>>>>... or too much of an A-hole?
>>>>
>>>>http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090325_mo_detained.6f8a23c1.html
>>>
>>>To Terry: it took me a whole minute and the whole first paragraph to understand that "Officer delays family racing to see dying mom" does not mean "officer caused family races to be delayed so he could see his dying mom", but rather "Officer delays a family which was racing to see their dying mom".
>>
>>Like I've said before, when taking the slip road (off ramp) from a motorway (freeway, turn-pike) to enter the Services (food, gas, toilet, rip-off), there's always a sign: "End of Motorway Regulations". For years I read this as "You must obey the regulations for whne you come to the end of the motorway" (eg slow down and stuff), rater than "End of the regulations you must obey whilst on the motorway".
>
>Our daughter brought a form titled with no less than seven nouns, most of which were to be understood as adjectives to describe the noun to the right, but not necessarily the nearest one - and there were about fifty possible groupings. Whoever makes such language doesn't care, they're bureaucrats who just slap anything on a heap and go to the next victim. "Electric pencil sharpener" may become ambiguous once electric pencils are invented; today it's still not. But that's a simple case where it can be either "sharpener of electric pencils" xor "electric sharpener of pencils". But with nouns and adjectives just heaped up, any combination may apply. The city owned vehicles (i.e. the vehicles owned by the city, I didn't say "the city had owned vehicles") have "official local government use only", which can be interpreted as
>
>- unofficial local government cannot use it
>- local government cannot use it unofficially
>- any official government must not use it unless it is local
>- the official local government may use it but must not repair it, sell it, junk it or do anything else but use it
>- official local government may use it, but official local barber, court, police, bar and anything else must not
>
>(I stole this from myself)
>
>>Now if that headline had included "from": "Officer delays family from racing to see dying mom" it would have been unambiguous (monoguous?)
>
>Much better. I think the worst chosen word was "racing", as it implies a competition with/against others. Specially "family racing" seems like something a neighborhood would organize on a Sunday morning (which also crossed my mind, good, because I never cross it myself).
>
>Maybe "officer delays family speeding to their dying mom"... but then if the author of the headline had ever thought about possible ambiguity, we wouldn't be talking about it now, would we?


Language is a tool not a prison, Be flexible and go with the flow then it all makes sense or doesn't seem quite so important.

Hows your garden BTW

anything edilble ?