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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 “touchdown” – 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