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I read this sentence in an article about my local fire fighters, and it said:

New burn building and house structure being built on the training site for specialized training.

Is the grammar correct? If it is, what does it mean? Is it supposed to say "New born"?

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  • This reads like a headline or caption; it would not be grammatical as a standalone sentence.
    – choster
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 19:39
  • No, it in inside a bullet point information, not a headline or a caption.
    – ʇolɐǝz ǝɥʇ qoq
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 19:43
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    If it is a point in a bulleted list, then it is probably not intended to be read as an independent sentence. Please provide the full context if you can.
    – choster
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 20:15
  • As a caption for a picture of a burn building this would be grammatically correct. As a standalone sentence or bullet point, it wouldn't.
    – delliottg
    Commented Aug 26, 2015 at 20:01
  • @delliottg Actually, as a standalone sentence it is still grammatically correct, just very far from a clear choice of words, and a very good example of why punctuation and even stylistic elements (such as italicisation) exist. A simple hyphen would have made this much clearer.
    – MikeB
    Commented Apr 3, 2020 at 16:35

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I think the key to understanding this sentence is knowing that “burn building” is a special term (like “cash machine” or “slaughterhouse”). From what I can gather, the term refers to any building used for training firefighters by simulating the conditions of a structure fire.

Traditional burn buildings, built with special materials, can withstand multiple fires, although they do break down over time. Traditional burn buildings exist in communities, at fire academies and on university campuses. The fuel used to ignite fires in these structures is typically straw, hay or wood pallets.
Source: howstuffworks.com article: How Firefighter Training Works, §3: Burn Buildings and Firefighter Ranks

With that in mind, this bullet point informs us that two things are being built on the training site: a house structure (presumably to train firefighters on moving through a house and checking each room according to their training) and a burn building, in which firefighter trainees will have to contend with the presence of an actual fire as they move through the structure. Here’s a picture of one such structure in use:

enter image description here

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