This is from The New Yorker. This sentence, written by Doreen St. Félix, is 61 freaking words long and contains 12, yes 12, prepositonal phrases. Six such phrases is a sure sign of a severe, if not fatal, case of wordiness. Twelve prepositional phrases means the writer must be quarantined for at least a month until this malady clears up. Turner Catledge, the great southern gentleman and New York Times managing editor, once said the paper’s composing room had an unlimited cache of periods and admonished his reporters to use them liberally. Doreen, listen up. If you can’t, Doreen’s editor should immediately report to the school nurse. The narcolepsy must be treated.
Here is the offending and offensive prose:
“On Wednesday, seven days after the nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz walked into his former high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, in Parkland, Florida, and killed seventeen people with an AR-15, the White House invited a select group of the survivors of that shooting, and of mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and at Columbine High School and in Aurora, Colorado, for a ‘listening session.’ ”
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