7 Simple Sentences That Drive English Speakers Crazy

3. ‘The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.’

Similar to ‘the old man the boat,’ the trick of this sentence is figuring out which word is the verb, and which is the subject. At first, it seems like ‘houses’ is the subject and ‘married’ is the verb—then you get to ‘and single,’ realizing too late ‘married and single soldiers’ is a big adjective phrase. Even more confusing, ‘complex’ seems to be an adjective modifying ‘houses,’ which makes sense logically and linguistically to us. But it turns out ‘complex’ is meant as a noun here, as in an ‘office complex’ or ‘sporting complex’, and ‘houses’ is the verb, meaning ‘to shelter.’So, the non-confusing way to write this sentence would be: ‘the building shelters married and single soldiers and their families.’ Or, to cut out the redundancy, ‘The building shelters soldiers and their families.’ Basically, a needlessly complex way to describe on-base housing.