Writers often mistakenly withhold
repetition of prepositions with corresponding sentence elements in the
erroneous belief that those elements can share a single preposition. In each of
the following sentences, a repeated preposition is missing, and a discussion
after each example explains the problem and a revision resolves it.
1. These developments are
significant as the cost and influence of regulation on business models remains
high in many industries.
This sentence’s construction implies
that cost can share
the preposition of with influence,
but it requires its own, because cost
is parallel not to influence
but to “influence of regulation on”: “These developments are significant as the
cost of, and influence of regulation on, business models remains high in many
industries.”
2. Such dysfunction can arise
from incentives that do not encourage resiliency and management being out of
touch with the customer.
Similar to the problem in the previous
sentence, from
should be repeated before management
so that the reader is not led to believe that management corresponds to resiliency rather than to incentives: “Such dysfunction
can arise from incentives that do not encourage resiliency and from management
being out of touch with the customer.”
3. They are designing
preventive and detective control activities that are effective in the new
environment, both from a risk-management and operational-scalability
perspective.
For the phrasal adjectives “risk
management” and “operational scalability” to be fully parallel, legitimately
sharing the noun perspective,
the second phrase must, like the first phrase, be preceded by an article: “They
are designing preventive and detective control activities that are effective in
the new environment, both from a risk-management and an operational-scalability
perspective.” (Better yet, do so and transpose both and from
and repeat perspective
after each phrasal adjective: “They are designing preventive and detective control
activities that are effective in the new environment, from both a
risk-management perspective and an operational-scalability perspective.”)
