[Huck]

Bush's margin of victory in the state that put him over the top in his re-election bid will be about 119,000 votes smaller than the unofficial margin of 136,000, the county election board figures showed. That means Kerry drew closer by about 17,000 votes.

Am I the only one who thinks this sentence was written with Escher-like grammar?

[orionblamblam]

Nope...

[blakep]

Yep - you're correct.

They twisted the language in order to acheive what they wanted.

I can't believe this is what goes on in our newsrooms.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

[xkaydet65]

Just think of eats, shoots, and leaves

[Pearls Before Swine]

Re Escher like grammar:

It is really a case of Escher-like punctuation. If a comma had been inserted in the right place, there would be no confusion, as in:

Bush's margin of fictory in the state that put him over the top ... will be about 119,000 votes, (COMMMA HERE) smaller than the unofficial margin of 136,000...

[AnnaZ]

Am I the only one who thinks this sentence was written with Escher-like grammar?

You capture the mindbogglingness of this perfectly.

 

;^)

[libstripper]

They had a terrible editor. If you add a single comma, it reads a follows and makes sense:

"Bush's margin of victory in the state that put him over the top in his re-election bid will be about 119,000 votes [,] smaller than the unofficial margin of 136,000, the county election board figures show."