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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Criminal Sentence 221: Debate over Prepositions

Today's big headline:

"Debate begins over Obama's court pick"

There is no debate, though, that this syntax is messed up.

What does the "over" phrase describe? Not "begins." Let's just move it next to what it does modify, "debate."

"Debate over Obama's court pick begins"

2 comments:

JoJo said...

I'm new to the sentence sleuth and I love it! Although I am a little paranoid about commenting in case I make a grammatical error.

The Sentence Sleuth said...

Welcome to the site, JoJo. Don't worry about making mistakes. We all do! (Just remember to proofread and you'll most likely catch errors.)