I’ve been spending some time lately thinking about diagramming sentences. Not much time. I’m not a total freak.

My children tell me they didn’t much like diagramming sentences in their classes at school. Funny, I remember being the only person in my junior high class that enjoyed the activity. I found diagramming a refreshingly mathematical aspect of English class in eighth grade. A couple years ago, I bought a book on the subject and read it cover to cover. Thank you to my teacher, Miss Langston. (I think that was her name.)

Today, more of this waxing nostalgic was brought on by something I heard on Morning Edition:

“Here in Afghanistan last Saturday millions of Afghans braved threats by the Taliban to vote in record numbers for their next president.”

Now, I’m not going to diagram this sentence, as I don’t think this software supports the lines and diagonals I’d need (alas, another thing that the overuse of word processing programs might put out to pasture), but I think the order of the words deserves some examination.

Although I was half asleep when I heard it, I immediately asked myself, “Why is it that the Afghan people took as a threat the suggestion that the Taliban might vote in record numbers for their next president?” Were the members of the Taliban not properly registered to vote?

One might also ask, “What exactly did the Afghans do to demonstrate their bravery in the face of the Taliban threat to vote?”

But, these things are probably not what the NPR co-host was getting at, eh?

I suspect that what she was saying was that the Afghans demonstrated bravery by voting for their next president (and, some, very possibly, that candidate’s opponents), despite some threats by the Taliban.

And again, I assume that the person who reported this story — presumably the co-host herself — actually wrote down what she was going to say, and read it, before she said it on the air. One must question, I think, whether there was an editor involved; and ask why that editor didn’t do his/her job and change the copy to reflect what the co-host was actually trying to get across.

Perhaps: “Despite Taliban threats (of violence, revenge, retribution?), last Saturday millions of Afghans bravely voted in record numbers in an election to decide the next president of Afghanistan.”

That was easy.