Syntactic Errors
K. Hills · Archives of Ophthalmology · 1977
To the Editor.—The October 1976 issue of theArchivesaddressed in editorial and epistolary fashion the desirability of proper use of language. These praiseworthy admonitions may have honed my grammatical sensibility, for when I read the article "Autosomal Recessive Retinitis Pigmentosa and Coats Disease," published in the same issue, I detected a number of syntactic errors that might be worth calling to your attention. In the "Comment" section of this interesting article, we are informed that "retinitis pigmentosa and coats disease" have "existed" in the ophthalmic literature and occurred in "the same individual," albeit in the latter instance, infrequently. I submit that the authors intended to say thereportsof the two conditions "exist" in the literature or "have been published." I am well aware that these diseases haveoccurredor evenexistedin a human being, but I can't bring myself to believe that one of my favorite