Presenting The 2025 Shams Charania Award For Excellence In Divulging Of Information Through Syntax Comprehended By Many

Can you ask someone to “close your eyes and watch” something? Just how private does a conversation need to be in order to upgrade from speaking “privately” to “very privately”? What does it mean for a wild pigeon to be “essentially on life support”? These are some of the many conceptual riddles posed by the contenders for Defector’s annual prize for bizarre sentences in journalism. It’s time to announce the 2025 Shams Charania Award For Excellence In Divulging Of Information Through Syntax Comprehended By Many.

In this year's crop, there are uncharacteristically artless sentences by otherwise capable writers, and characteristically jacked-up sentences by perennial Shamsy contenders, people and outlets steadfastly committed to obscurantism and bluster. Today I hope to honor all those heroes for their humanity, because I spent much of this year wondering whether humans would even be dealing with written language for that much longer. It had a pretty good run.