Boston Police tweet on the accident early this afternoon. MBTA spokeswoman Lydia Rivera says an inspector came in contact with an exposed wire and was shocked, never lost consciousness and was taken to Boston Medical Center with a non-life threatening injury.
Comments
never happened
when will people learn that these tweets are absolutely useless... especially when in the hands of boston police. seriously... look back at their previous tweets. how many were actually correct? less than 50 percent easily
Update: It did happen, but wasn't fatal
See the post above for an update from the T.
Electrocuted means dead
If the man is in "unknown" condition, then the BPD should not be using the word "electrocuted" in its tweet.
And that's why I didn't use it in my headline
Based on the last time BPD said a T worker was electrocuted.
But you technically *could have*
and wouldn't have been wrong....that is, if you cite Oxford American dictionary over Merriam-Webster . According to what I just quickly looked up, the former says "injure or kill" with electricity while the latter defines it as killing only.
I'm glad the injured worker is going to be okay.
I like the wiktionary
I like the wiktionary explanation of the uses, where nonfatal is "informal":
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/electrocute
I'd love to see what something like the NYT style guide says...