The Captain’s Log

Toplevel | Pontifications of The Great and Terrible Captain Cucamunga.

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 23:25:58 EST

Consider This Sentence

The following sentence occurs in The Toronto Star on Apple News. “Frank Gehry, the Canadian-American architect whose dynamic buildings defied convention, cementing him as one of the most important and influential designers of his generation, died on Friday at his home in California.”

The phrase that begins with cementing surprises. We expect the main verb of the sentence and not a modifier. And cemented without the comma works better, but I will omit the phrase because it is editorial in nature.

My rewrite: “Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry died at his home in Santa Monica on Friday. Gehry’s idiosyncratic designs combined collapsed and swollen forms with the straight lines and right angles of traditional architecture.”