You might be thinking it’s a little early to be talking about Thanksgiving, but in fact it’s not too early to talk about Canadian Thanksgiving, which is celebrated on the second Monday in October. In honor of my roots, I wrote a post for the Web site Gridskipper about Canadian-related places in my new hometown of Paris. I’m excited to be a new contributor to Gridskipper, and would be oh-so-pleased if you would check out my post.
On the more general theme of thanksgiving, I am feeling extremely thankful for the opportunity I have to live in this beautiful city. This evening we took a walk down the Champs Elysées, and with the bright fall foliage and the twinkling street lights, it all seemed too lovely to be real. Of course not every day is sunshine and roses (more often grey skies and crowded streets), but almost every day I have moments of real contentment when I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
December 28th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Please forgive me for taking you to task over sentence structure. However, your writing is usually refreshingly well crafted, which makes the error in this entry all the more glaring.
It’s a dangling participle. It rears its head in this sentence: “Celebrated on the second Monday in October, we’re just days away from the big date.”
The unintended reference of the first phrase is “we.” I don’t think you meant to say that “We’re celebrated on the second Monday in October” – or did you?
In all writing, I think it’s safest to simply avoid this construction. The comment would be correct, and stronger, if it were written so: “Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October. We’re just days away from the big date.”
Here’s a page which explains the problem of the dangling participle rather well:
http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/WritingGuide/10dangpt.htm
Thanks and best wishes,
Mr. Lapin
January 1st, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Mr. Lapin:
Oops. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I’ve just edited the post as you suggested.