A super typhoon bore down on the Eastern Phillipines, with winds reaching more than 250kph, and evacuations began before it makes landfall tomorrow morning.

The above from a respected national news broadcaster. It almost goes without saying that two sentences would have been smoother and more readable.

But is it wrong?

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Think I should have highlighted "makes" as well.

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Or instead. "...began at 4pm yesterday" would have been fine.

So I think my objection is the comparison with the future unknown rather than the past. By definition, if they have started before something that hasn't yet happened, then to say they have begun is enough. The bit about making landfall is logically redundant in that sentence as written.

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Although, to say it bore down is not even to imply that it is still bearing down.

No, whether or not there are measures by which that sentence is correct, it remains an awkward sentence that should never have seen the light.

G

Yes, 'have begun' makes better sense, I think, but is still not quite right. Perhaps 'evacuations have begun before it will make landfall tomorrow morning'? Or 'in advance of it making'.

I'm constantly correcting the English of TV news reporters in my head as they're making their reports, which probably makes me some kind of anally-retentive grammar policeperson but it irks me that, these days, near enough is good enough for some, even if the meaning of a sentence becomes totally skewed.

Although perhaps, in the end, we should be more concerned about the typhoon.

Jan

"Evacuations began in advance of a super typhoon, with winds reaching more than 250kph, that is due to make landfall on the Eastern Phillipines tomorrow morning."

My brain hurts. The confusion of tenses makes no sense whatsoever. I can see what they were trying to convey, but for a national newspaper, it's really not good enough.



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Sorry - newscaster, I should have written. My brain is obviously shrivelling under the strain of the tense atrocities which were/are being/will have been perpetrated in the name of journalism

Wow! That is extraordinarily bad writing. Not just the mangled tenses, but the clumsy construction just sort of sucks all the drama out of it. If you change "bore" for "is bearing" and "began" for "have begun", then it sort of works but it's still a sentence that looks like it was put together by a nine year old.