At about 11.40 am on Monday, the police found the younger teenager lying motionless with multiple wounds in a toilet.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigations revealed that the teenagers are not known to each other.
As the younger teenager is dead, should it be “Investigations revealed that the teenagers were not known to each other”?
Thanks!
I would rewrite the paragraph as follows:
Around 11:40 a.m. Monday, police found the younger teenager lying motionless in a restroom with multiple wounds.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation revealed that the teenagers did not know each other.
About 11.40 am on Monday, the police found the younger teenager lying in a restroom motionless with multiple wounds . He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigations revealed that the teenagers were not known to each other.
(Investigations revealed that the teenagers had not known each other.)
“…the teenager’s were not known to each other” sounds very awkward.
Torsten, we use sentences like ‘the boy and the girl, though not known to each other earlier, are in deep love now’.
Could you please let me know why it should be awkward.
Awkward and unnatural: The teeangers were not known to each other.
Better: The teeangers did not know each other.
This does not sound awkward to me. I does sound formal though. I don’t mean grammatically formal. It’s the way it would be written in a police report or news article. In normal conversation people would just say they didn’t know each other.
Since this does sound like a news article, I think “were unknown to each other” is realistic.
While attesting an affidavit, the lawyer writes: The deponent, who is (personally) known to me, has signed in my presence at my office today. So, ‘is known to’ is a very common phrase even in legal parlance, Torsten.
The passive construction rather than the active (whom I know) is rampant in law.
Yes, a lot of the terminology and language used by bureaucrats, lawyers and civil servants is complicated and sometimes there is a need for this kind of language, but very often there is not. Very often these people use complicated language deliberately, and “is known for” is such a case. There is no need to say “is known to” when you can say “knows”.