On Tuesday 22 March 2011 13:17:59 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 23:13 +1030, Tim wrote: > > On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 10:34 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > > > "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?" > > > > Or, if you want a less wordy answer: > > > > The words "That begs the question" are not part of the question that's > > being asked (why do they think it has a basis?). The question has to be > > written all by its lonesome. > > Even more OT: since we're talking about English grammar and orthography, > there are certain errors that tend to crop up on this list (and on > others of course), to wit: > > 1) This looks like an error? > 2) How do I do this. > > Sadly, they are often committed by those who would seem to be native > English speakers. People, informality is fine and I have no problem with > it, but a question in written English has to be grammatically structured > as a question and not a statement (error 1) and *must* conclude with a > '?' (error 2). Neither of these is optional, e.g. you can't convert a > statement to a question merely by sticking a '?' on the end. So the > correct forms of the above would be: > > 1) Does this look like an error? > 2) How do I do this? Just a small comment wrt. error 1 --- I was actually surprised to find out that in some languages the statement and the question have exactly the same form, the only difference being the question mark vs. period at the end of the sentence. In vocal communication, people would distinguish between the two by using different voice pitch at the end of the sentence, marking it as a statement or as a question. So the error 1 above may be "imported" into English from outside, so to say. > Just thought I'd get that off my chest :-) :-) Of course, when a native English speaker makes such mistakes, he is either too sloppy or barely literate, which is bad. But when a non-native does it, it may just be down to not being aware that such a construction is a mistake in English. Best, :-) Marko -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
