"Honestly, I think the awkwardness is more made up in the media than it is for she and I. I think it will be fine tonight. I'm sure it will." - Nick Lachey, on seeing his ex-wife Jessica Simpson at the MTV Video Music Awards
Nick has made two errors in pronoun case. In the prepositional phrase "for she and I," the compound object of the preposition is "she and I." Both "she" and "I" are subjective in case and cannot function as objects of a preposition. To correct the error, change the case of the pronouns to objective.
"Honestly, I think the awkwardness is more made up in the media than it is for her and me."
Nick has made a comparison that is not necessarily illogical, but its syntax is somewhat awkward. The structure of the first sentence establishes a comparison between two prepositional phrases:
- the awkwardness is more made up in the media
- than it (the awkwardness) is [made up] for her and me
The implied meaning of the second part of the comparison it "the awkwardness is made up for her and me." This syntax is somewhat unusual; it might make more sense to compare "made up in the media" with a contrasting concept such as "based on reality."
This version of Nick's statement corrects the pronoun case errors and creates a more logical comparison:
"Honestly, I think the awkwardness is more made up in the media than based on reality."
This comparison is more logical and parallel in structure than that in the original statement. Each component of the comparison contains a participial phrase ("made up in the media" and "based on reality") that modifies "awkwardness" and features a participle ("made up" and "based") followed by a prepositional phrase ("in the media" and "on reality").
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