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As a Chinese-speaking democracy, points out Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the us, a Washington think-tank, Taiwan has long been valued by the United States as an alternative political model to the Communist-run mainland.

The use of "point out" seems awkward, can someone explain why it is grammatically correct?

To me, the sentence is ok if it is like this

As a Chinese-speaking democracy,Taiwan has long been valued by the United States as an alternative political model to the Communist-run mainland.

But the phrase "points out Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the us" is just placed awkwardly in between.

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    The cited text features very clumsy "stylistic inversion". The main thing you should learn from it is Don't write like this!
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 28, 2022 at 11:41
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    no, the sentence is definitely not ok if it is as you suggested, because two fundamental tenants of journalism are to a) cite your sources, and b) not express opinions. Mentioning something as someone else's opinion is news. Mentioning something without saying that it is someone else's opinion is expressing an opinion.
    – Mike Nakis
    Feb 28, 2022 at 20:52
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    Neither is scraping other news articles. headtopics.com or the economist, or both, stole that from somewhere or each other. - I can't find it in quotes but it's all over the place, written the same horrible way.
    – Mazura
    Mar 1, 2022 at 0:10
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    @Mazura CBS News had an interview where it looks like this quote was paraphrased from.
    – Esther
    Mar 1, 2022 at 16:15
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    "two fundamental tenants of journalism" @MikeNakis the word is "tenets".
    – Erick G. Hagstrom
    Mar 1, 2022 at 16:51

4 Answers 4

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It's a different word order that is equivalent to this:

Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the US, a Washington think-tank, points out that, as a Chinese-speaking democracy, Taiwan has long been valued by the United States as an alternative political model to the Communist-run mainland.

It's not ungrammatical as they expressed it, but it is awkward - it packs too much into one sentence.

As to points out, it means about the same as says.

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    I'm not gonna bother resequencing for clarity (there will be alternatives, I'm sure), but I suspect the primary problem isn't really that the sentence tries to pack too much in. It's the clumsy word order that lets it down.
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 28, 2022 at 11:42
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    @FumbleFingers: I'd probably argue there are numerous causes of confusion: (1) The reversed word order (for subject and verb) is uncommon/unexpected. (2) The original sentence interrupts the main idea of the sentence ("As a Chinese-speaking democracy, [...], Taiwan has long been valued...") with the statement that Bonnie Glaser is pointing this out. (3) That statement in the middle of the sentence also packs in several descriptive phrases in a row ("of the German Marshall Fund of the US, a Washington think-tank") describing where Glaser works and then describing that organization itself.
    – V2Blast
    Feb 28, 2022 at 19:25
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    And adding on to points (2) and (3): Both these phrases, which are being placed in the middle of another thought, are only set apart from the rest of the sentence by commas. I think that makes it even harder to understand the sentence. For instance, the commas around "a Washington think-tank" could be replaced with dashes or parentheses for clarity (in addition to the other changes Jack suggested), like so: "Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the US – a Washington think-tank – points out that, as a [...]"
    – V2Blast
    Feb 28, 2022 at 19:29
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    "As to points out, it means about the same as says" -- I think there is a subtle but important difference. Point out connotes that the thing or idea described is real and valid; someone (implied to be reliable) is remarking on an evident fact, as if literally pointing a finger at it. Say does not endorse the source's viewpoint in this way. It is similar to the difference between know and believe (to know is to have reliable, true belief).
    – nanoman
    Mar 1, 2022 at 5:55
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    @nanoman: Excellent point, succinctly expressed. For my money, that implication of "expressing a real-world fact" (rather than just the speaker's opinion) is also there (albeit somewhat weaker) if I say Nanoman observes / makes the observation that we normally say what we think, but point out [undisputed] facts (as opposed to Nanoman says that...).
    – FumbleFingers
    Mar 1, 2022 at 12:55
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It is common in journalism to start a sentence with all or part of the thing someone said, and indicate who said it later in the sentence. If Bonnie Glaser had already been introduced, or was otherwise familiar, the author might have written

As a Chinese-speaking democracy, points out Bonnie Glaser, Taiwan has long been valued by the United States as an alternative political model to the Communist-run mainland.

Journalists do this because the thing being said in these cases is more important than who said it. So they often bury the speaker's name in the middle of the sentence, which is the least salient location.

But this kind of sentence-rearrangement becomes harder to follow when the pieces get too big. That's what went wrong in the original sentence.

Added later: I should say something about when the rules of grammar actually allow this kind of rearranging. Unfortunately, this is one of those things where native speakers know what they can do without being sure how to put the rules into words. Of course, normally the subject (Bonnie Glaser) comes first in the sentence, followed by the verb. But verbs of saying or thinking have a lot more flexibility. All three of the following are acceptable. (And in these examples I used direct quotation, but it also holds for indirect quotation as in the OP's example.)

Jim said, "Ouch."

"Ouch," said Jim.

"Ouch," Jim said.

Note that, if your original sentence were "Jim ate a sandwich" then you absolutely cannot reverse it to "A sandwich, ate Jim."

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Perhaps it's awkward because it has two levels of parenthesis. Anyone reading it out loud would need their normal register, a lower one, and an even lower one! A listener might well say, "Get on with it!"

Jack O'Flaherty's solution is good. There are others, including:

According to Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the US, a Washington think-tank, Taiwan has long been valued by the United States as an alternative political model to the Communist-run mainland.

It's US (capitalized), by the way. Unless it's us!

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I bet that it is missing quotation marks. You now know why they are important.

"As a Chinese-speaking democracy," points out Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund of the us, a Washington think-tank, "Taiwan has long been valued by the United States as an alternative political model to the Communist-run mainland."

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    How do you know that sentence was a direct quote? Maybe it was just paraphrasing what Bonnie Glaser said, in which case it most definitely should not have quotes.
    – Esther
    Feb 28, 2022 at 22:27
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    @LawrenceC: How can you know whether this is a direct quote or not? If she didn't say those exact words, then you are wrong, pure and simple. Downvoting because of your comment.
    – TonyK
    Mar 1, 2022 at 1:19
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    >> The quote marks fit so well I really think I'm right. Absolutely not a rule in English.
    – mcalex
    Mar 1, 2022 at 5:01
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    The fact that the quote marks "fit so well" just indicates that it sounds like something somebody could say in those exact words, it does not indicate that this specific named person said it in those exact words. Actually the lack of quotation marks should indicate that it was not said in those exact words.
    – kaya3
    Mar 1, 2022 at 11:19
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    It's common when paraphrasing to say "So-and-so said that ...", which is probably what makes this seem like a quote. When you leave out "that", it will almost always sound like a quote, even if it's not actually. So you can't really jump to the conclusion.
    – Barmar
    Mar 1, 2022 at 16:28

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