Double-take, # 133

Seems improbable:

Link: The Guardian, ‘IPCC investigates alleged student assaults […]’

The journalist’s determination to be pithy has undermined logic: the mismatched syntax in the final section of the sentence results in a statement that exactly reverses the true state of affairs. To avoid such ambiguity, relative clauses should immediately follow the noun they qualify. The reader should not be expected to work out the logic from external knowledge or additional research.

a university that called for the scrapping of tuition fees

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 56

Here’s a phrase that is increasing in popularity across the journalistic board:

Source: BBC News (Android), ‘EE to take over 58 Phones 4U stores’. Link: online version

Placing a company into administration for insolvency is a legal process that has to be organized. A company can thus enter administration, or go into administration, or be put or placed into administration. All these terms are used by financial professionals.

Logically, however, a company cannot fall into administration. Falling is an accidental, spontaneous action. It is thus not meaningful to apply it to the formal process of administration. To use fall not only sets up a contradiction within the phrase, but it also implies that the company has been lax in relation to its financial situation — ‘Oh heck! I’ve just noticed we’re on the edge of insolvency…’ — where it is far more likely to have been trying a range of measures short of administration to solve its problems.

It’s hard to see why this phrase came to be used.

fall into administration

Double-take, # 87

Source: Whilton Locks Garden Store

hens (grown on chicks); supermarket sized eggs