Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:58:54 EDT
Consider This Sentence
The following sentence occurs in the Wall Street Journal on Apple News. “President Trump has ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, ending a yearlong tenure atop the Justice Department marked by failed efforts to prosecute his favored targets and a view by the president and his advisers that she mismanaged the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.”
The WSJ and the Washington Post print run-on summary sentences every day. They must be named and shamed.
For clarity, the phrase that begins, “ending a yearlong tenure…” should be “ending her yearlong tenure…”
The phrase, “according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter,” can be shortened to, “an insider.”
The phrase, “marked by failed efforts…and…a view by the president…” is unintelligible on first reading. Marked by a view is too abstract for my taste.
The antecdent of his is person not President Trump.
I prefer that attributions be placed at the start of sentences. It is a mistaken notion of newspapers that the main clause should not be preceded by modifiers.
My rewrite: “According to an insider, President Trump has dismissed Attorney General Pam Bondi 13 months into her term. During her time atop the Department of Justice, Bondi failed to successfully prosecute Trump’s political enemies and failed to manage the Jeffrey Epstein scandal to her boss’s satisfaction.”