The Philbin

Found online: When the Joe Philbin and the Dolphins installed the pass-first offense to cater to Tannehill, it stopped the development of Miller, made his offense line worse and stopped the offense from being efficient.

I'm not exactly sure what the writer meant. He/she could have wanted to say "Joe Philbin and the Dolphins," or he/she might have meant "the Joe Philbin-led Dolphins." Either way might have worked better than the way it was written.

From another article: There is a lot of optimism surrounding the Suh for this next season. He has gotten better and better the past four seasons, and now with a very reputable defensive coordinator, we can expect great things to come from Suh.

This is another sentence in which "the" bothers me. It looks like they were saying something else (maybe the defensive tackle) and changed it; then they forgot to cut out "the."

Why did I bold out "very"? You don't need it here. He's either reputable or he's not. Very is irrelevant.

Links: On my web site, I have links to some of my stories online.

 

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  TWITTER: EDITORatWORK

MORE EDITOR@WORK BLOG ENTRIES

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• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

BLOG ENTRIES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

ANECDOTES BY TOM GILLISPIE

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• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer OUTTA there!

ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

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BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL

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(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

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(the book of great NASCAR stories)

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