Head-on

Multitasking, or performing two parallel activities, is dangerous. While walking and chewing gum may be a snap, walking while talking on the phone or even texting can be a snag because the combination of “a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car” leads to distracted walking. The problems this can cause are easy to imagine. The problem with this sentence may be less conspicuous, yet all items in a list should be not only grammatically but also logically parallel. The toy on the living room floor ditched between a stop sign and a car does not make logical sense. To call attention to the fact that the dangers of multitasking are not limited to crowded streets but may also be lurking at home, the list should move from the outside to the inside: “a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a parked (or sometimes moving) car, or even a toy left on the living room floor or a vacuum cleaner in the hallway.” However, a pedestrian would not stumble over a toy in the living room but a person would.

Fortunately, “Most times, the mishaps for a distracted walker are minor, like a lightly dinged head and broken fingernail, a jammed digit or a sprained ankle.” Again, the “jammed digit” has no connection to the physical injuries listed before and after it. “A lightly dinged head, a broken fingernail, and a sprained ankle, or a jammed digit on the pedestrian’s cell phone” joins the links of this chain more coherently.

According to a study, about 50% of those phone accidents involve young people. Yet the older and allegedly wiser are not invulnerable either. “A 68-year-old man fell off a porch while talking on a cell-phone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness.” “Spraining” and “causing” looks good. They are both present tense participles and thus seem to form a parallel structure. However, the sentence does not make much sense. The man was spraining a thumb and causing dizziness? What caused the dizziness was the fall and the pain from the sprained thumb. It is, therefore, more likely that the “68-year-old man fell off a porch while talking on a cell-phone, spraining a thumb and an ankle which caused dizziness.” Like pedestrians using cell-phones, the distracted writer fell prey to inattention blindness and smashed against a dangling modifier. He did not suffer any injuries, except – maybe – to his pride.