Althouse: Blood and grammar.

May 25, 2013

Blood and grammar.

1. Questionable sentence in yesterday's Daily News: "But a bride-to-be who stabbed her fiancé in the heart just hours before they walked down the aisle has now been convicted of his murder."

2. I've read about a murder that happened long ago in which a woman was stabbed in the heart with a long pin, and because she neither felt it — perhaps because of a tight corset — or saw the blood — which oozed slowly into her dark-colored dress — she went about her activities for many hours before succumbing.

27 comments:

rhhardin said...: Pretty soon you'd be rewriting a perfect infinitive and all would be lost. Nothing would ever sound right again.; 5/25/13, 10:20 AM
Bob said...: In the era when swords were the weapon of choice you read of men who, stabbed, continued to live until the weapon was actually withdrawn from the body. Even today in emergency rooms, a person brought in with an object embedded in the torso will see the object carefully stabilized so that it doesn't move about and slice open major blood vessels.; 5/25/13, 10:21 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Both them sentences is good to me.; 5/25/13, 10:23 AM
edutcher said...: Last I heard, you don't start a sentence with a preposition, you tack on a comma to the previous sentence and add the prepositional phrase to it.

(I know, I know...)

Should be:

It was supposed to be her special day, but a bride-to-be who stabbed her fiancé in the heart just hours before they walked down the aisle has now been convicted of his murder.; 5/25/13, 10:23 AM
Chanie said...: 'before they would have walked" but they never did. ann's anecdote in the second sentence, aside, the article says the groom-to-be was pronounced dead at 3am.; 5/25/13, 10:27 AM
Saint Croix said...: It's interesting how both the defense and the prosecution seem to be lying in this case.

Franklin's defense attorneys said she was attacked first by her fiancé, who then tried to run off with their 9-month-old son.

Okay, that's a lie.

But prosecutors and witnesses claimed neither Franklin nor her child were in any danger, and the attack was unprovoked.

That's a lie, too!

Geez, the motivation is so obvious.

The couple were arguing at 2 a.m. on the day of their nuptials — Aug. 11, 2012 — after Brewster returned to their Whitehall Township apartment drunk.

He'd been out for an impromptu bachelor party.

Hell, I knew sex was involved when the bride stabbed her fiancé on her wedding day.; 5/25/13, 10:36 AM
Michael K said...: " Even today in emergency rooms, a person brought in with an object embedded in the torso will see the object carefully stabilized so that it doesn't move about and slice open major blood vessels."

Another reason is that most of these stab wound of the heart cases die of pericardial tamponade. The sac around the heart does not stretch. As blood is pumped from a small hole, it fills the sac around the heart and impedes filling between contractions. The patient has distended neck veins and a very weak pulse.

Releasing the pressure by opening the pericardium allows the heart beat to circulate blood and the hole in the heart can be closed almost at leisure.

This is how ice pick wounds kill people.

We once operated on a woman with a crossbow bolt through her heart. By cutting the bolt (the is what a crossbow arrow is called) we could gradually pull it out closing the hole in the rear of the heart, then the front of the heart. That was my one crossbow wound.; 5/25/13, 10:37 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Were I the editor, I would recommend:

{just hours before she was to walk down the aisle}

because it solves the obvious problem and also because the bride walks down the aisle, not the bride + groom.; 5/25/13, 10:39 AM
dbp said...: I read the story eager to understand why the guy wasstill willing to marry a woman who just stabbed him.; 5/25/13, 10:56 AM
dreams said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/25/13, 10:57 AM
dreams said...: Shouldn't it be, But a bride-to-be who stabbed her fiancé in the heart just hours before they WERE TO WALK down the aisle has now been convicted of his murder.; 5/25/13, 11:00 AM
William said...: Why would someone name their daughter Na Cola instead of Nicola? This child was born into a world of bad spelling and erratic grammar.; 5/25/13, 11:09 AM
shirley elizabeth said...: Also, her name is Na Cola.; 5/25/13, 11:12 AM
shirley elizabeth said...: Also, her name is Na Cola.; 5/25/13, 11:13 AM
Saint Croix said...: Also, her name is Na Cola.

I like that name!

Not sure about Shirley, though. Don't call me Shirley.; 5/25/13, 11:21 AM
wildswan said...: Word sees nothing wrong with that sentence, so I guess it is OK.; 5/25/13, 12:30 PM
wildswan said...: Word sees nothing wrong with that sentence, so I guess it is OK.; 5/25/13, 12:32 PM
Rabel said...: Was it raining? Did they argue over whether that met the [unlinkable] OED's definition of ironic? Cause if he insisted that it didn't, that would be exculpatory in my mind.; 5/25/13, 12:37 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Did the stabbed-in-the-heart guy walk down the aisle?; 5/25/13, 12:38 PM
ErnieG said...: Imagine what the sentence would have looked like without the help of layers of editors and fact checkers.; 5/25/13, 1:03 PM
Saint Croix said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/25/13, 1:37 PM
Carol said...: Last I heard, you don't start a sentence with a preposition,

But, "but" is not a preposition, it's a conjunction. And it's perfectly okay to start a sentence with a conjunction in informal writing.; 5/25/13, 2:40 PM
Carol said...: And that was one shitty writer and news editor that let that sentence stand.; 5/25/13, 2:41 PM
Foose said...: Empress Elisabeth of Austria, a famous 19th-century beauty, took an icepick to the heart at the hand of an anarchist when she was visiting Switzerland. Didn't feel anything but a blow - and her elaborate corset kept her walking around and functional for quite a few hours afterwards, until she finally collapsed and died; they opened up the corset and found the wound.; 5/25/13, 6:11 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Thanks, Foose!; 5/25/13, 7:47 PM
n.n said...: A corset acts like a tourniquet to prevent excessive blood loss from sensitive areas.; 5/25/13, 11:13 PM
Akaky said...: "It was supposed to be her special day, but a bride-to-be who stabbed her fiancé in the heart just hours before they walked down the aisle has now been convicted of his murder."

"...just hours before they would have walked down the aisle..."

The sentence as first printed suggests that the bride murdered her fiance first and then married him afterwards, thereby reversing the usual way these things tend to go.; 5/26/13, 1:20 PM