Thursday, December 15, 2005

I can't resist a good play on words. There's a Sunday comic strip called "Frank and Ernest" that deals largely in wordplay, and it's probably my favorite comic (well, maybe just after "Dilbert").

Anyway, FinnCanuck, of the blog Sotamies, inadvertantly led me to a huge linguistic mistake made by a mainstream journalist. The situation is not funny--it involves a murder. But the story title is classic: "Man Accused of Abducting Dead Jogger". Maybe I'm a bit picky with the English language, but the story title quite clearly indicates that someone kidnapped a corpse. I do know what the writer meant to say, but the fact remains that the title indicates that a deceased runner's remains were hijacked.

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