Thread: need punctuation help please

Originally Posted by Линдзи

Originally Posted by Oddo

Read a good book about English if you don't understand Lindsay. It's hard to explain, but she is right.

Thanks, Oddo

Completely , sorry, but BTW Lindsay dearest, have you come across this Churchill quote:
"That is the sort of English up with which I will not put."?

That shows perfectly the need for a balance of style and technical correctness. Perhaps that helps my case in our earlier discussion?

Heh. Churchill really was funny wasn't he? But I think he really felt that way about English.. shame...

[quote=майк]Heeeellllpppppppppp - this thread is running away with my question .....

Originally Posted by "майк":1tje6sus

Let's suppose this was a dramatic piece, and that the audience might be expecting the patient to be unconscious, white, and male. Could the commas be used in order to add emphasis: to apply grammatical brakes to the flow of the piece What I'm trying to say is, in the fight between grammar and style, who (could be 'which' - who knows) wins???

@Линдзи - Don't leave me now - I need to know, or at least, get an opinion [/quote:1tje6sus]

Heh. Yes, I've heard the Churchill quote, and yes...believe it or not...I am perfectly comfortable with breaking grammar and punctuation rules for dramatic effect. With caveats, of course. Please do allow me to get up on my soapbox and tell a parable.

My sister is an excellent equestrienne. She can ride any horse in just about any riding style, and do so correctly and gracefully. Yet she often, when we ride the trails around my family's farm, kicks off the stirrups, slouches across the horse's back, and generally lets her horse do whatever it wants to do. She can do this because she is an excellent rider. If she were to need to get the animal under control quickly, she could. And she's not getting into any bad habits by riding this way, because correct riding is so deeply engrained in her. But none of us would ever let one of the kids who comes out to take riding lessons get away with that sort of behavior! They need to learn the rules perfectly before they are allowed to break them.

That's exactly, to my mind, the way it is with writing. Many of the finest English-language writers frequently play fast and loose with linguistic convention. But they do so for reasons of personal expression and style. They do it to create a mood, to get across a particular idea. This sort of behavior should only be attempted, though, once one has a wholly solid foundation in proper writing. Believe me, a critical reader can tell the difference between stylistic "errors" and laziness. When Kurt Vonnegut excessively repeats a phrase, you know he's doing it to make a point. When a shoddy writer uses a cliche, though, it's obvious to a good reader that they do so out of laziness, ignorance or general lack of skill. It shows, it really does.

Okay, now that I've gotten all my pretentiousness out for the day, I'm going to go do some lesson planning...