3 ms·
"Want" disambiguates to plural subject, so it can only be "Comcast and Disney want Fox".
by reubenmorais 8y ago
"Want" disambiguates to plural subject, so it can only be "Comcast and Disney want Fox".
- wging 8y agoIt's a subtle nuance that people often get wrong, though -- or they may be speaking in a dialect like British English, where 'want' (plural subject) is used for corporate entities. (I admit the latter is unlikely for an American publication.)
- adrianmonk 8y agoYou're absolutely right, but that still leaves it a garden path sentence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence) and thus a poor title. The measure of good writing isn't that it's possible to parse unambiguously with sufficient dedication. Good writing gets the idea across without placing any undue burden on the reader. (And it's easily fixed by adding a second "why": "Netflix is why AT&T bought Time Warner and why Comcast and Disney want Fox".)
- bootlooped 8y agoThanks for this, I didn't realize there was a term for the issue I was taking with the structure.
- always_good 8y agoBut Disney can be plural the same way some people will write sentences like "Radiohead are awesome". It's ambiguous. There's no reason not to punctuate here.