When Copy Desks Don T Do Their Job

• Salvatore Di Nolfi / AP Photos
• Italian tennis player Fabio Fognini, shown here in September, made an obscene gesture to the crowd after a match this week—or maybe it was someone else. Good copy editing would make it clear.

Thomas Friedman writing in the Wednesday New York Times:

Here’s proof that no story can be too short to be confusing. Who made the obscene gesture, Fognini or Chuhan? If you think it was probably Fognini, well, so do I, but the construction of the sentence doesn’t give us a clue.