Dear Author:

[nightdog_barks]

I do not think this sentence conveys the information you think it conveys.

Two years later his older brothers started enlisting one after another in the Union Army to fight the Yankees, leaving only the three youngest -- Hiram, Absalom, and Frank, age eleven, nine, and seven -- to work the farm under their father for the duration of the war.

Bolding mine, for emphasis.

Comments

[nightdog_barks]

Exactly!

:-D

[taiga13]

Once for an undergrad paper on population growth, I wrote "women had smaller families" and then changed it to "woman had fewer children". Or I thought it did. I proofread it more than once, only to get it back from the professor with the words "women had smaller children" circled.