Confusing News Story

[R. Richard]

I read the following CBS News story. I'm confused. Apparently three suspects assaulted a subway train. Then, the subway train was captured on video.

How do you go about assaulting a subway train? Are there laws against it?
How do you capture a subway train on video? Do you then have to let it go?
What in the hell are they teaching in the NYC public schools?

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/11/16/l-train-attack-caught-on-video-cops-looking-for-suspects/

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Police in Queens are hunting for three suspects they say are wanted for an assault on a subway train that was captured on video.

The video was recorded just after 2 a.m. on Nov. 8.

It shows an argument between two men on a Queens bound L train that police say quickly escalated into a beating.

 

[sr71plt]

I found that to be perfectly understandable and correct English. *shrug*

If that's the most you can find to complain about today, you should have a great one.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

This reminds me of a recent post on a blog I enjoy:

In my New Testament class at Michigan State all those years ago, Professor Anderson was going through those sweet old liberal Protestant efforts to explain away the miracle stories, and a student asked, “Why can’t we take them literally?”

“Because literalists are”—I recall he said but may be wrong—“clods.” He went on: “Nicodemus was the first literalist. Jesus told him he had to be born again, and he asked how he was supposed to get back into his mother’s womb.”

There is a kind of literalism that creeps into strictures on usage, and the people who go in for that make no more sense than Nicodemus.

<snip>

Now, I am a copy editor, on the prowl daily for careless combinations and ever aware of Mark Twain’s distinction that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. My job and my quest are to use language as precisely as we can manage.

But informed copy editors must also be aware that there is also a false precision, a will-o’-the-wisp that will lead them off into the marsh and waste valuable time.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2011/11/usage_literalists.html

 

[sr71plt]

That was great, thanks. And so to the point here.

 

[PennLady]

In the OP I can see parsing the red sentence would get you a goofy result, but as SR said, I think we can all get the meaning.

 

[R. Richard]

In the OP I can see parsing the red sentence would get you a goofy result, but as SR said, I think we can all get the meaning.

The problem that I had was with the sentence structure. You say, "...I think we can all get the meaning." That's where the trouble starts. You get a meaning, I get a meaning, someone else gets a meaning. Unfortunately, they be be separate and completely different meanings. I have had some problems with different meanings from the same written material. If your lawyer has to oppose my lawyer in a court where I live, your lawyer will lose. (Since I never passed English in school, I have an English teacher come in and diagram the sentence in question. I have never found a lawyer who could diagram a complex sentence, or would even try.)

 

[Handley_Page]

I read the following CBS News story. I'm confused. Apparently three suspects assaulted a subway train. Then, the subway train was captured on video.

How do you go about assaulting a subway train? Are there laws against it?
How do you capture a subway train on video? Do you then have to let it go?
What in the hell are they teaching in the NYC public schools?

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/11/16/l-train-attack-caught-on-video-cops-looking-for-suspects/

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Police in Queens are hunting for three suspects they say are wanted for an assault on a subway train that was captured on video.

The video was recorded just after 2 a.m. on Nov. 8.

It shows an argument between two men on a Queens bound L train that police say quickly escalated into a beating.

Good one.
A good example of the confusion caused by bad use of the language.

 

[PennLady]

The problem that I had was with the sentence structure. You say, "...I think we can all get the meaning." That's where the trouble starts. You get a meaning, I get a meaning, someone else gets a meaning. Unfortunately, they be be separate and completely different meanings. I have had some problems with different meanings from the same written material. If your lawyer has to oppose my lawyer in a court where I live, your lawyer will lose. (Since I never passed English in school, I have an English teacher come in and diagram the sentence in question. I have never found a lawyer who could diagram a complex sentence, or would even try.)

There will always be room for (mis)interpretation of things like that. Still, I can't help but think most people would just resolve it to themselves to mean that three people assaulted another person while all people were on a subway train. Because for one thing, if they had in fact "assaulted" the train itself, different language would have been used, like "vandalized". It's not all about parsing and diagramming.

 

[PennLady]

And to add to the fun. I read this on a Washington Post blog today.

The greater effect will come with the schedule. With an uneven number of teams in each league, an American League team will play a National League on every day of the season, from opening day to Game 162. The line between leagues, having already blurred over the years, will become nearly extinct.

It took me several minutes to get the second sentence. Initially I thought it meant each NL team would play an AL team every game and although I realized that wasn't possible, it took me a minute to get my mind around it.

 

[R. Richard]

And to add to the fun. I read this on a Washington Post blog today.

Quote:
The greater effect will come with the schedule. With an uneven number of teams in each league, an American League team will play a National League on every day of the season, from opening day to Game 162. The line between leagues, having already blurred over the years, will become nearly extinct.

It took me several minutes to get the second sentence. Initially I thought it meant each NL team would play an AL team every game and although I realized that wasn't possible, it took me a minute to get my mind around it.

Ah yes. What you read is a statement that really requires a priori knowledge to understand. Thus, you were at least initially confused.

I was, at one time, employed as a computer programmer. Back then, I was urged to read computer manuals. Said manuals were written by non-programmers, who had no idea how computers operate (lacked a priori knowledge.) However, the non-programmers were able to write smooth sounding nonsense that appealed to other non-programmers and even some educated programmers. In one such situation, I was told, by a PhD in computers (foreign guy) that he thought the manual that I had been forced to read was 'pretty good and very clear.' I responded, "Show me the section on setting up a tasking structure." There, of course, was no such section. However, the snooth nonsense had lulled a PhD into forgetting that the most important information that we needed was missing.

I don't read concepts and smooth sounding prose. I read words, in a sentence structure. If the words and/or the structure don't make sense, I'm very aware of the lack. (As you may have guessed. I could never pass high school English.)