I have read today: "Individuals from those states who have proper visas can now board U.S.-bound flights, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly."
The sentence uses reversed order of words "said the official". Why? Is it acceptable? Can anybody explain me the grammar rule?
This is absolutely acceptable. In fact, this type of grammar is very common in news articles and English literature. But to tell you the truth, it's almost exclusively used only in written English. Rarely do you hear someone say that in real life unless they are citing a quote from a book, relating a story or something to that effect. The pattern is as follows:
blah, blah, blah, said such and such
Where blah, blah, blah is what they are saying and such and such is the person saying it.
So, if you are reading a lot of news articles, be ready to see this kind of grammar pop up over and over again.
