"Police tried and failed to persuade the man to leave with a megaphone."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23784416

Declining grammatical standards at the Beeb.

“Perhaps sir could be tempted with this attactive top of the line, VoiceMax3000, now with a matching carry case!”

You know what it meant so why get worried?
This is grammatically correct , so you will approve, and yet its gibberish

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

But what it meant isn’t what it said.

This is grammatically correct , so you will approve, and yet its gibberish

It isn’t correct. 😉

I think you’re missing the point JY. The change in grammar substantially changes the sentence’s meaning.

I understood it to mean that the bizzies shouted at him with a megaphone to get him to leave the plane.

So what really happened?

“Using a megaphone, Police tried to persuade the man to leave, but failed.”

Doesn’t it mean they were trying to persuade him to take his megaphone with him?

So what really happened?

“Right now sunshine, take this megaphone, leave now and we’ll say no more about it, understood?”

“No.”

“What? Look this is a really nice megaphone, so just take it, and go home, there’s a good lad.”

“Shalln’t!”

“Awwwww, please. Look final offer, take the megaphone, a couple more drinks from the hostess trolley, and Brian here will give you a hug to say sorry for that business with the batton, the stress-position and the grapefruit.”

“No, no, no.”

As he was semi naked and out of his head on ecstasy, is “megaphone” a euphemism, or does it mean something completely different in German?

The change in grammar substantially changes the sentence’s meaning.

Only if you are as daft as assume they offered him a megaphone to leave rather than assume they shouted at him, asking him to leave, with one.

I am happy to take a bet with you on which of these was the case.
If you are bright enough to notice the poor grammar then you are bright enough to work it out. Not least because you thought it was bad grammar and meant something else 😉

Reminds me of these so-called newspaper/article headlines. Not sure how many are real, but they always make me smile:

1. 20-Year Friendship Ends at Altar

2. Include Your Children when Baking Cookies

3. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

4. Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

5. Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

6. Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case

7. Survivor of Siamese Twins Joins Parents

8. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

9. Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus?

10. British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

11. Eye Drops Off Shelf

12. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

13. Clinton Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead

14. Enraged Cow Injures Farmer With Axe

15. Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told

16. Miners Refuse to Work after Death

17. Stolen Painting Found by Tree

18. Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years in Checkout Counter

19. Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Year

20. War Dims Hope for Peace

21. If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last a While

22. Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

23. Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide

24. Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

25. Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

26. Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge

27. New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group

28. Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft

29. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

30. Ban On Soliciting Dead in Trotwood

31. Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

32. New Vaccine May Contain Rabies

33. Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

34. March Planned For Next August

35. Blind Bishop Appointed To See

36. Lingerie Shipment Hijacked–Thief Gives Police The Slip

37. L. A. Voters Approve Urban Renewal By Landslide

38. Patient At Death’s Door–Doctors Pull Him Through

39. Latin Course To Be Cancelled–No Interest Among Students, Et Al.

40. Diaper Market Bottoms Out

41. Croupiers On Strike–Management: No Big Deal

42. Stadium Air Conditioning Fails–Fans Protest

43. Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped

44. Henshaw Offers Rare Opportunity to Goose Hunters

45. Women’s Movement Called More Broad-Based

46. Antique Stripper to Display Wares at Store

47. Prostitutes Appeal to Pope

48. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

49. Lawyers Give Poor Free Legal Advice

50. Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

51. Fund Set Up for Beating Victim’s Kin

52. Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years

53. Cancer Society Honors Marlboro Man

54. Nicaragua Sets Goal to Wipe Out Literacy

55. Autos Killing 110 a Day–Let’s Resolve to Do Better

56. Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

57. Half of U. S. High Schools Require Some Study for Graduation

58. Blind Woman Gets New Kidney from Dad She Hasn’t Seen in Years

what is interesting* is that Beeb, the spoken abbreviation of BBC is not a shorter abbreviation when written.

*relative to the rest of this thread

Some classics from the insurance industry.

“Coming home I drove into the wrong house colliding with a tree I don’t have.”

“The other car collided with mine without giving warning of his intentions.”

“I thought my window was down, but I found out it was up when I put my head through it.”

“I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.”

“A truck backed through my windshield into my wife’s face.”

“The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.”

“I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.”

“I had been shopping all day for plants and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I didn’t see the other car.”

“I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.”

“I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident.”

“As I approached the intersection, a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.”

“To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front, I struck the pedestrian.”

“My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.”

“An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.”

“I told the police I was not injured but on removing my hat, found that I had a fractured skull.”

“I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.”

“The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run, so I ran over him.”

“I saw a slow moving sad faced old gentleman, as he bounced off the hood of my car.”

“The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.”

“The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of its way, when it struck my front end.”

“Using a megaphone, Police tried to persuade the man to leave, but failed.”

Well, yes, that’s another way of saying it. Whaddya want? A gold star for grammar on your arse?

Of course if you’re looking to misunderstand it to demonstrate your smartarsedness on an internet forum, then I can see where you’re coming from (or should that be “I can see from where you’re coming?”).

I just like tracking down interesting grammatical errors and flagging them up, JY, especially when they change the meaning to something humorous, like in the this example. Of course its obvious what it means- that’s half the point.

You and DD don’t half take things seriously.

I think the main point is we would normally expect better from the BBC given their heritage. And that language can be a tricky and variable thing, if used carelessly.

I just like tracking down interesting grammatical errors and flagging them up, JY, especially when they change the meaning to something humorous

But in your OP, you say nothing about it being funny, just some stuff about “declining grammatical standards”.

You and DD don’t half take things seriously.

As you well know, JY takes his grammar and spelling very seriously. I’m just taking the mick.

EDIT: In case I wasn’t clear, I meant a “gold star stuck on your arse in respect for your grammar skills”, not “a gold star for your use of grammar while sitting on your arse”. I know you like things to be clear and all that. 😉

we would normally expect better from the BBC given their heritage

No, most of them went to Cambridge. It’s an absolute dump.

As you well know, JY takes his grammar and spelling very seriously

True dat blood And very funny 😀

I just find it amusing that folk, who are capable of “deciphering”, get so uppity about it’s abuse.
It very rarely leaves you unaware of what they meant to say, even when it not what they actually said.

As a former BBC News Online journo who has had the pleasure of subbing copy, I’m struggling to see why we needed to know about the megaphone in paragraph three, though it’s possible the old Ceefax rules are still in force, long after the demise of Ceefax*

The fourth par, and the free use of the word ‘partying’ in the intro would also get the red pen treatment from me.

*The first four paragraphs from any online story had to fit exactly onto a Ceefax news page template, which generally meant three longer sentences and one shorty, and a headline which had to be between 29 and 31 characters long, including spaces. Which led to some ridiculously oversimplified headlines on serious science stories.

This poor grammar is something up with which I will not put!

Sod the grammar, where did he get hold of that E? It sounds great!

So what really happened?

He was having a drug fuelled megaphone orgy, and the police tried and failed to get him to leave, until a dog bit him on the knob leg…

spend four hours partying alone in his underpants on a military jet used by Angela Merkel.

..and you kept reading looking for grammatical errors?

I just find it amusing that folk, who are capable of “deciphering”, get so uppity about it’s abuse.
It very rarely leaves you unaware of what they meant to say, even when it not what they actually said.

No, but it does tend to out the author as an under-educated cretin when it occurs in official situations. One more grocers’ apostrophe from our head of HR and I’m going to politely suggest she goes back to school.