Gwynne's attack opened with a consideration of the phrase "demands too much too young".
"Presumably they mean something like 'demands too much when children are too young to be ready for so much', but, as worded, it simply is not English," he said. "In that sentence as worded, 'too young' can only be two adverbs, 'too' qualifying the adverb 'young', and 'young' qualifying the verb 'demands', as would, for instance, 'soon' or 'early'. But 'young' is an adjective, and cannot ever be an adverb. And it certainly is not doing the work of an adjective in that sentence, because there is no noun that could be 'understood' and which would turn that sentence into English."
I think we need to distinguish 'good English' from grammatically correct English. IMFFHO, the judges are intellectual dinosaurs who think that 'demands too much when children are too young to be ready for so much' is preferable to 'too much too young' which has the advantage of being succinct and clearly understood by the majority. Gobbledygook indeed?
