Jim knew that Candace had discovered the thief and felt it was OK to tell the reporters. Here we have verbs that are parallel but ambiguous. Who felt it was OK to tell the reporters, Jim or Candace? When the first part of a compound verb is followed by a subordinate clause, the second part of the verb may appear to belong to the subordinate clause. In these cases, it’s best to give the second verb its own subject: Jim knew that Candace had discovered the thief, and he felt it was OK to tell the reporters. As an alternative, you can recast the sentence to avoid the parallelism: Once Jim knew that Candace had discovered the thief, he felt it was OK to tell the reporters.
