Fixing Garden Path Sentences

When reading, I often encounter sentences which my brain initially misreads. Typically, the sentences have a word order choice that causes momentary ambiguity as the sentence is being read. These are called “garden path sentences.” Garden path sentences make your text more difficult to read because they require more conscious effort from the reader, distracting from the meaning the text is trying to convey. The cadence of an audible rendering that would normally eliminate misunderstanding is difficult to include in text. I’d like to show a few examples I’ve encountered in the real world, and demonstrate how to fix such issues. Afterwards, I’m hoping you’ll be more likely to recognize garden path sentences in your own writing, and be more able to fix them.

“The witty, articulate woman I once was seemed to no longer exist.”
First reading expects something different after “was.” For example, “The witty, articulate woman I once was familiar with had disappeared.” When the reader encounters “seemed,” the sentence momentarily seems grammatically incorrect. It’s similar in structure to: “The dog that I had really loved bones.”
Solution: “I was no longer that witty, articulate woman I once had been.” Or, “I once was witty and articulate, but now that woman seemed to no longer exist.”

I wanted to find more examples before I posted this, but it’s been languishing as a draft for too long. So, if you have encountered a garden path sentence, please leave it in a comment! I’d love to get more examples.

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