Misplaced 'Too'


 Mahesh Vijapurkar has a comment on a DNA headline:

The lead headline in the Daily News and Analysis (DNA) of October 21, 2010 is Pakistan wants Obama too, ups pressure on US.
That country wants Obama to visit them when he makes a trip to India this November for otherwise it would send a wrong signal about the relationship between those two countries.  It just wants a visit and possible diplomatic gains from it.
Is the right in using this headline?
It is not, for Obama too implies that they want something else and Obama as well. That is, by using that adverb, the headline writer indicates that it is getting something or the other but wants in addition, the visit of Obama. That is, beside other things, the visit too.
What the headline writer intended and should have done was write the same headline by shuffling the words thus:
Pakistan too wants Obama, ups pressure on US. If India gets him to visit the country, then Pakistan too should be visited, making for even-handed treatment of the two countries. After all, in the game of one-upmanship, sometimes attempts are to get parity if not an upper-hand all the time.

Comments

Popular Posts