewed the White book elsewhere" was meant to refer back to Coit rather than to Calhoun.

The modifier following Calhoun's name is an adjective clause, that is, a clause that functions as an adjective³. In English, the usual way that we indicate the noun that an adjective clause modifies is to place the clause next to the noun. In prose, an adjective usually precedes the noun. For instance, the passage describes John Kenneth Galbraith as a "former ambassador", where "ambassador" is the noun and "former" is the adjective. In contrast, clauses that function as adjectives may either precede or follow the noun they modify. Moreover, unlike single adjectives, adjectival phrases are often set off from the noun and the rest of the sentence by commas or, less commonly, dashes. For example, later on the same page as the passage quoted above, there is the following sentence: "Victor Lasky, who had bombarded JFK with hostile quotes of all kinds in his book on the late President in 1963, appeared to have mixed feelings about quotemanship in 1965.⁴" Here, the noun is the proper name at the beginning, and the adjective clause is the long phrase that follows the noun and is set off from the rest of the sentence by commas. So much for grammar.

Since the adjective clause in the above passage follows directly after Calhoun's name and is set off by commas, it appears at first glance that it must be modifying "Calhoun". However, given that Calhoun died long before the reviewed book was written, historical knowledge together with common sense indicates that this was probably not what the author intended. Reading the above passage, the historically informed reader searches for another noun for the adjective clause to modify, and finds Coit's name back at the beginning of the sentence.

This sentence is an example of what is called a misplaced modifier⁵. Where should the adjective clause have been placed? There's more than one way to do it, but here's one possibility:

But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a biography of John C. Calhoun, Margaret L. Coit, who had reviewed the White book elsewhere, wrote the Times to take sharp exception to Galbraith's point of view.

It's important to note that the original sentence is not ungrammatical. Rather, the grammar of the sentence seems to say something that the author didn't intend. How do we know he didn't intend it? Because dead men don't review books.

Notes:

↑ Paul F. Boller, Jr., Quotemanship: The Use and Abuse of Quotations for Polemical and Other Purposes (1967), p. 402.
↑ Gerald M. Capers, "John C. Calhoun", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3/27/2026.
↑ Robert J. Gula, Precision: A Reference Handbook for Writers (1980), p. 255.
↑ Loc. cit.
↑ Gula, op. cit., pp. 54-55.

April 15th, 2026 (Permalink)

You Don't Say!

There is no foreign institution with which, in any basic sense, [the American presidency] can be compared, because, basically, there is no comparable foreign institution. The President of the United States is both more and less than a king; he is, also, both more and less than a Prime Minister.¹
The following blurb is from the front cover of a Sax Rohmer novel²:
"…one of the 'greats' of horror fiction."―San Francisco Examiner

Notice that "greats" is in quotation marks within the quotation marks. So, whoever wrote this comment for the San Francisco Examiner was not calling Rohmer one of the "greats", but quoting someone else. I would suspect that the quote was made up by the publisher except for the inner quotation marks, which suggest irony. I doubt whether anyone, even in 1962, would have seriously thought Rohmer was a "great" of horror fiction or any other genre. Unfortunately, it would be hard to check the quote to see if its context is actually a favorable review of the book since the citation only gives the name of the newspaper with no date or page, and the book in question was published in 1962. Rohmer's novel was originally published in 1932³, so there's a thirty year span in which the quote might have been made. The Examiner quote was probably the best that could be found, and the publisher hoped that the potential reader wouldn't notice the quotation marks around "greats".
Riddle me this: What ancient invention makes it possible for people to walk through solid walls? Click on the button below to see the answer.

Doors
This is a variation of a riddle usually asking what invention lets people see through solid walls―you should be able to figure that out on your own⁴.

Notes:

↑ Harold J. Laski, The American Presidency: An Interpretation (1943), p. 23. I found the first sentence of this quote in: Paul F. Boller, Jr., Quotemanship: The Use and Abuse of Quotations for Polemical and Other Purposes (1967), p. 253.
↑ Sax Rohmer, The Mask of Fu Manchu (Pyramid Books, 1962).
↑ Ibid., p. 4.
↑ If not, see: David J. Bodycombe, The Riddles of the Sphinx (2007), pp. 352 & 556.

April 4th, 2026 (Permalink)

(W)retch

[W]hen I spot an error (like this egregious misspelling from―yes―The New Yorker: '[A]fter drinking it I wondered for several moments if I would wretch.'), my blood begins to boil, or at least come to a simmer you could poach an egg in.¹

A wretch may retch, you may feel wretched while retching, and reading The Wretched of the Earth may make you retch, but not all who retch are wretches.

The error in The New Yorker that Florey was referring to in the quote above was that of putting a "w" on the beginning of the final word. Despite the fact that "retch" and "wretch" are pronounced exactly the same and differ in spelling only by that silent "w", the two words belong to distinct grammatical categories. "Wretch" is a noun referring to a person in a wretched condition, that is, miserable²; whereas "retch" is a verb for vomiting or, alternatively, what is called "dry heaving", that is, trying to vomit but not succeeding³. So, the author of the article that Florey quoted may have felt wretched or like a wretch, but that was because he felt as though he would retch.

I decided to run the sentence with the misspelling by GPT-5 mini to see how it compared to The New Yorker's "vaunted" fact checking department―this is the magazine's own term for it⁴―and here is that exchange:

Me: Can you check a sentence for grammar and spelling?
GPT-5 mini: Sure―paste the sentence and I'll check it.
Me: "The nose was almost nonexistent, but after drinking it I wondered for several moments if I would wretch.⁵"
GPT-5 mini: Corrected sentence:
The nose was almost nonexistent, but after drinking it I wondered for several moments whether I would wretch.
Notes: Changed "if" to "whether" for formality/clarity. "Wretch" is uncommon; if you meant "retch" (to vomit), use "retch" instead. Example with that change:
The nose was almost nonexistent, but after drinking it I wondered for several moments whether I would retch.⁶

The change of "if" to "whether" is unnecessary but a stylistic improvement, in my opinion, but the problem with "wretch" is not that it's uncommon, it's that it's ungrammatical and not what the author meant. Still, GPT-5 mini did better than The New Yorker's presumably human editors, since it at least suggested the proper correction in the end. Are there layoffs in the magazine's "vaunted" department in the future?

The confusion of the two words is not common enough to be mentioned in any of the reference books I usually consult, but if it's good enough for The New Yorker, that's good enough for me.

Notes:

↑ Kitty Burns Florey, Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences (2006), p. 116.
↑ "Wretch", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 4/1/2026.
↑ "Retch", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 4/1/2026.
↑ Zach Helfand, "The History of The New Yorker's Vaunted Fact-Checking Department", The New Yorker, 8/25/2025. There's an amphiboly in this headline: Is it the fact checking that is vaunted or the department?
↑ Jack Turner, "Green Gold: The Return of Absinthe", The New Yorker, 3/6/2006. The misspelling is still uncorrected.
↑ Private chat with GPT-5 mini, 3/29/2026.

April 1st, 2026 (Permalink)

From the E-Mailbag

A reader writes to ask:

If I ride my bicycle one mile at thirty miles per hour (MPH) to the top of a hill, how fast will I have to coast down the other side for a mile to average sixty MPH for the whole two-mile trip? A friend told me ninety MPH but I can't get the math to work. Help!

Can you solve the reader's problem?

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