5 ms·
While that is grammatically correct, I was always taught that you'd remove superfluous words or refactor the sentence when writing formal English. I'm certainl
by laumars 11y ago
While that is grammatically correct, I was always taught that you'd remove superfluous words or refactor the sentence when writing formal English.
I'm certainly not the best writer (quite appalling actually), but the following reads better while still carrying the same intent:
You'd think that would be easy to detect with no false positives.
However I'd be interested to read any corrections if I'm wrong as I'm always looking to improve my English writing skills.
- hluska 11y agoWhen I've edited others, I've always gone to great pains to get rid of the extra that. You'd think that that... is equal to You'd think that... And 'you'd think that' won't risk distracting any of your readers. The problem comes when I'm actually writing. I tend to read my writing out loud to myself before I post it, and when I actually say things out loud, the double that sounds better. I have two conclusions: - My editing is all about hypocrisy. - It's hard to get out of the habit of writing how you speak.
- grkvlt 11y agoNo, the italics aren't helping... Although this probably says something about how easy it is to fail to notice word-doubling errors?
- laumars 11y agoI think you may have missed my point (or I have missed yours). I was saying that same sentence works with both a single and double instance of the word "that". The italics was only there to separate the quoted text from my comment, rather than a typeface suggestion to the former poster.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoI think the original reads OK, but the antecedent to "that" was unclear anyway and should have been spelt out. However, clearly this was written with an ear to humour so the extra "that" is essential - which is why you have your editing interface flag the double but not auto-correct it.