This pales when compared to my favorite grammatical annoyance, a common perverse construction, for example "... similar effect to ..." when "... effect similar to ..." is actually intended. This misordering is so common that, in a Web search, it appears to outnumber the canonical ordering.

I acknowledge that terms like "canonical" argue for a nonexistent language authority, and that an acceptable word ordering is any one that conveys what the speaker intends.

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umanwizard 6 days ago | parent [-]

I don’t follow, can you give examples of what you mean?

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lutusp 6 days ago | parent [-]

One might say, "benzodiazepines have a similar effect to alcohol", or "benzodiazepines have an effect similar to alcohol." The second construction is clearer in its meaning.

	▲	umanwizard 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t really get why one is in the wrong order? Maybe we’re parsing them differently somehow. The meaning reads identically to me although the parse tree is different. Benzodiazepines have a similar effect to [the effect of] alcohol Vs. Benzodiazepines have an effect [which is] similar to [the effect of] alcohol.