Re: Tony Cooper's downhill slide

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 05:06:22 GMT, Bob Cunningham
<exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 03:14:24 GMT, Tony Cooper
><tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
>
>> On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:56:13 GMT, Bob Cunningham
>> <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> >I choose to continue to think that Cooper simply didn't
>> >recognize that the commas made the remark parenthetical, but
>> >zeroed in on the undesirable interruption the first comma
>> >seemed to produce and leaped to his keyboard without trying
>> >to understand what the purpose of the comma was and probably
>> >without noticing that there was a second comma, the one
>> >after "Fall".
>
>> >Anyway, note that Cooper's arguments are obviously baloney,
>> >since he didn't complain about both commas, or about the
>> >remark being punctuated as parenthetical. He complained
>> >only about the first comma. He even repeated above his
>> >complaint about the first comma only, saying
>
>> Bob, I'm sorely disappointed in you. I know you didn't have time to
>> run this through a Perl thingy, but even a quick visual count would
>> show there are three commas in the sentence (before the colon).
>
>Cooper, I'm not disappointed in you, because experience has
>taught me that no stupidity you care to post will be
>surprising and hence should not be disappointing.
>
>Are you really too dumb to know that the existence of a
>first comma and a second comma doesn't preclude the possible
>existence of any number of additional commas that are not
>relevant to the issue being discussed?
>
>The question you unwittingly blundered into was whether or
>not "in _Free Fall" was parenthetical. To see whether or
>not Charles intended it to be, it was necessary to consider
>only the commas that bracketed it.
>
>And Charles's intention was all that mattered. As I've
>said, we have no right to challenge someone's punctuation on
>the basis that if they had wanted to say something different
>from what they wanted to say, they should have punctuated it
>differently.
>
>Charles knew what he wanted to say; he said it; he
>punctuated it properly.

You know, if you'd ever cut the personal slicing and dicing, this
could be an interesting dissection of a sentence. Oh, I know, I do it
too, but I do try include some hard reasons for my position.

This defense of the punctuation because it is the choice of the writer
is bogus. It's bogus on general principles, it's bogus because it's
the defense by someone out-on-a-limb, and it's bogus because it
results in a poorly constructed sentence.

Try addressing the hard point: The error is making "in _Free Fall" a
parenthetical phrase when there's no reason to make it a parenthetical
phrase. While it *can* be done, it makes for a jerky and awkward
sentence. Since "in _Free Fall_" can be integral because it
identifies Golding as an author, _Free Fall_ as one of his works, and
this work as the source of the question posed later in the sentence,
there's ample reason to not set the phrase out as parenthetical.
Especially since it's followed by a justified parenthetical phrase.

You don't excuse a poorly constructed sentence because the author of
the sentence chose to write it that way. Not here. If you want to
defend the construction it should be on the basis that the
construction used makes the meaning more clear.

I'm have not maintained in this threat that Charles broke a rule of
punctuation, but I have said that, by virtue of unnecessary
punctuation that created a parenthetical phrase where none was needed,
he wrote an awkward sentence. Removing the offending comma doesn't
make it a particularly good sentence, but it makes it a better
sentence.

Even after resolving the need for the first parenthetical phrase we
are left with the strange and awkward arrangement after "depravity".
He's referred to a similar question but not specified what the
original question was. We can assume it's something like "Just where,
in his life, did he go wrong", but we really don't know. If it is
that same question, the word "similar" shouldn't be there. It kind of
leaves you up in the air about what was meant.

Charles wrote:

"Much as Golding speculated, in _Free Fall_, about Samuel Mountjoy's
fall into depravity, a similar question must be asked about our own
Coop: just where, in his life, did he go wrong?"

--

Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
.

Relevant Pages

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