It’s Only Spring Training…
Posted on March 12th, 2010 in Uncategorized |
…so Amalie Benjamin is just warming up!
Here’s today’s lede from the Globe’s syntax-torturing Red Sox correspondent:
“ It was unfamiliar to John Lackey, the lengthy bus ride, the rain delay.”
If this stuff gets into the paper, one can only imagine what the editors start with…
5 Responses
3/12/2010 11:18 am
Not sure it’s a great lede (WHY was it unfamiliar? I could click the link I suppose but am not interested). But it would have been extraordinarily easy to fix: just replace the first comma with a colon.
Colons rule! and this should have been low-hanging fruit for any decent editor.
3/12/2010 2:36 pm
Well, there’s also the noun-verb problem, SE. “It was unfamiliar…the lengthy bus ride, the rain delay.”
How about: “The long bus ride and rain delay were unfamiliar to John Lackey…”
(The more I look at that sentence, the more the word “lengthy” cracks me up.)
Better to be plain-spoken than to write pretentious drivel.
3/12/2010 3:49 pm
‘It’ could just refer to the overall feeling of being delayed.
Besides, she’s all attractive & everything…
3/15/2010 10:41 am
“By Amalie Benjamin and Peter Abraham” - at least assign credit where credit’s due. Wouldn’t that be a prudent rule of journalism?
3/17/2010 11:58 pm
“Better to be plain-spoken than to write prententious drivel.”
Ok, Richard, look….I like the way you write, but YOU use words like ‘balderdash’. That’s not plain spoken. You live in a glass house here. Stop throwing stones, hon.