One too many commas!
The legacy of this case will be that the media never gets it right, and worse, that a group of lawyers, with the aid of a public relations team, who had a financial stake in the outcome of pending and anticipated civil litigation, were allowed to commandeer control of Florida’s criminal justice system, in pursuit of a divisive, personal agenda.
Which comma should definitely go? There are seven to choose from. One or two other commas might be stylistically iffy, but one comma is clearly unnecessary.
(source)
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The problem goes beyond commas. Here's my quick rewrite:
ReplyDeleteThe legacy of this case will be that the media never gets it right and, worse, that a group of lawyers with a financial stake in the outcome of pending and anticipated civil litigation, aided by a public relations team, were allowed to commandeer Florida's criminal justice system in pursuit of a divisive, personal agenda.
Jeffery Hodges
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Splendid editing. Much smoother.
ReplyDeleteJeff's edit points out the fundamental problem in this text: the referent of the "who" clause is unclear. Grammatically it could be either "the group of lawyers" or "a public relations team." Adding a comma after "team" does not necessarily clear this up--it could also simply change the "who" clause from restrictive to none restrictive. Very poorly written.
ReplyDeleteI would also do as Jeff did and drop the comma after "justice system" as well.
(And I may just be ignorant, but I honestly have no idea whether it was the lawyer's or the PR team that had the financial stake. Neither choice seems immediately obvious to me.)
Yes; my original focus was on the unnecessary comma after "system," but Jeff dealt with the misplaced modifier as well. We could go one step further and take the "s" off "gets" in "gets it right," since "media" is technically plural: the media never get it right.
ReplyDeletePoorly written articles are about all I expect from journalists these days; their posts are as dashed-off and unedited as those of bloggers.
Lawyers are more likely than PR departments to have a financial stake in the outcome of litigation, so I made a judgment call and chose to rewrite as I did.
ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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Speaking of dashed-off... I am embarrassed to see that my hastily-typed comment has an unnecessary apostrophe in "lawyers."
ReplyDelete*sigh*
Actually that sentence was written by Jeralyn Merritt who is a lawyer.
ReplyDelete