Maverick sentences

Mavericks are those who do not follow accepted rules, who zig where others zag. Fairly recently, the term's positive connotation (a person disregarding rules to advantage) has been exploited in politics, alas not at all successfully. In writing, too, kicking over the traces is not a ticket to success – if we agree that success means to be coherent and clear.

To investigate the life of the "eponymous hero" Samuel Maverick, Philip Dodd traveled to Texas where “At certain times the mosquitoes away from the water’s edge were thick in the air.” This sentence lacks coherence because material is inserted between the subject and the predicate. A prepositional phrase (at certain times) is followed by the subject (the mosquitoes), which is followed by a prepositional phrase (away from the water’s edge), followed by the verb (were) before the sentence ends with another prepositional phrase (in the air). The sentence becomes stringy and hard to follow. Reorganizing the parts and simplifying the vocabulary improves the sentence’s coherence: Away from the water’s edge, the mosquitoes were sometimes thick in the air.

Incoherent sentences often fail to establish a precise relationship between their parts. "I had realized how vulnerable the Gulf Coast was to extreme weather conditions flying in, or trying to, the night before." What this sentence actually says is that weather conditions were flying in during the night. Again, reorganizing the parts clarifies who was flying: Flying in, or trying to, the night before, I had realized how vulnerable the Gulf Coast was to extreme weather conditions.

A similar case of confusion about who is doing what occurs when Dodd recounts that "In 1942 Dr. Lewis A. Maverick confirmed that it was the cowboys who herded the cattle who had spread the term 'maverick' as they moved on to other jobs and thought the word was disseminated during the big cattle drives from Texas up to Montana and the northern states." Apparently, the cowboys moved to other jobs and did some thinking on the way. However, the person thinking about the dissemination of the word was Dr. Lewis A. Maverick: In 1942, Dr. Lewis A. Maverick confirmed that the cowboys who herded the cattle had spread the term “maverick” as they moved on to other jobs and that the word was disseminated during the big cattle drives from Texas up to Montana and the northern states. The insertion of a simple that ties the second part of the sentence to its main verb confirmed. (Philipp Dodd, "Samuel Maverick")

But what the heck is William Sanders doing? "William Sanders, a statistician studying Tennessee teachers with a colleague, found that a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher for those years" (Elizabeth Green, "Building a Better Teacher"). Whether this is a groundbreaking discovery or not, the sentence suggests that this researcher studies teachers who have a colleague. In fact, he is a statistician who together with a colleague is studying Tennessee teachers.

Maybe those weak teacher who drag their students down studied under one of those “methods professors [who] have never set foot in a classroom or have not done so recently” (Green). Those who never set foot in a classroom, didn’t do so recently. That’s pretty obvious. But those who haven’t done so recently not necessarily have never done it. We evidently deal with two sets of methods professors, and a sentence not mangled by ambiguity should clearly distinguish between some methods professors who have never set foot in a classroom and others who have not done so recently.

Cheese is always the perfect last course. So how about "slicing some pecorino for a simple lunch of crusty bread, foggy green olive oil and a bottle of rosso di Montalcino. The cheese was decidedly creamier, akin to the difference between Greek yogurt and the nonfat kind" (Danielle Pergament "Tuscany Without the Crowds"). The incoherence of this sentence is caused by its illogical connections. The cheese is not creamier than the rosso di Montalcino but probably creamier than the store-bought kind, and it is more akin to Greek yoghurt than to the nonfat kind, not to the difference between the two.