Watch the Words!

An Illinois newspaper printed the following story:

     Police say a 15-year-old boy has died and eight people wounded in a shooting at a party.

One of the criteria for a group of words to comprise a sentence is that they have to make sense.  In the above sentence, wounded needs a helping verb unless the people did the wounding.  I am sure that the writer intended to say and eight people were wounded in a shooting.  We now have two subjects and two complete verbs as part of the police description.

You may have noticed that there is no comma after died.  That is because the sentence is an informal quote from the police rather than a sentence describing the tragedy.  If it were just a news story, it would read A 15-year-old boy has died, and eight people were wounded in a shooting. 

To clarify our example sentence, it would accurately read Police say a 15-year-old boy has died and eight people were wounded in a shooting at a party.  What is the lesson here?  Don't bring guns to a party.  It can be more dangerous than lawn darts.  Also, watch what you write to make sure it makes sense.