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"quoted as saying"

Posted by Smokey Stover on February 01, 2004

In Reply to: "Quoted as saying" posted by ESC on February 01, 2004

: : Hi,
: : Could you please explain the part-sentence in the last paragraph:
: : "the spokeswoman was quoted as saying by Roy Wadia"
: : I am confuesd by this! What does it mean?

: It means that we aren't reading a quote from the spokeswoman. What we are reading is what Roy Wadia says that she said. Mr. Wadia is telling us what she told him.

If we change the word-order of the sentence to see what it really says, try this (changing "But" to "that"): "The spokeswoman was quoted by Roy Wadia, an official at the WHO office in China, as saying that she said she was not sure . . . . " We see here the perils of the passive voice, and of complex, even convoluted, structure in a sentence that has gone on for too long. Can you just imagine what Fowler would have said? SS

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