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In the New Yorker...

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serious crayons:
Am I reading this wrong or is this a pretty egregious editing error by New Yorker standards? It's from a March 2022 article that I just happen to be reading now.


--- Quote ---Doctors in the Midlands had developed the custom of recording when a baby had died; doctors in London that a miscarriage had occurred.

--- End quote ---

Either switch the semicolon for a comma or add a verb to the second part.


Front-Ranger:
That is a seriously messed up sentence! The only way it could work is if the "when" and "that" could be coordinated; either use when in both cases or that in both cases.

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 11, 2023, 03:44:09 pm ---Am I reading this wrong or is this a pretty egregious editing error by New Yorker standards? It's from a March 2022 article that I just happen to be reading now.

Either switch the semicolon for a comma or add a verb to the second part.

--- End quote ---

I'd just switch the semicolon to a comma. That said, I do think it would be a better sentence if it were written as "that a baby had died" and "that a miscarriage had occurred." That would make the two parts parallel. "When" makes me think the doctor was looking at his watch and noting the time. But maybe he was?

But I also don't know the context of the sentence.

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2023, 10:15:24 pm ---I'd just switch the semicolon to a comma. That said, I do think it would be a better sentence if it were written as "that a baby had died" and "that a miscarriage had occurred." That would make the two parts parallel. "When" makes me think the doctor was looking at his watch and noting the time. But maybe he was?

But I also don't know the context of the sentence.

--- End quote ---

The article was about how numbers and statistics can be misleading. Those two places were part of one study and I guess that difference messed up the results.

Agreed about "that"!

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 12, 2023, 06:38:06 pm ---The article was about how numbers and statistics can be misleading. Those two places were part of one study and I guess that difference messed up the results.

Agreed about "that"!

--- End quote ---

Numbers and statistics misleading? Imagine that!  ;D

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