Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 47

Dr Faustus has spotted problems in the Guardian's reporting of the Philpotts' conviction, notably this error which, as he says, is particularly insensitive and should have been found and corrected before publication:

 Link: Guardian, 'once child'

Dr Faustus also observes that the use of quotation marks in paragraph 18 is 'very strange'.

Indeed, the piece seems to have been rushed into publication. The story was co-written and two voices/styles of writing can be clearly discerned. The responsibility for proofreading, of course, falls to both writers, but seems to have been carried out by neither. There are further issues, such as the failure to hyphenate grief-stricken, and the inclusion of this largely unintelligible paragraph:

Even when the missing comma from the first line has been mentally inserted, and the superfluous comma in the final line removed, the meaning remains ambiguous. Did Cotterill say it 'days after the fire' or was it Philpott's behaviour that was suspicious 'days after the fire'?

This is an excellent example of the confusion that results when the relative pronoun that is not used to mark the beginning of a relative clause, but simply implied, an unattractive modern habit that often forces a reader to reread material for sense, since no indication is supplied of what kind of syntactical structure is ahead or how it relates to the previous part of the sentence. Put more simply, readers need to know what will happen next grammatically, and how it relates to what has come before, so they can understand as they read.

The 'implied' pronoun is known as a zero relative pronoun, while the clause it (doesn't) introduce is known as a zero clause or contact clause. There is some debate about the status of that when introducing a subordinate clause: is it a relative pronoun in this case or a subordinating conjunction?

With the greatest respect to the grammarians, surely a more pressing point is the lack of clarity. The above example shows exactly why the practice is not conducive to clear communication. Inserting that after 'said' would make it clear that 'days after the fire' referred to when Philpott's behaviour was suspicious; conversely, placing that before 'Philpott' shows that Cotterill made the comments 'days after the fire' ― a fairly significant difference.

In both cases, flagging the grammatical relationship of what is to follow helps the reader to grasp the content's meaning quickly. As it is, without a that in either position, the sentence is a mess and it is impossible to conclude what is meant.