Monday, October 11, 2010

The least comprehensible paragraph of journalism ever written?

A few years back I stumbled upon this opening paragraph in a "quality" Australian newspaper. I don't want to "out" the author (although you can search and find the article for yourself), and we should perhaps assume some bizarre mishap in the sub-editing process - I would hate to think that this paragraph was, in fact, deliberate. Anyway, whatever the cause, the result, as you see, is sixty-five incomprehensible words with just a single, apparently random, comma between them. I hate it and I love it:

"It is virtually a cast-iron rule that any film in which the lead character is so awestruck by the close proximity of their object of desire that they fall over, walk into an unyielding object or unwittingly cause an accident causing the invariable passing cyclist to violently cartwheel is philosophically and morally unsound. Those reels will do anything to satisfy and damn the movie's integrity."

I will preserve it here for posterity.
Lee

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