Xopher wrote,
People don't talk in "complete sentences."
That depends on the person. I suspect that sentence fragments are a lot less common in speech than you seem to think they are--and there are people who when speaking use long convoluted sentences (ones which other people may get glassy-eyed trying to follow....).
"Stop that!" is a sentence, it's imperative.
"No," isn't a sentence, but it's a reply to a question or a direction (shortand e.g. for saying "Don't do that!") or other negation comment/response. It's not the expression of complete idea without an antecedent.
The affectation involving which which bugs me the most in print is when there's a paragraph split with a "Which..." sentence fragment on the new paragraph.
If you want your writing to read like speaking, you can't write in them, either.
I disagree. Most people I think really do speak in full sentences. "That's wrong" is I believe much more common that "Which is wrong," and people usually will say, "That's wrong" and not "wrong" when e.g. watching someone do something and trying to correct them, the words are to indicate that the process or action or way the person did something isn't correct and needed to be done differently/fixed. "Let me show you," or "Let me do that," are examples of sentences which often follow "That's wrong." Or, some will say, "That's not the right way to do that, you have to put a washer on before putting the nut on the screw." "Wait" and "Stop" are full sentences, they're imperative and the implicit subject is "you."
One or two words exclamations, or expressions which aren't full sentences and which are exclamations, are exclamations, not floating subordinate clauses generally. Someone yelling "You ratfink!" is expressing a negative sentiment about the person they're calling a ratfink. There is an implied "are a" in between
you" and "ratfink" --the verb "to be" got dropped out in the interests of cogency.
Sometimes you need to break a rule for a specific effect.
The effect on the audience might not be what the writer or speaker intended, that is, the person doing it might be assuming that the audience will react the way the writer or speaker expects, based on how the writer or speaker tends to react. This is not necessarily a good assumption.
Often this sort of thing occurs because a speaker was going to go on, but was interrupted or distracted; sometimes the independent clause is understood, or has been said by someone else.
In the case of "which" as whatever-the-term-is-for-word-which-initiates-subordinate-clause, almost always a subordinate clause beginning with which gets appended, not prepended, to the main body of a sentence, when used correctly. That is, "which" is in something of apposition and refers -back- to something already mentioned, not to something not yet mentioned. If there's a continuity break there's nothing to refer back as either "that" or "which."
Suppose John says "Now we know Teresa is the Thing." If Mary says "That's what I was saying," that means nearly the same thing as if she says "Which is what I was saying."
I don't see it, really, I don't, it looks/sounds to me as if Mary's literacy is bad in the latter instance.
In both cases John and Mary agree that Teresa is the Thing (and who could doubt it?). But the second version conveys her irritation that John hasn't been listening in a way that, to my "ear," is lost in the first; she adds a dependent clause onto his sentence to express that irritation.
Again, I don't have that interpretation/analysis/reaction at all.
What about the paper where the bulk of the paper was the list of co-authors, Tom?!
==============
On a completely different topic, however, why oh why oh WHY do I see book after book after book in which "which" is massively incorrectly applied? That is, instead of a sentence starting with "that," such as this sentence is (and I did not consciously start the sentence with "this," I was using a standard writing convention which happens to start, "That is,"), I keep seeing sentence fragments masquerading as sentences, that start with "which." "Which" is something to start a subordinate clause with, "Which she didn't do," is not a sentence, it's a sentence fragment. "That was wrong," is a sentence.
Whatever happened to the Grammar Police, and where are these people getting their grammar from, George W. Bush?!
I watched fireworks last night with Gay Ellen Dennett, Ted Atwood, Tony and Suford Lewis, Rick Katze, Mark Olson, Claire and Dave Anderson, and Joe Ross. We walked over from the home of one of the local fannish abodes one of the Natick Mall parking lots and up onto the roof parking area of it. There were lots of other people there. Fireworks were sporadically visible from elsewhere than the show we'd come to see--one site was probably Wayland with an official display, while the others were probably Amateur Hours, which considered the number of cops around to direct traffic and such, seemed very stupid to me to be lighting off where cops could see and go investigate.
The fireworks display we'd come to see started late, but was very nice, with lots of "oohs!" and "ahhs!" The finale was impressive and had lots of audio gunfire=-like noises from the barrage of fireworks going up for the end, but a sad corner of my mind was thinking things along the lines of, "Maybe the Vietnam vets' reflexes won't have them diving for cover anymore, but here are still the Gulf War vets, and anyone who's recently back from Iraq. I'm glad that the sounds here are happy ones, of fireworks that are a delight to see and hear--but there are so many other people, that shot fire and bursts in the sky, are terrorism and warfare, not happy celebration."
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 3 |
| 2004 | 1 |
Total: 4 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Paula Lieberman:
Show all comments by Paula Lieberman.