That
would be Ivana Marie Trump, aka Ivanka Trump, aka Yael Kushner. She
Tweeted this today after the latest two in an apparently endless
series of mass murders by gunfire in the United States:
“As
our nation mourns the senseless loss of life in El Paso, Texas and
Dayton, Ohio and prays for the victims and their loved ones, we must
also raise our voices in rejection of these heinous and cowardly acts
of hate, terror and violence.”
My
hat is off to Ms. Kushner-Trump for presenting us with one of the
longest dependent clauses in recent memory. It's a beauty:
“As
our nation mourns the senseless loss of life in El Paso, Texas and
Dayton, Ohio and prays for the victims and their loved ones . . .”
I
live overseas and many of my students and friends are English
learners. I usually tell them to keep the dependent clauses to a
minimum and don't let them get too long. At some point they tend to
take over the entire sentence, and nobody wants that. So this is
quite a bold sentence, grammar wise.
I'd
have put an Oxford comma after “terror” in the phrase, “hate,
terror and violence.” (Making it, “hate, terror, and violence.”)
But that's just me. The Oxford comma may also be called a serial
comma or a series comma. If there are three correct names for a piece
of grammar, it's probably important.
Ivana
Marie is onto another fine point here, although she doesn't seem to
realize it. The phrase, “heinous and cowardly acts of hate, terror
and violence” is also a fine description of the racist, bigoted
statements that come out of her father's mouth on a daily basis.
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