I was raised “old school rules”: no dangling participles, no dangling prepositions, no split infinitives. (I wouldn’t be surprised to find I got the punctuation incorrect in that preceding sentence.) I took Latin for 4 years. I grew numb to Star Trek’s “To boldly go”; however there are still some behaviors that I feel should NOT be tolerated. I expect leading newspapers and magazines to follow the old rules, dated as they might be.
Imagine my disappointment at reading the following sentence in The Wall Street Journal the other day.
It’s also developing an e-commerce platform to sell those services through local retailers that farmers already do business with.
Sigh. I expected better. That sentence would have still been clear had it used “local retailers with whom farmers already do business”. Not only would it be clear, but *I* think it would read more smoothly as well. Sigh.
At a time like this I REALLY miss my mother. I’m sure she could find many errors within my own writing, brief as this is. Although my sister is good at this grammar “stuff” as well. *grin*
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