BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash lands in Eindhoven.
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 23, 2014
No, the plane didn’t crash.
“This was an especially regrettable lapse that drew wide attention as Dutch families awaited the return of their loved ones’ remains,” AP spokesperson Paul Colford writes in a blog post.
CLARIFIES: Dutch military plane carrying Malaysia Airlines bodies lands in Eindhoven.
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 23, 2014
I looked through the AP Stylebook for guidance on compound verbs (i.e., “crash-lands” as opposed to “crash lands”) and came up empty. I’d hyphenate that verb if that was the intended meaning, but the book advises “the fewer hyphens the better; use them only when not using them causes confusion.” It does advise against using “awkward constructions that split infinitive forms of a verb…or compound forms.”
A lot of Twitter hounds suggested a comma (e.g.); that would have split the subject from the verb and been incorrect instead of easy to misread.
Epic, epic grammar fail RT @AP: BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash lands in Eindhoven
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) July 23, 2014
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