Saturday, April 14, 2012

We hardly knew ... wait, what?

It's ACES 2012 and heds are in the air, so let's start getting through some of the backlog that's piled up over the past few weeks.

What is CBS up to here -- listing its story topics (remembering Wallace, Cardinal Dolan) or listing the people you ought to remember (Wallace and Dolan)?


 As with the never-ending dispute about hyphenating compound modifiers, this isn't a case in which I'd say the the possible second reading (remembering Wallace and Dolan) is the one that's definitively "created" by grammar. I would say that at a quick, coffee-deprived read, it's ambiguous enough to merit rewriting. One solution is to put the longer or more complex element at the end of the compound. You can't have two potential objects if you're the last thing in the sequence: "Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Remembering Mike Wallace and more."

Having wondeful time, wish you were here, and if you are here, see you shortly.

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1 Comments:

Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

Huh, at first I read it as "remembering Wallace, remembering Dolan, remembering more". Then I thought, what difference could it make - since I read your alternative as actually meaning the same thing.

Then I realized Dolan isn't dead.

So, yeah - the rewrite would have helped.

11:58 AM, April 15, 2012  

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