Tuesday, January 04, 2005
 
Great Moments in Sentence Writing

A BBC piece entitled "Tribe shoots arrows at aid flight" features a number of illustrations about how pronoun abuse hurts everyone:
    Officials believe they survived the devastation by using age-old early warning systems.
No, I think that the officials survived the devestation by being elsewhere when the devestation occured.

    Scientists are examining the possibility to see whether it can be used to predict earth tremors in future.
The last sentence represents the worst sentence I have seen in a long, long time. "The possibility" doesn't really have an antecedent in the preceding paragraphs; I think the author meant that scientists were going to examine the actual actions of the tribes to determine if, possibly, they have a line on predicting tsunamis that won't cost money.

But the idea of using a possibility kinda scrums me. It sounds kinda Star Trek, ainna? But Captain, we can use the Solar Possibility to metaphase the Enterprise back in time four days....

On a side note to the natives who tried to shoot the planes with bows and arrows: although you, too, have watched the computer players' spearmen hold off your tanks in Civilization III, it's not that easy in real life.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:54 AM
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."