User talk:Tony1/Exercises in textual flow

Exercise two

This is tough. From a technical standpoint, no problem, and the hints/explanations are great. Helpful and not too wordy. Question though—what's the goal? Is it to show how to split sentences only, or is it to show how to improve run-on sentences? The problem is that most long sentences need more work than just a simple split. Below are specific comments on the first three examples; the fourth one I liked as is. Not sure if these are what you're looking for, but they at least explain my concern.

To me the answer of the first example is an improvement, but an uninteresting one. The same underlying structure is there; only now we've repeated a word and replaced a comma with a period. In the second sentence we're still packing in three distinct pieces of information about the development (who, where, and when), and then tacking on a catch-all at the end. And "mainly in western and central Europe" comes across to me as redundant; wasn't Catholocism "mainly" in that part of the world in those times? But this isn't a redundancy exercise.

The solution to example B introduces a loss of meaning; to maintain it one could use a dash instead of a period:

However, ardent debate between political factions known as the Federalists and anti-Federalists ensued over the balance between strengthening the nation’s government and weakening the rights of the people—people who just 10 years earlier had rebelled against the perceived tyranny of George III of England, particularly his unwillingness to change the taxation regime.

To me that reads better. It provides a dramatic pause, and doesn't dilute the author's intended meaning. Side question: is there any sort of guideline for the order of the subject, verb and prepositional phrase of sentence one? Is (debate) --> (between political factions...) --> (ensued) better than (debate) --> (ensued) --> (between political faction...)? I would have thought not.

Example C—One thing I've learned is to hate "to be" verbs, so adding two of them doesn't excite me. Personally, I would have split it like this:

As such, the comic strip holds a unique place in British football folklore, demonstrated most clearly by the phrase “real Roy of the Rovers stuff”. Commonly used by football writers and commentators in describing displays of great skill or results that go against the odds, the phrase refers to the dramatic storylines that became the trademark of the comic strip.

I guess my point is that these are pretty good exercises for methods of splitting long sentences, but I feel like in some cases they fail to address the underlying problem (ex. A) or they introduce new problems (B & C). --Spangineer^es (háblame) 16:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for this detailed feedback, Spangineer. The goal is to teach people how to split sentences; if this involves minor secondary issues, I've included them, hoping that they don't cloud the issue.

Question A

I think by "mainly in western and central Europe" the author means "not in Italy (i.e., southern Europe): elsewhere in the Roman church". But it's a good point: I'll ask Peirigill (and will have to admit that I've used his text here, but he won't mind!) If I need to, I'll change the text—it's shameful, but I have falsified information when it's linguistically convenient to prove a point. This is not a content article, but a process article, I keep telling myself. <smile>

Question B

I read it several times and then realised (I think) where the loss of meaning might be. Can I add "same" to get around this?

However, ardent debate between political factions known as the Federalists and anti-Federalists ensued over the balance between strengthening the nation’s government and weakening the rights of the people. Just 10 years earlier, the same people had rebelled against the perceived tyranny of George III of England, particularly his unwillingness to change the taxation regime.

Either word order is possible, but I think the existing one is the easiest. (Otherwise, there might be an undesirable juxtaposition of "the people" and "the factions".)

I like the dramatic pause of the em dash (and I'm an em-dash guy, as you know), and it's a good solution. But I wanted an example in which they observe a straight repetition "the people. The people" avoided. I need to make it clear in the hint that this is only one solution.

Question C

Your suggestion is much better!

Thanks, Span. Tony 03:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]