Sure it's no good, but is it non-grammatical?

In an otherwise stellar take-down of the state of affairs when it comes to Big Food and our federal government, Mark Bittman writes this:

But her most public work, the 2010 document called “The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation,” has a decidedly mild Michelle Obama-ish tone. In discussing the obesity crisis, it lays the blame squarely at the feet of … the victims: “In addition to consuming too many calories and not getting enough physical activity, genes, metabolism, behavior, environment, and culture can also play a role in causing people to be overweight and obese.”

Put aside the imprecise, non-grammatical writing. Instead of talk about curbing the marketing of junk to children, we get a discussion of “limiting television viewing”; instead of banning soda from schools, we get “Make sure water is available throughout the school setting.” In short, instead of criticizing the industry for peddling and profiting from poison, it criticizes us for falling prey to it. [emphasis added]

That is, Mark claims to have found a sentence composed by the surgeon general to be ungrammatical. But please reread that sentence:

In addition to consuming too many calories and not getting enough physical activity, genes, metabolism, behavior, environment, and culture can also play a role in causing people to be overweight and obese.

 . . . and let me know if you find an error in the grammar of it. Specifically, here is what I see as the bones:

In addition to ___________, genes, metabolism, behavior, environment, and culture can also play a role in causing people to be overweight and obese.

If I filled in that blank with a single-word noun, such as "overeating," I bet Mark would never label it ungrammatical. The question remaining is whether the phrase used in the original sentence acts as a noun phrase that could work as a noun. Here it is:

consuming too many calories and not getting enough physical activity

This phrase acts as what is commonly called a gerund phrase. A grammar expert—a real grammar expert—would, I know, be able to tell you more specifically about how this operates in the sentence, but the basic description of "gerund phrase" is good enough for our purposes: A gerund phrase begins with an "ing" verb acting as a noun. In this case the two conjoined gerund phrases are "consuming too many calories" and "getting enough physical activity" with the second of them negated by the "not" prefixed to it.

The opening phrase works just fine as a noun, and the sentence should not, therefore, be construed to be non-grammatical. So far, so good, but let me conjecture a little more about Mark's thinking and say a word about one thing that may contribute to what people judge as bad writing.

When I first read that sentence, I messed up the "In addition to" part and started trying to read the first part of it as a modifying participle phrase. In fact, the very same phrase could be used that way in a sentence like this:

In addition to consuming too many calories and not getting enough physical activity, Jared watches too much TV and has poor dental hygiene.

And if you read the surgeon general's sentence that way, you start trying to make this phrase into a dangling modifier, as if it were "genes" that were "consuming too many calories and not getting enough physical activity." It is possible Mark is referring to that sort of problem when he calls it non-grammatical, but I think it's more likely that Mark is just using non-grammatical as an umbrella term for "bad writing," and this sentence surely is an example of that.

To make this a better sentence, the confusion created by the opening phrase needs to be eliminated. There is more than one way to do that; here is just one possibility:

Consuming too many calories and not getting enough physical activity can contribute to weight problems. Other factors could be genes, metabolism, behavior, environment, and culture.

That is still not great, but it does the job of making it easier on the reader. I think it puts it more clearly into the realm of what people might call bad writing (isn't "not getting enough physical activity" synonymous with "behavior" in this context, e.g.), but those critics would not actually call it non-grammatical.

Mark's other complaint—that the information in the sentence is imprecise—has not been addressed, but if I wanted to be snarky I could shoot back: You say it's imprecise. Could you be more specific?

I wrote more on the topic of using grammar as an umbrella term for usage problems here.

A Cup of Grease for the Marquess!

In response to an article in today’s New York Times about the return of Robin Roberts  to “Good Morning America” a reader wrote “Does ABC keep jobs open for all of its employees for 6 months while they recuperate, or just marquis players?"

For a moment I thought the writer might be referring to TV nobility, but then I realized what was meant was “marquee.”

In Britain, “Marquis” has traditionally been pronounced “MAHR-qwiss” and often spelled “Marquess” to reflect this pronunciation. In the US, the most common pattern is to follow the French in pronouncing it “mahr-KEE” in names such as “the Marquis de Sade.”

The French-influenced American  “-ee” pronunciation also prevails in the US for the Mercury Grand Marquis, and even the British often use the US/French pronunciation when not referring to titled persons.

An exception to this pattern is the common American use of the British pronunciation when speaking of the Marquis of Queensberry rules of boxing.

Americans often prefer French-influenced to Anglicized pronunciations, such as in “herb” with a silent “H,” as well as a silent T in “valet” (“val-AY” instead of UK “VALL-it”) and “filet” (“fill-AY” instead of UK “FILL-it”). (We don’t get the vowels right, though, so our pronunciations don’t sound correct to a French speaker.)

There are no “Chick-fil-A” restaurants in Britain. (Lucky them!)

Americans are so conscious of not pronouncing French final consonants that we sometimes create phony French pronunciations for words that don’t deserve them, as when a waiter offers you “vish-ee-SWAH” (vichyssoise). When the last consonant in a French word is followed by an E, the consonant is not silent, but pronounced. It’s “vish-ee-SWOZ.”

Then there is the French expression coup de grace, properly pronounced  “coo duh GRAHSS,” is commonly mispronounced in the US as “coop duh GRAH” and misspelled coupe de gras. Here the   ending of coup is mistakenly sounded when it should be silent, and the ending of grace is mistakenly silent when it should be sounded.

A coup is a blow, but a coupe is a cup. (In both languages a coupé is a vehicle.)

Grace in this phrase is “mercy” but gras is “fat,”  as in foie gras; so theoretically a coupe de gras might be a cup of grease.

The sign over a theatre entrance is always a “marquee” (though there are several “Marquis Theatres” in the US). So a “marquee player” is an actor famous enough to be featured on the sign outside. Even if Sir Patrick Stewart appears at your theatre, don’t call him a “Marquis.”

Author appearance: Geoff Pullum at the University of Washington

Here is a rare opportunity to see the globe-trotting Geoff Pullum deliver a lecture in the Great Northwest. Next Tuesday, February 12 at 6:30. The title of the lecture,

The scandal of English grammar teaching: Ignorance of grammar, damage to writing skills, and what we can do about it

has prompted Geoff to post a clarification at Language Log:

[ . . . ] although the summary published on the registration page is entirely accurate, I would still conjecture that as many as half the people planning to attend will think that the scandal is people who write bad. They will assume that I will be dinging ordinary folks for writing (and speaking) ungrammatically. Little will they know what lies in store: that my target is the grammarians. It is the rule-givers and knuckle-rappers and nitpickers that I will be castigating for their ignorance of the content of the principles of English syntax.

But those of us who know Geoff already knew that.