Can you make sense of this sentence?
From this Wiki article on the killing of George Tiller in 2009: “Tiller was fatally shot in the side of the head on May 31, 2009, by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder during worship services at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher and handing out church bulletins.”
How was he serving as an usher and handing out church bulletins, while murdering someone at the same time?
Gailcalled, we need you now. :( ♥
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9 Answers
Holy cow, @Dutchess_III, you’ll be busy forever finding common grammatical errors in Wikipedia.
It’s WIKI – - not known for great grammar or punctuation.
Just playin’ around guys. I’m taking a break now and then from cleaning and rearranging my kitchen SINCE THE PANTRY IS FINISHED!!
No need to take things so seriously. Have fun with it.
Ok, here’s another! I turned the TV on, which is something I NEVER do, but I want to take a break but I don’t want to go outside because it’s cold.
Flipping through show descriptions, looking for something easy on the mind, like How It’s Made, I came across a True Crime thing. The description read: “Mother is murdered and her son, stabbed.”
So, was her son named Stabbed and he got murdered too I wonder?
Well it’s ambiguous who the subject of the final clause is – either Tiller was shot while handing out bulletins, or Roeder shot Tiller while handing out church bulletins. That’s a bad error in the sentence – “he” should be replaced with “Tiller” or “Roeder”, or the whole thing turned into two better sentences, such as one sentence for each person.
That’s like a man with one leg named John. His other leg apparently isn’t important enough to get a name.
Who was handing out the bulletins? It seems the whole sentence was written in either two sessions or a squirrel happened by and distracted the writer. “Tiller was fatally shot in the side of the head” oh look a squirrel….
“I like eating meat and my family.”
I could see at once that it was Tiller who was handling church bulletings. From my experience when there is a sentence like that, the “he” after the “where” often refers to the main subject.
Turns out this confirm that my hunch is right.
Ah. I didn’t realize he was actually shot at the church. If you don’t know anything about the case the sentence makes more sense. I had years of half formed assumptions behind me. Especially since it happened not far from here.
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