Okay, you tell me what’s wrong with the following sentence. It’s the first line from a story in the London Telegraph:
Jiroemon Kimura, who was born on April 19, 1897 when Queen Victoria was still on the throne and worked as a postal employee, is “particularly fond of red bean cake and rice”.
Either the author is really mixed-up about what Queen Victoria’s vocation was, or he made a grammatical mistake. At very least, it’s an intolerable—but humorous—ambiguity. If we were to disambiguate the author’s intent, all we would need to do is insert a “who” as follows:
Jiroemon Kimura, who was born on April 19, 1897 when Queen Victoria was still on the throne and who worked as a postal employee, is “particularly fond of red bean cake and rice”.
Without the “who,” I’m afraid the author has made Queen Victoria out to be a mailman—a scandalous suggestion!
UPDATE: The sentence has been corrected on The Telegraph website.
