A possible new feature for the blog
Katharine Kerr September 3rd, 2006
I had an idea for the Craft section, and I want to see if anyone’s interested. I was thinking of an occasional ”What’s Wrong with this Sentence?” post or page whenever one of us finds a particularly awful real sentence. Someimes dissecting mistakes is the best way to learn, and rather than mortify anyone here, I could keep an eye out for mstakes by writers who’ll never know we’re dissecting them.  I mean, their work. Â
 Here’s an example. This is from an actual report of a football game in a big-city newspaper, and yes, it’s all a single sentence:
“Lawson intercepted a deflected pass in the second quarter and rumbled 23 yards for a touchdown that was taken away from him when the officials ruled that he came in contact with running back Larry Croom, upon whose hands the ball clanged off of.”
I am not making this up. The length is obviously a mistake. Anyone else care to comment?
“upon whose hands the ball clanged off of”? You are making it up, and you are a bad person to deny it. Nobody could write such a phrase: it’s ungrammatical in at least three ways (it ends not in a preposition but in two separate prepositions, and yet it starts with a third…), it has an entirely inapposite verb at its heart (the ball clanged? on - or off - someone’s hands? what’s to clang here?) and hence it fails to make any sense at all.
The rest of the sentence we will disregard. Sheesh…
Those last 8 words have to be the worst clause ever written in the English language…
Actually, the only truly incorrect grammar in the whole sentence is the final ‘of’ - which simply doesn’t belong.
There are however 2 inappropriate verbs. I find it hard to imagine a footballer rumbling down the field, or a ball clanging upon someone’s hands. Other than that, grammatically there’s nothing wrong. It is nevertheless awful because it is so awkwardly phrased - using “that” as a conjunction when there is already a “that” earlier, and the whole “upon whose” construction. Sheesh indeed…
The idea that no sentence should end in a preposition is a bit old-fashioned, and there are many cases when a sentence can be prefectly acceptable with a final preposition. This is not one of them!!
I can’t make sense of it at all–there seems to be built-in sports jargon knowledge required–will wait on the next. Excellent idea, though.
Okay, let me see if I’ve got this right.
Lawson (subject) intercepted (compound verb #1) a deflected (indirect object) pass (direct object) in the second quarter (prepositional phrase) and rumbled (compound verb #2) 23 (indirect object) yards (direct object) for a touchdown (prepositional phrase) that was taken away from him (adjective clause?) when the officials ruled that he came in contact (adverb clause?) with running back Larry Croom (prepositional phrase?), upon whose hands (prepositional phrase) the ball clanged off of. (another adjective clause?)
The first “that” should be a “but it.” And recast that last clause for all sorts of reasons.
—L.
Calling Thog!
Wow! Good one! The trouble with the sentence comes from the modification of the word “touchdown.” Not sure if I got the grammatical tags and all of the subordination and modification correct — but there is a cascade of subordination off the word “touchdownâ€? that is kind of Rube Goldbergian.
The author clearly thinks that Lawson was robbed of the TD, but doesn’t give the robbery the grammatical prominence it needs – its own separate sentence.
SUBJECT – Lawson
VERB #1 – intercepted
Prep phrase – in the second quarter
DIRECT OBJECT – a deflected pass
CONJUNCTION – and
VERB #2 – rumbled
–Adverb – 23 yards
–Prep phrase – for a touchdown
—–Clause modifying “touchdownâ€? – that
—–Sub/V – that (implied: touchdown) was taken
———Adverb – away
———Prep phrase – from him
———Adverbial clause – when
————-Sub/V - the officials ruled
——————Subordinate clause – that
——————Sub/V – he came
————————Prep phrase – in contact
————————Prep phrase – with Larry Croom
—————————–Prep phrase – upon
———————————-Sub/V– the ball clanged
—————————————Prep phrase – off [of] whose hands
That sentence hurt my brain. I read it out loud, though, and it sounds like something I’d hear during Monday Night Football. Maybe the intent was to make it sound like something a sportscaster would say? (I suppose that’s a Devil’s advocate viewpoint.)
I’d love to see a section devoted to this sort of thing. I know that my own grasp of grammar has become a bit spotty over the years, and it’s worth brushing up.
With all due respect, I’d like to elaborate on “length is a mistake.” Length is a mistake (IMHO) in this context because the author is writing in a newspaper, and his audience is unlikely to be able to digest complex sentences. He’s writing a sports pages, so he probably needs more punch. Short sentences tend to jab and punch better than elaborate ones. (I think that’s your point, Ms. Kerr.)
Length in and of itself doesn’t constitute a grammatical mistake. Sometimes long sentences are wholly appropriate, and there are ways to make long sentences intelligible and clear.
This probably works better and has 45 words:
Lawson intercepted a deflected pass in the second quarter and rumbled 23 yards for a touchdown, but the touchdown was disallowed when the officials ruled that opposition running back Larry Croom had managed to get his hands on the ball before Lawson (had?) hit the end zone.
Even so, were I writing a sports column, I’d make that two or three sentences.
The above rewrite corrects another fault of the sentence — verb tense. Because of his method of cascading phrases, the author doesn’t go into past perfect tense when he should. He recounts interception, rumbling and taking away in the past tense, then recounts why the touchdown was disallowed — which event happened before the touchdown — that part should have been in past perfect tense.
And THAT’S in addition to the other excellent points already mentioned.
Dang! There are SO MANY things wrong with that sentence. My brain hurts thinking about it. Thanks for the mental calisthenics.
Excellent choice, Ms. Kerr.
Larry Croom is obviously some sort of robot.
Good stuff, everyone! I will keep an eye out for sentences this bad or worse, and post them as I find them.
Kit Retterson’s analysis makes one more point that only someone who watched the play can know — it wasn’t the ball that Croom touched, it was Lawson. The sentence is so unclear that even the most determined analyst can’t tell what the hell happened unless he or she saw it happen.
I suspect the “clanged” is a mistake for “clanked”, a made-up football word that owes something to the vernacular use of “tanked”, meaning “failed badly”.
In a way, criticizing sports writing is worse than shooting fish in a barrel. Only fashion writers use clumsier, stupider language on an every-day basis.
Sentences like this annoy me because they give length a bad name. I like long sentences. They add flavor and savor to a work, and, when properly subordinated, they aid in a certain style. Unfortunately, some folk can’t tell the difference between a run-on sentence and one whose awkward construction is made worse by its unusual length. This sentence doesn’t violate any single grammatical point aside from clarity, so so far as I’m concerned, the whole thing just gets marked “Awkward–Rephrase.”
This could be reconstructed into a number of smaller sentences, or, alternately, into a single sentence which described the flow of the action sequentially, rather than as a series of amendments and afterthoughts. Unless the players are robots, the verbs “rumbled” and “clanged” should also be swapped out.
To clang also has a metallic meaning, so the image is probably that of a lead football clanging off metal hands — very robotic, indeed.
The length is a problem because it’s sports writing, Kevin, which is generally written at a 12 year old reading level. I like long sentences myself, but in journalism you need to be aware of the intended audience.
This sentence is long because it’s an ill-thought-out stack of clauses, not because it’s a graceful rumination on something or other.
Well, I think that twelve year olds can understand long sentences if they’re written properly. Breaking that sentence into several smaller ones is the easier–and I’d say proper–solution, but if we wanted to make it a long, clear sentence…
In the second quarter, Lawson intercepted a deflected pass and charged 23 yards for a touchdown, but officials took this away, ruling that the ball had bounced off running back Larry Croom’s hands.
Or something like that. I didn’t see the play and don’t know all the sports jargon, but I think the above would still be understandable to the average twelve year old.
One thing nobody seems to have mentioned is that the author just didn’t describe events very well. Kevin’s attempted paraphrase flat makes no sense if you’re familiar with the rules of football, but that’s less Kevin’s fault than the original sentence being obscure. Retterson’s isn’t much better. I think that the officials ruled that Lawson’s play was illegal because he was called for pass interference, but I have to guess that because the sentence fails to plainly say what happened. So my paraphrase, assuming I’ve interpreted the sentence correctly, is, “Lawson took an interception 23 yards for a touchdown in the 2nd quarter, but his play was nullified when official ruled he had interfered with running back Larry Creem, the intended taget.”