r/EnglishLearning • u/Official_glazer Non-Native Speaker of English • Dec 05 '25

📚 Grammar / Syntax Does this makes sense or not?

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Something just bothers me about the first 3 rows.

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u/fairydommother Native Speaker – California Dec 05 '25

It does but its really clunky. I'd rephrase it to something like "I may not be the best person, but by far the worst thing I've done..."

But I also dont like that be cause the first half of the sentence should be setting up for something good that you've done or something bad that you don't do. "I may not be the best person, but i always donate to charity in the winter." Or, "I may not be the best person, but at least I don't steal cars."

The whole structure of the sentence is bizarre to me, so id change the entire thing to something more like "im not a bad person, but one time I did accidentally touch..."

Does any of that make sense?

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u/Superbead Native/Northwest England Dec 05 '25

I think they were trying to offset "the worst thing I've ever done" otherwise sounding rather unbelievably angelic, so they decided to diss themselves a bit from the outset to come across as a bit more identifiable to the average reader.

It's heavy-handed, but I think the only real crime is the accidental repetition of "by far". I have a habit of doing that too.