What is a garden-path sentence?

What is a garden-path sentence?

A garden-path sentence is a pretty, pastoral term for a writing phenomenon we writers want to edit out of our work.

Have you ever heard the term “leading someone down the garden path” to describe deceiving someone? That’s what garden-path sentences do: deceive. While grammatically correct, garden-path sentences mislead the reader into interpreting a sentence incorrectly. Fortunately, garden-path sentences don’t appear in speech because when we talk, we include subtle inflections and tones to clarify our meaning. However, you find them all the time in writing.

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As readers, we generally attempt to understand a sentence left to right as we read it. However, when a sentence contains an ambiguous beginning, it’s possible to interpret the sentence wrong—forcing us to return to the beginning to reprocess the sentence to get to its true meaning. Garden-path sentences frustratingly interrupt the flow of the rest of the work.

For example, look at this garden-path sentence:

• We painted the wall with cracks.

Grammatically, there’s nothing wrong with the above sentence. But as a reader, we trip up while reading it. We begin by interpreting the first part as, “We painted the wall”: subject, verb, direct object. Great. We then see the word “with” and anticipate that it’s starting a prepositional phrase that will describe what we painted the wall with. Did we paint the wall with baby blue paint? Or did we paint the wall with the blood of our enemies? Who knows? Whatever the next word is, we anticipate it will be an object of the preposition that will answer the question, “What did we paint the wall with?” Instead, the next word is “cracks.” Well, that doesn’t make sense! You cannot paint something with cracks. Then we readers return to the beginning and reread the sentence. We then understand “with cracks” describes the wall and not what the wall was painted with.

The writer could avoid this confusion by reworking the sentence as “We painted the cracked wall.”

Take our editing advice: If you want crystal-clear writing and happy readers, avoid garden-path sentences.

10 examples of garden-path sentences

The best way to identify garden-path sentences is to read your work out loud so you can hear yourself verbally trip over them. Read these ten examples out loud so you know what to look for in the future.

• When Mia called her old mother was happy.
• I convinced her children are noisy.
• The old man the boat.
• When Gertrude eats food gets thrown.
• While the woman hunted the deer ran into the woods.
• The lady sent the flowers was pleased.
• Wherever Jane walks the dog chases her.
• The woman who whistles tunes pianos.
• That Ava is never here hurts.
• The dog that I had really loved bones.

These ten sentences are all grammatically correct, but that doesn’t make them good. When you see these sorts of sentences spring up in your work, fix them.

How to fix garden-path sentences

When editing work, you’ll recognize a garden-path sentence when you see it, or more accurately, trip over it. Since there are a variety of garden-path sentences, there are a variety of ways to fix them. Let’s fix some together so you can get the hang of some common techniques.

Add a comma to clarify the meaning

Take this garden-path sentence for example:

• While Hannah was eating the pie was still baking in the oven.

Fix this garden-path sentence with a comma after “eating”:

• While Hannah was eating, the pie was still baking in the oven.

Doesn’t that read better? A simple comma can save a sentence.

Add a complementizer like which, that, or whom to clarify the meaning

For example, look at this garden-path sentence:

• The cotton clothing is made of grows in Georgia.

Frustrating, huh? See what happens when you squeeze the word “that” between “cotton” and “clothing.”

• The cotton that clothing is made of grows in Georgia.

Adding that one little word makes the sentence a lot more palatable for the reader.

Change the part of speech to clarify the meaning

Sometimes you just have to change some words around. Look at this example:

• He scrubbed the floor with scuffs.

See what happens when you transform the noun “scuffs” into an adjective.

• He scrubbed the scuffed floor.

That simple change maintains your sentence’s meaning, while making it a lot clearer.

Now that you know how to identify garden-path sentences, you can edit them out of your work or avoid them altogether. Good writing is clear and concise.