Sunday, March 02, 2014

Finally?

The description reads:
A man who spins fables and fantastic tales from his life is dying - his journalist son finally wants his father to tell the truth in director Tim Burton's colorful, eye-popping story.
I'm not sure, but I'd bet this is the result of a fear of infinitive splitting.

He doesn't "finally want" him to tell the truth; he's wanted that for a long time, as we see in the movie's opening scenes. No, he wants him to finally tell it.



Labels:

2 Comments:

At 12:17 AM, March 03, 2014 Anonymous Kathie had this to say...

Why not "...his journalist son wants his father finally to tell the truth..."?
OR
"...his journalist son wants his father to tell the truth at last..."?

 
At 8:35 AM, March 03, 2014 Blogger The Ridger, FCD had this to say...

Sure. Of course either of those would work. I'm not prescribing split infinitives. I'm only say that neither of those wordings would have prompted the rewrite that gave us the phrasing with the wrong meaning. An editor wouldn't have touched them.

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

     <-- Older Post                     ^ Home                    Newer Post -->