Thick spears of chicken
by CarolineYuck:
“You can’t get that at the Second Avenue Deli,” he said, pointing out thick spears of chicken, celery and carrot, and sprigs of dill that were barely contained by the bowl.
I’ve reread this a few times and can’t figure out the list of ingredients. Maybe it’s the awful term “thick spears,” which I could imagine referring to potatoes or something but not celery, not carrots, and certainly not chicken. With the extra comma after carrot, the sentence tells us only the dill was barely contained by the bowl, which sounds like a LOT of dill. Bad show, Julia Moskin.
On the other hand, the article from which I drew the sentence is interesting and worth reading: Can the Jewish Deli Be Reformed?
P.S. Take a moment and reflect on the irony of my earlier post on anti-swearing language elitists combined with this persnickety language dissection. But clear language isn’t an issue of education or elitism — trying to be artificially descriptive or clever muddies the writer’s message.
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