No, beyond the legalese. For example, the comma placement in:
which, unknown to them threatens,
The comma should go after “them”, because “unknown to them” constitutes the entire aside.
If you delete the aside in this, it reads “which national security”, whereas it should read “which threatens national security”.
This is just the first one I found; I didn’t go hunting for them. It’s one of those grammatical mistakes that actively ruins the cadence of the sentence as you read it in your head.
I have complete sympathy for non-native speakers writing papers, but it also raises the question of whether they properly understand the source material they’rereferencing.
I will inform you that this excerpt is correct English. There needn’t be an article like “a” or “the” before “possibility”. It reads awkwardly in everyday language, but that really is just innocent “legalese” phrasing.
No, beyond the legalese. For example, the comma placement in:
The comma should go after “them”, because “unknown to them” constitutes the entire aside.
If you delete the aside in this, it reads “which national security”, whereas it should read “which threatens national security”.
This is just the first one I found; I didn’t go hunting for them. It’s one of those grammatical mistakes that actively ruins the cadence of the sentence as you read it in your head.
And worse mistakes:
I have complete sympathy for non-native speakers writing papers, but it also raises the question of whether they properly understand the source material they’rereferencing.
I will inform you that this excerpt is correct English. There needn’t be an article like “a” or “the” before “possibility”. It reads awkwardly in everyday language, but that really is just innocent “legalese” phrasing.
Thanks for the correction. Rereading it I can kind of see if they mean possibility as an abstract concept, so I’ll take the L on it.
But I still maintain it’s a pretty fucked way of phrasing it.
That is perfectly grammatical English, especially in legal texts.