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Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophil

Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals. Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"

berberous 9y ago
Native speaker. Agree that it is poorly written.
cstejerean 9y ago
That sentence does sound weird, it's not just you, and using of contain rather than contains doesn't help either. If it was referring to the Naica Mine it should have been "which contains caves ...".
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  It would also be clearer if "looking for extremophiles" were moved to an earlier position in the sentence. Here's how I would word it: Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years looking for extremophiles in the Naica Mine. The mine, located in Chihuahua, Mexico, contains caves as large as cathedrals.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    This is tangential at best, but a) I've been thinking about it for some time and b) someone reading this thread may actually know: why are there differences in punctuation rules between languages? Comma placement before certain words in a particular situation, hyphen-related rules, quoting, and so on - there may be differences even within a single language, and differences between languages are even bigger. How come? The punctuation - or more specifically, the commas, their placement or absence in certain places - is the last thorn my brain hurts over when reading and writing English. I read a sentence, and I feel like I'd trip each time I see a comma where there shouldn't be any. Like walking a rocky road or something.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      Most punctuation was developed before any standardization efforts, so every language has rules that reflect whatever the most influential writers believed to be natural Quotation marks differ because the transition from handwriting to printed letters solidified different shapes like ", «, „ or “, depending on how the strokes were jotted down in handwritten text.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      I think of it as similar to HTML vs CSS: words are the content, punctuation marks are an attempt to mark up a suggestion of how to present them. (Where I'm including whitespace in punctuation)
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      In theory comma placement has something to do with the natural cadence of speech, and that varies quite a lot between different people (even within the same language, much less different languages). There's a popular meme about it: http://imgur.com/gallery/ljjibpM http://imgur.com/gallery/ljjibpM
bendykstra 9y ago
That is known as a misplaced modifier. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/36/ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/36/
mrkgnao 9y ago
Yes, it's a linguistic dangling else. (I think so, at least. Not too sure.)
mistermann 9y ago
For some reason it seems perfectly fine to me (native english speaker).
mirimir 9y ago
Looking for extremophiles, Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals. But yeah, the sentence is too long, with too many modifiers. Edit: grammar
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Native speaker here. For what it's worth, I understood it perfectly. And so did you. It's not possible for extremophiles to contain caves, so obviously you know what they mean. Much of English is like this in informal conversation, and informal conversation is arguably the best way to write.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  Native speaker here. Having not previously known what extremophiles are, I had to read it three times to convince myself they couldn't contain caves. Geology has a certain reputation for its vocabulary https://xkcd.com/1829/ https://xkcd.com/1829/
- crush-n-spread 9y ago
  I disagree that informal conversation is the best way to write. If you're going to write an article, you should convey the ideas in the article as clearly and smoothly as possible. In informal conversation there are tonal and visual cues. In an article all we have is words, so use them correctly.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Native speaker also. The fact that it's possible to figure out a bit of writing does not mean that it's clear and well-written.
- GrinningFool 9y ago
  Even in informal conversation, that's not really about ordering that you'll come across. I had to parse it a couple of times , and my first thought was that my contextually acquired definition of extremophiles from the comments and article was wrong in a really weird way. (Because of the word roots ).
dboreham 9y ago
You're not wrong: it is broken English and parses incorrectly vs its intended meaning. Should be "...team have spent years looking for extremophiles, exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contain caves as large as cathedrals." Or split into two sentences.
- Ericson2314 9y ago
  Contains too
ianamartin 9y ago
It's not just you. The whole article is full of some really janky and broken English. No offense to the original author intended, but I would really expect the Telegraph to have better editing than this.
BjoernKW 9y ago
You're right. While understandable through context the sentence is ungrammatical because the relative clause is misplaced. It should rather be "Looking for extremophiles Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals." and even then it's quite cumbersome to read because there are too many modifiers. Sentences like that should simply be split up in order to avoid such problems and to be more comprehensible. Unfortunately, many writers seem to equate long sentences with sounding intelligent (speaking from personal experience here ... school and academia can teach you bad writing habits that take some time to unlearn).

berberous 9y ago

Native speaker. Agree that it is poorly written.

cstejerean 9y ago

That sentence does sound weird, it's not just you, and using of contain rather than contains doesn't help either. If it was referring to the Naica Mine it should have been "which contains caves ...".

Turing_Machine 9y ago
It would also be clearer if "looking for extremophiles" were moved to an earlier position in the sentence. Here's how I would word it: Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years looking for extremophiles in the Naica Mine. The mine, located in Chihuahua, Mexico, contains caves as large as cathedrals.
- klibertp 9y ago
  This is tangential at best, but a) I've been thinking about it for some time and b) someone reading this thread may actually know: why are there differences in punctuation rules between languages? Comma placement before certain words in a particular situation, hyphen-related rules, quoting, and so on - there may be differences even within a single language, and differences between languages are even bigger. How come? The punctuation - or more specifically, the commas, their placement or absence in certain places - is the last thorn my brain hurts over when reading and writing English. I read a sentence, and I feel like I'd trip each time I see a comma where there shouldn't be any. Like walking a rocky road or something.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Most punctuation was developed before any standardization efforts, so every language has rules that reflect whatever the most influential writers believed to be natural Quotation marks differ because the transition from handwriting to printed letters solidified different shapes like ", «, „ or “, depending on how the strokes were jotted down in handwritten text.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    I think of it as similar to HTML vs CSS: words are the content, punctuation marks are an attempt to mark up a suggestion of how to present them. (Where I'm including whitespace in punctuation)
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    In theory comma placement has something to do with the natural cadence of speech, and that varies quite a lot between different people (even within the same language, much less different languages). There's a popular meme about it: http://imgur.com/gallery/ljjibpM http://imgur.com/gallery/ljjibpM

bendykstra 9y ago

That is known as a misplaced modifier. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/36/ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/36/

mrkgnao 9y ago

Yes, it's a linguistic dangling else. (I think so, at least. Not too sure.)

mistermann 9y ago

For some reason it seems perfectly fine to me (native english speaker).

mirimir 9y ago

Looking for extremophiles, Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals. But yeah, the sentence is too long, with too many modifiers. Edit: grammar

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Native speaker here. For what it's worth, I understood it perfectly. And so did you. It's not possible for extremophiles to contain caves, so obviously you know what they mean. Much of English is like this in informal conversation, and informal conversation is arguably the best way to write.

paulddraper 9y ago
Native speaker here. Having not previously known what extremophiles are, I had to read it three times to convince myself they couldn't contain caves. Geology has a certain reputation for its vocabulary https://xkcd.com/1829/ https://xkcd.com/1829/
crush-n-spread 9y ago
I disagree that informal conversation is the best way to write. If you're going to write an article, you should convey the ideas in the article as clearly and smoothly as possible. In informal conversation there are tonal and visual cues. In an article all we have is words, so use them correctly.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Native speaker also. The fact that it's possible to figure out a bit of writing does not mean that it's clear and well-written.
GrinningFool 9y ago
Even in informal conversation, that's not really about ordering that you'll come across. I had to parse it a couple of times , and my first thought was that my contextually acquired definition of extremophiles from the comments and article was wrong in a really weird way. (Because of the word roots ).

dboreham 9y ago

You're not wrong: it is broken English and parses incorrectly vs its intended meaning. Should be "...team have spent years looking for extremophiles, exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contain caves as large as cathedrals." Or split into two sentences.

Ericson2314 9y ago
Contains too

ianamartin 9y ago

It's not just you. The whole article is full of some really janky and broken English. No offense to the original author intended, but I would really expect the Telegraph to have better editing than this.

BjoernKW 9y ago

You're right. While understandable through context the sentence is ungrammatical because the relative clause is misplaced. It should rather be "Looking for extremophiles Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals." and even then it's quite cumbersome to read because there are too many modifiers. Sentences like that should simply be split up in order to avoid such problems and to be more comprehensible. Unfortunately, many writers seem to equate long sentences with sounding intelligent (speaking from personal experience here ... school and academia can teach you bad writing habits that take some time to unlearn).