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Subject:RE: [RMX:NL] Re: Subtly bad sentence construction From:Slager Timothy J <Timothy -dot- Slager -at- dematic -dot- com> To:Richard Hamilton <dick -at- rlhamilton -dot- net>, TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 2 Jun 2015 12:27:50 +0000
Diagrammed or not, that sentence doesn't make much sense. A couple of commas might help. What's the antecedent to "it"?
I liked that song as a kid, but apparently didn't pay much attention to the lyrics.
Excellent point your teacher made: ungrammatical sentences cannot be diagrammed.
tims
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+timothy -dot- slager=dematic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+timothy -dot- slager=dematic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Richard Hamilton
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2015 3:47 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: [RMX:NL] Re: Subtly bad sentence construction
When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher, in an attempt to be cool, tried to diagram the following line from Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane:
Your eyes, I say your eyes may look like his Yeah, but in your head, baby, I'm afraid you don't know where it is.
About halfway through, he got stuck (somewhere around "but in your head, baby, ..."). Highly entertaining, and, as far as I can recall (it's been a few years; that song was current when this happened:-), that was the end of sentence diagramming in his class.
Richard
-------
XML Press
XML for Technical Communicators http://xmlpress.net
hamilton -at- xmlpress -dot- net
On May 29, 2015, at 13:34, John G <john -at- garisons -dot- com> wrote:
> I got out of that in freshman HS English class when I asked my teacher
> to diagram the last sentence in Ulysses ... you know, just to show me
> how it's done
>
> Still a wise ass ...
>
>
> JG
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Lin Sims <ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
>> I was never taught to diagram sentences, and sometimes I think I
>> missed out.
>>
>> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 3:53 PM, Margaret Cekis <
>> margaret -dot- cekis -at- comcast -dot- net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> When all else fails, I go back to diagramming the sentence, and both
>>> of those are doozies.
>>> Margaret Cekis, Johns Creek GA
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