California needs to get a grip on its legal system:
"After serving more than five years for the VCR offense, a federal judge released Ramirez in 2002 under reasoning the appeals court affirmed Monday."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y23512418
There we go with topic vs. subject again.
"After serving more than five years for the VCR offense, a federal judge released Ramirez in 2002 under reasoning the appeals court affirmed Monday."
This is nothing short of laziness. There are a bunch of ways to recast this.
"A federal judge released Ramirez in 2002 after he had served more than five years in prison for stealing a $199 VCR. The appeals court agreed with the judge's reason for overturning the sentence."
"Ramires, who had served more than five years of a 25-year sentence, was released in 2002 by a Federal judge who ruled that the punishment did not fit the crime."
It's really so easy to get it right, and actually (to me) rather harder to get it wrong, but then most of us understand the finer nuances of English, something the reporter obviously did not.
Well, both your solutions fix the problem, TEd, but create new ones: the first is too wordy, and the second uses the passive voice. Yet I still like the passive-voice phrasing most of the three.
It is indeed a question of subject vs. topic.
Asp:
I started to comment on the passive voice when I wrote those two replacement suggestions, then decided not to. Like you, I don't like the passive voice, mbut there are times when it comes in pretty handy.
I have written entire pay entitlement manuals ( several hundred pages of regulations!) with absolutely no passive voice in them, but I'll admit there were times when it would have been easier to use it.
TEd
California needs to get a grip , period.
As to news reporting, has anyone else detected what seems to be an increase in the use of...colloquial words, for lack of a better term. Yesterday one of our local newscasters reported that somebody had "busted into" somewhere; and there was something similar not too long ago that I can't recall right now. Do you-all think this is a good thing, or not? It sounds pretty unprofessional to me.
I don't like it, Jackie, because it only pushes colloquial further down. pretty soon we'll just be grunting...
This seems to me just another case of working too hard to misunderstand something. If you have to work harder to misunderstand it than you would to 'fix' it, then reanalyze your understanding of grammar.
After serving more than five years for the VCR offense, a federal judge released Ramirez in 2002 under reasoning the appeals court affirmed Monday.
The reporter probably wrote: "After serving more than five years for the VCR offense, Ramirez was released by a federal judge in 2002 under reasoning the appeals court affirmed Monday." But some editor tsk-tsked the use of the passive, and it was changed. Whenever somebody deprecates the usa of the passive, I wonder aloud how come so many languages developed one in the first place? Now ergative languages have an anti-passive. Cool.
In some technical writing the use of the active instead of the passive produces horribly strained syntax.
Yep, you sussed me out. I've been making my living as a tech writer for the past sixteen years.
You're absolutely right, jheem. It had to be some hard-assed copy editor!
But some editor tsk-tsked the use of the passive, and it was changed. Now, jheem, was this tongue-in-cheek on your part? Or should I tsk-tsk and insist on "But some editor tsk-tsked the use of the passive, and changed it."?
It was purely unpremeditated.
The editor and the writer could be the same person. I know I feel schizo when I write. Listening to the muse and all that ...
"But some editor tsk-tsked the use of the passive, and changed it."?
I was whooshed right by this one.
Listening to the muse and all that...
I ain't sayin' nuthin.
I ain't sayin' nuthin.
Paralepsis raises its head.
Oh, muse + ick, not an 'ill Greek letter μ'. I see. My mistake.
Like Sophronius, I'm just an *interpreter.
> an interpreter
yeahbut®
into what language? ;)
And what's musick's *native language, for that matter?
Michael Parks and I've been down this long lonesone highway before...
******
...native...
It's been changing since the first time someone asked *the question.
I was much amused by this statement, in a recently released opinion:
As a result of defendant’s third degree CSC conviction in this case the fifteen-year-old victim of defendant’s CSC became pregnant and gave birth to a child.
There's more consequences to a conviction than one would imagine...
This was on the front page of today's Charlotte Observer. I have nominated it for the worst paragraph of the year.
"These hogs, also called wild boar, are said to descend from Russia's Ural Mountains. They were brought to these mountains (western NC) to be hunted. Black and bristly, their tusks curve out of long snounts, tiny eyes warily squinting under a thick lump of shoulder muscle."
Competition must not be very stiff in NC.
If you have to work harder to misunderstand it than you would to 'fix' it, then reanalyze your understanding of grammar.
I agree, Faldage. If you have to work at misunderstanding something, you should have misunderstood yourself in bed.
BTW headline should have read: "VCR felon released after serving more than 5 years of 2-5 year term. Appeal court ruled inmate got more time than he deserved, and he did more time than he should have."