this bbc headline (below) made me roll my eyes. i feel like the writer got into trouble at ‘linking’ and added ‘both’ to try to escape but it just caused a different problem. i spent a short while wondering how a bridge could link just one of them. “first road bridge opens linking north korea and russia” isn’t perfect but is better imho. we don’t need the active voice, since the agency of the countries is implicit. #wordplay North Korea and Russia open first road bridge linking both countries https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9xvg1kz0mo