I don’t know exactly what it is called but I see it all the time. Here’s an example from an email I received from a can rental company:

As a valued customer, we would appreciate your taking a moment to complete this brief Customer Satisfaction Survey regarding your recent rental at METRO CENTER.

(Emphasis added by me). The subject in one clause is customer, while the subject in another is we. This is in my view incorrect because in all strictness, since the subordinate clause is a fragment, I would expect it to match the subject of the main clause. The rental people are not a valued customer — I am.

What’s the grammatically correct form of the sentence above? How about this:

Since you are a valued customer, we would appreciate your taking a moment to complete this brief Customer Satisfaction Survey regarding your recent rental at METRO CENTER.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 19:56 and is filed under The Daily Badness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.