Help punctuating this sentence please?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

The reason I say it is the most complicated is because one word can have many meanings.

The other day I heard someone say exactly the same thing, but they were giving it as the reason French was more complex or nuanced than English. Hopefully I'm not being as linguistically subjective as that speaker was being.

Apparently English has a lot of words. It has inherited both Latin and Germanic vocabulary, so that kinda doubles its word count.

[JwkOKC]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Commas are sometimes your friend and sometimes your worst nightmare.

Yep.

Sometimes, simultaneously.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

The reason I say it is the most complicated is because one word can have many meanings. Also because it is backwards to most other languages.

Can you explain what you mean when you say "it is backwards compared to most other languages"?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Thanks for the point about cases. Still, my point holds, I think. English is, as European languages go, not a complicated language. No gender and very little conjugation, and sentence order for the most part is simple and rigid. Mind you, the commas can be fiddly.

English does of course have cases, but (with one notable exception), it expresses case by word order, not inflection. Eg:

The dog bit the man

Word order tells us the "dog" is in the nominative case, and is the subject of the sentence, and "the man" is in the accusative case and is the object.

The exception to "no inflections" is the genitive case, which English (primarily) indicates by adding an "apostrophe s" to indicate possession:

The man's dog

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can you explain what you mean when you say "it is backwards compared to most other languages"?

We do subject verb, most other languages do verb subject.
That is how it is backwards.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

We do subject verb, most other languages do verb subject.
That is how it is backwards.

Actually "SVO" (subject-verb-object) is by far the most common word order in the world's languages, and is used by most Western European languages (English, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, etc) as well as Mandarin Chinese.

Second most common is "SOV" (subject-object-verb), with languages such as Latin and Japanese.

"VSO" (verb-subject-object) trails in a distant third. The most commonly-spoken language that uses it is Arabic.

[Cinisajoy]

Thanks for the info HarryT.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by JwkOKC

In any creative effort, only the creator determines the applicable rules. Many so-called rules of grammar are nothing more than one person's preferences, petrified like so much wood with the passage of time.

The best reference for such questions that I have yet located anywhere is at http://www.grammarbook.com/ which is a great site with many examples for almost any question one might pose. Note that I have no connection at all with it -- I'm just passing along a discovery.

When it comes to punctuation, I personally follow a musician's approach and use it to phrase the flow of the text. A period means a full rest, a semi-colon is a half rest, and a comma is a quarter rest. Em and En dashes provide ties and other fractional rests. And if it sounds right to my ear when I read it aloud (or do so mentally) then it's right to me -- and the grammar police can pound sand.

I suspect my attitude is a minority viewpoint. However very few editors have mangled my efforts in the years since my first national publication in 1949...

Yeah, I'm with you. I'll break the rules for flow. And yeah, I like that site too. It depends what you're writing. But for fiction perfect grammar can kill flow. (Not often, mind you, but it can and when it does it gets the boot in favor of flow. Every time.)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Thanks for the info HarryT.

You're welcome, but I'm curious to know what languages you had in mind when you stated that most languages put the verb before the subject. Can you elaborate a little on that?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Yeah, I'm with you. I'll break the rules for flow. And yeah, I like that site too. It depends what you're writing. But for fiction perfect grammar can kill flow. (Not often, mind you, but it can and when it does it gets the boot in favor of flow. Every time.)

Just to be clear--I never meant that DIALOGUE by characters has to be "grammatically perfect." It has to be readable, and not get in the way. I abhor dialect, for example, when an inexperienced writer feels compelled (historical romances set in Scotland spring instantly to mind) to inflict "dinna" and "ken" and whatever on the reader, rather than dropping it in early and allowing the reader to "hear" it in his/her head as the narrative goes.

The sentence that you, Gregg put in front of us is one of those sentences; yes, it's (apparently) internal dialogue, but when it's internal dialogue, I generally want it to be at least not grammatically incorrect in such a way that I instantly notice it. For example, if a character continuously says "Bert and me," (rather than Bert and I, when needed), of course I expect him to THINK that way. It would be discordant if he didn't.

But to me, that's different than the sentence that started this discussion/thread. To me, the original sentence was simply wrong. It would have distracted me.

It's also pretty typical that writers are very staunch defenders of the idea that "grammatically perfect" writing = bad. It's certainly something that I see at our office, and an idea that I hear repeated constantly at the KDP Boards. Of course, that's where the infamous thread about how ellipses were for abrupt breaks in dialogue and emdashes meant "trailing off," too, so...y'know. Take that for what it's worth.

Hitch

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Just to be clear--I never meant that DIALOGUE by characters has to be "grammatically perfect." It has to be readable, and not get in the way. I abhor dialect, for example, when an inexperienced writer feels compelled (historical romances set in Scotland spring instantly to mind) to inflict "dinna" and "ken" and whatever on the reader, rather than dropping it in early and allowing the reader to "hear" it in his/her head as the narrative goes.

I would note that "ken" (meaning "know" - essentially the same word as the German verb "kennen") is an everyday word in the north of England and Scotland; it's a word I use in my own speech, although I wouldn't use it in writing here. It's rather different to trying to represent dialect using funny spellings such as "dinna".

I'd personally make a distinction between using normal spellings of words that the reader may perhaps be unfamiliar with, and trying to represent dialect by means of non-standard spelling (as books like "Tom Sawyer" do, for example).

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

English does of course have cases, but (with one notable exception), it expresses case by word order, not inflection. Eg:

The dog bit the man

Word order tells us the "dog" is in the nominative case, and is the subject of the sentence, and "the man" is in the accusative case and is the object.

Which is rarely taught to children, and nor does it need to be. This is a point I'm making about English. For the most part, it is simple and obvious. I wonder if the same can be said for German, which as I understand, uses a more complex case system, as well as having three genders!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Which is rarely taught to children, and nor does it need to be. This is a point I'm making about English. For the most part, it is simple and obvious. I wonder if the same can be said for German, which as I understand, uses a more complex case system, as well as having three genders!

Yes, German has case endings. The equivalent in German would be:

Der Hund biss den Mann

with the "den" indicating the accusative case, as opposed to "der" for the nominative.

So in German you could say:

Den Mann biss der Hund

with no loss of meaning. This is in fact done when you want to stress some aspect of the sentence - in this case that it's THE MAN (rather than someone else) that the dog bit.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You're welcome, but I'm curious to know what languages you had in mind when you stated that most languages put the verb before the subject. Can you elaborate a little on that?

I was thinking Latin, Tex-mex and most Asian speakers I know get certain words very backwards. Not just in order but in meaning. Many Asians get give and take backwards.

Trust me, Tex-mex is a very common language.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would note that "ken" (meaning "know" - essentially the same word as the German verb "kennen") is an everyday word in the north of England and Scotland; it's a word I use in my own speech, although I wouldn't use it in writing here. It's rather different to trying to represent dialect using funny spellings such as "dinna".

Yes, of course, you're absolutely right, Harry. I should have thought my response through more clearly, and not included "ken." I guess I recently saw...what was it? I think it was "canna" and "kenna," both used for "cannot." I know how common "ken" is, for "know," and for that matter, I've been known to use it myself, in very specific circumstances.

"Ken" almost stands in a class by itself, as it's not what I really meant as "dialect." It's a word. It's like...a German in a book saying "hund" for dog. That wouldn't faze me. Of course, in this country, we see it used in various books for "can," rather than KNOW. I probably oughtn't to have selected Scottish as my pet peeve, but with Historical Romance, it seems to be the most-abused form of English dialect. HOWEVER, I could list a boatload of heavily-overwrought abuses of "Southern-speak" from the US.

OMG, and TEXAN. And things like "cain't." UGHGHTHG. Or, speaking of k's and n's, "kin." As in, "I kin do that fer ya, ma'am." ICK.

I'd personally make a distinction between using normal spellings of words that the reader may perhaps be unfamiliar with, and trying to represent dialect by means of non-standard spelling (as books like "Tom Sawyer" do, for example).

I'd have to think about that one. I've never really considered Twain as an abuser of dialect, per se, but on the other hand, he made up half the terms of dialect/region that he used. What was it, Bellythumper? Gullywasher? :-)

I ought to also admit that as a bookmaker, dealing with dialect and spell-checking is a major pain in the glutes. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it colors my view, but I genuinely think that by and large, I've always disliked dialect when done poorly--or worse, incorrectly.

Hitch