Sun, 27 Sep 2026 06:41:05 EDT
Consider This Sentence
The following sentence occurs in BBC News on Apple News. “German prosecutors are investigating a man aged 105 over allegations that he was an accessory to multiple counts of murder at a Nazi prisoner of war camp in World War Two.”
It is more accurate to say that prosecutors investigate the allegations than it is to say that they investigate the man. The accessory is not an accessory to counts of charges of murder but rather to the murders.
You know how I feel about present participles. Investigating must go.
A man aged 105 is clumsy compared to a 105-year-old man, so I will use the latter.
World War Two sounds like the name of a video game. The Second World War is descriptive.
A few more details can be gleaned from other news sources.
My rewrite: “Prosecutors in Dortmund have launched an investigation into allegations that a 105-year-old German man was an accessory to the murder of Soviet prisoners of war when he was a prison camp guard in the Second World War.”