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The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders on Thursday announced that it is suing the social media company X, accusing it of spreading disinformation.
After Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, discovered that it was the target of a disinformation campaign this past summer, the Paris-based group filed 10 reports of policy violations with X, formerly known as Twitter.
Since none of the posts in question have been removed, RSF opted to sue the company in French courts “for its complicity in disseminating false information, misrepresentation and identity theft,” the group said in a statement.
Ok maybe a very stupid question but
The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders on Thursday announced
Isn’t that gramatically incorrect? Shouldn’t it be “The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders announced on Thursday”?
I see this kind of writing a lot in news articles so surely it’s not actually wrong, but that’s not how I was taught English writing.
Idk if you’re a native speaker or not, but as a native speaker of American English there is absolutely nothing wrong with this to me. You could put it in about 4 different places:
On Thursday the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders announced ____.
The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders on Thursday announced ____.
The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders announced on Thursday that ____.
The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders announced ____ on Thursday.
The first one typically has a comma after “Thursday”. The second one you could offset “on Thursday” with commas. The third one is at best really awkward without a “that” or a question word (who, what, where, why, how) and you could offset “on Thursday” with commas; you can also drop the “on”, in which case you can’t use commas. The last one is possible but could be ambiguous (it could be that “on Thursday” is part of their announcement).
It’s correct, as much as any English is correct, but not typically spoken naturally like that.
The press (newspapers) has an idiosyncratic grammar, probably born of maximising space in a newspaper column. Headlines are often grammatical nightmares, body copy less so.
One could think of it as a form of semantic compression.
A good example of this is their insistence on using the comma, to mean “the”, “of” or “and”, leading to some bizarre headlines.
Midland, Baker, Roz, Mazda, convicted, fraud
Which despite the fact it just sounds like a list of random words, is in fact a valid sentence. Or at least it represents one.
