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Name that grammatical error
… as found in this title to a short note in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: “Female Instructor Barred From Teaching at Muslim University Without Burqa.”
In other news, Inside Higher Ed reports that Kenneth Howell, the University of Illinois religion professor who was fired after sending an email to his class explaining Catholicism’s view of homosexuality, will be returning to the classroom this fall. He’s not off the hook — the investigation of whether the firing was legit continues — but now at least he’s innocent until proven guilty. Meanwhile, the university has discontinued its problematic relationship with the campus Newman Center, an independent Catholic organization that was “nominating” and paying its professors of Catholic thought. This means Howell will be paid by the university itself this fall, which most likely is reeling at the news that it has to match the Center’s pay scale of $10,000 per class. That’s several times what most adjunct professors make.
Hmmm. I actually don’t see it. I mean, “From” is capitalized and probably shouldn’t be, but that can’t be what you’ve taken the time to post about. The only other thing I can even imagine that is problematic (other than the article-free stiltedness of headline language in general) is the location (and thus scope) of the prepositional phrase “Without Burqa”.
The University, after all, probably isn’t supposed to be taken as being without its burqa. It should probably be “Teaching Without Burqa” instead.
Five years ago I probably would have found this irritating, too. But ever since I took Latin I’ve been a lot more tolerant of misplaced clauses — after all, isn’t half the fun of reading figuring out to which noun the ablative applies? And it seems reasonable to consider “Teaching at Muslim University” to be a single gerund/noun phrase that can be modified by “Without Burqa.”
But it’s *so* reasonable that, confessing my ignorance, this, too seems like it probably isn’t what you had in mind. So I’m stumped.
But I’m a lawyer and a philosopher, not a Cleric of the Church of Grammar.
Michael, you are more forgiving than I am! The issue is indeed the dangling modifier. You make a good case for it not being an issue — but my own sense is that it only gets to not be an issue if the person who wrote it went through the reasoning process you outlined. In other words, the author should not be surprised to discover that he or she has asked the reader to picture universities as entities capable of wearing burqas. My hunch is that there would be some surprise involved….
$10,000 per class. Wow. That may get a lot of adjuncts rethinking the traditional academic hostility to Catholicism.
My first response to the grammar question is to say that, because of the need for brevity, headlines have a grammar of their own. But regardless of that, I think the headline is perfectly OK, in the same way that Practicing law without license is OK. Just as everyone would understand that without a license modifies not law but practicing law, so everyone understands that without burqa modifies not Muslim university but teaching at Muslim university. I doubt that anyone would object to the headline Lawyer Sanctioned for Practicing Law without License.
Even if the headline was ungrammatical, I would call the problem a “misplaced modifier” rather than a “dangling modifier.” IIRC, the latter would suggest that the noun or noun phrase being modified is missing entirely from the headline, which is not the case here.
A Muslim University without a Burqas!?! I am shocked, I tell you! Absolutely shocked!
My favorite quote on grammar questions: Whom cares?