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After looking up the definition of garden path sentence... I'm not sure this fits the bill. It doesn't look like a misleading statement to me. Unless you mean
by ldp01 9y ago
After looking up the definition of garden path sentence... I'm not sure this fits the bill.
It doesn't look like a misleading statement to me. Unless you mean it's missing a comma after '2000'?
- wfunction 9y agoIt's hard for me to tell what the most likely interpretation is, but yes, a comma could certainly disambiguate it. As it was written, I was expecting it to go "But since 2000 heavy trucks have accounted for 40% of the TOTAL growth in oil demand, and since [foo] is also true, we expect that [blah]..." but then my mental model just crashed.
- Veratyr 9y agoI think it does. "Since 2000 heavy trucks have" tells me "2000 heavy trucks" did something and I'm going to read what that something caused. It's only when I get to "and similar gains are projected over the next few decades." that it's clear the author meant "Since the year 2000, heavy trucks have". It's a garden path sentence because the initial interpretation while you're reading it is incorrect and you only realise this when you get to the end and reprocess the start. If the author put a comma there, it would be clear on first read: "Since 2000, heavy trucks have".
- ldp01 9y agoI get what you mean now. I think I mentally auto-corrected the sentence on the first pass and never really considered the literal meaning.