I ranted about Straits Times a couple of days ago over the quality of their content, and today I just had to see something to make me rant again. This time, it’s not even about quality of content; it’s about their atrocious quality of writing and editing. Bad content, bad writing and editing. Can our flagship English newspaper sink any lower?

Here’s the problematic lead paragraph (original article here):

WHILE most offenders appeal in the hope of lowering their sentences, 18-year-old Danny Koh Jia Gui asked an appeal judge to be jailed and caned instead of having to undergo reformative training.

The confusing part is in bold. The sentence construction conveys the meaning that Koh had asked for the jailing and caning of the judge instead of asking for the judge to jail and cane Koh. The copy editor was obviously SLEEPING on the job. If I were the copy editor, I would have rewritten the lead paragraph as follows:

While most offenders appeal in the hope of lowering their sentences, 18-year-old Danny Koh Jia Gui asked an appeal judge to impose a jail sentence and caning instead of reformative training.

The rewritten paragraph has the same number of words with much greater clarity in meaning.

Sigh.

Update:

I just realised the Straits Time put up a rewritten story, and the original that I read was posted up yesterday, but a new version put up today. It seems like they have quality control problems, but as always, they try to secretly change the story and hope nobody notices instead of admitting they screwed up.

The first version I read:

The second version

The second version

The second version