July 23, 2005

  • Every now and again one runs into an example of sloppy writing that
    causes one to do a doubletake.  Case in point is this news
    headline at BBC:  'Taleban' shoot dead Afghan judge

    If he's dead, why shoot him?  

    I clicked on the link to make sure it was,
    in fact, poor writing and not a matter of someone in the Taleban
    deciding some poor deceased Afghan judge wasn't quite deceased
    enough. 

Comments (3)

  • "Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim"

    There's hundreds of examples of this sort of thing - headline writers who have to squeeze as much information into as short a space as possible.

  • LOL!

  • OTOH, Moosie, in this particular instance a simple rearrangement of words would have sufficed to make the meaning clear: Taleban shoot Afghan judge dead

    Same number of words...same amount of space...much more comprehensible.

    Therefore, it was a true example of sloppy writing.

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