The following paragraph appeared on the front page of Saturday's Times, in an article headlined, "Blood Industry Shrinks as Transfusions Decline":
Blood bank revenue is falling, and the decline may reach $1.5 billion a year this year from a high of $5 billion in 2008.
It's not clear, to this reader, at least, what the sentence means. Is the Times trying to tell us that blood bank revenue has declined to $1.5 billion this year from $5 billion in 2008? Or is the Times trying to tell us that blood bank revenue declined $5 billion in 2008 from 2007, and will decline $1.5 billion this year from the year before? Or is the Times trying to tell us that blood bank revenue this year will be $3.5 billion, down from $5 billion in 2008?
The real meaning the sentence conveys is that the better editors at the Times are off on their summer vacations this week, or if they are not, they weren't paying attention when this article moved. It's one thing to get this kind of confusing language in a brief article that runs inside the newspaper. But this was on page one.