Learning grammar from Billy Bob Thornton

I just discovered the rather hilarious site? blog? Celebrity English, which critiques the speech of the likes of Billy Bob, Angelina, and Jessica. It's much funnier for being absolutely deadpan:

Billy Bob has made an error in parallelism. His second sentence contains a list of items that are not all the same grammatical structure.

Dead-on, too, in its analyses of the celebrities' grammar. Even so, I would have preferred "are not all" in the sentence I just quoted to read "don't all have." (Since when are "items" "structure"?) 

The truth is, everyone needs an editor!

Comments

Here's the quote from Billy Bob Thornton:

“I have the utmost respect for Angelina. She’s a very sweet person, very talented and one of my best friends in the world.”

I'm not sure the analysis is correct, though. If "very talented" is parenthetical, adding information to "a very sweet person," then there are only two items in his list and they are parallel.

Am I off here?

Posted by Greg Scott | March 4, 2009 7:16 PM

Greg, if Billy Bob had said, "She's a sweet person, exceptionally so, and one of my best friends in the world," I'd agree with you. But it doesn't really make sense for "very talented" to be parenthetical. Sweetness and talent are different qualities!

Note, too, that if "very talented" were parenthetical, it would need to have a comma after it, as well as the one before. So whoever wrote this down (and followed AP style, which doesn't use serial commas) wasn't interpreting what he or she heard as a two-item list.

Posted by BARBARA WALLRAFF | March 5, 2009 5:41 PM

I find nothing wrong with Billy Bob's usage here. I read the list as three things she is - i.e., she's a sweet person, she's very talented, and she's one of my best friends in the world. You'll note I've introduced my personal preference here, following the penultimate item in the list with a comma, as I learned in elementary school. Apparently I'm in the minority on this, and the lack of a comma after "very talented" in the quote is acceptable current usage.

Posted by Kevin DeLaughter | March 12, 2009 6:16 PM