Syntax

[intrepidity]

I'm not trying to make light of this very serious event, but is it just me or is this sentence very poorly worded?

BRISBANE — A dismembered body found near a San Francisco Bay Area pier belonged to a woman reported missing by her husband, who jumped off the Bay Bridge after police recovered her mutilated torso, authorities confirmed Wednesday.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5326011-181/police-torso-found-at-bay

[kentauros]

1. I've seen a lot of run-on sentences lately.

Especially used as opening "paragraphs."

If something is posted online, it seems like there's never an editor involved before that takes place.

[intrepidity]

2. So true

Thing is, I still cannot figure out what the article is actually saying. Weird.

[kentauros]

10. I had to edit it myself to figure it out, thusly:

A dismembered body (was) found near a San Francisco Bay Area pier. (It) belonged to a woman (who was) reported missing by her husband. (He then) who jumped off the Bay Bridge (upon learning that the) after police (had) recovered her mutilated torso. (A)uthorities confirmed (the report) Wednesday.

I'm not a reporter nor have I ever taken any journalism classes. I thought for sure in the past any reporter posting such badly composed copy would have gotten a severe tongue-lashing and likely (or possibly temporarily) demoted.

I also get the impression it's beyond laziness and to the point of someone trying to get out of their job. Now, if I'm wrong, and this is simply how this reporter writes all the time, then the owners of the paper/journal are the ones who need to be given a good tongue-lashing. And then fired.

[Festivito]

3. Any word on the husband's body after he jumped off the bridge?

[mackerel]

5. Husband's body was intact and it was

easy to make the identification. Apparently he was a very well known tech innovator and his wife was a very troubled woman who had been diagnosed with bi-polar.

[intrepidity]

6. Not that I can see

but it took me awhile to realize that he jumped off the bridge and not the torso of his dead wife.

I guess my brain inserted a comma so that I read it like this:

A dismembered body found near a San Francisco Bay Area pier belonged to a woman, reported missing by her husband, who jumped off the Bay Bridge after police recovered her mutilated torso, authorities confirmed Wednesday.

[Festivito]

7. I see that the police covered her mutilated torso again, and then she jumped.

[Quackers]

8. That was nice of them.

Most of us only get one police recovery after we die.

[Festivito]

9. Oh, has she died. How sad. Many of our soldiers get prosthetics for their dismembered limbs.

[mackerel]

4. A similar article from SFgate is no better.

Granted the whole thing is weird.

[nilesobek]

11. Wednesday, authorities reported that

a man jumped off the Bay Bridge after they recovered the mutilated torso of the body of his wife near a San Francisco Bay pier. This is my edit but the way the words sere scrambled...who knows?