3 ms·
I don't see anything wrong with the sentence besides maybe the use of "front" that you pointed out. I got it easily the first time reading it and I'm certain it
by jimmaswell 10y ago
I don't see anything wrong with the sentence besides maybe the use of "front" that you pointed out. I got it easily the first time reading it and I'm certain it would be just as clear to me spoken as long as I was paying attention.
- AckSyn 10y agoI remember this story and the only (personal preference) issue I can take with it were the comma placements. Yikes. Shatner anyone?
- SNACKeR99 10y agoI think the commas very well placed. If it reads like Shatner to you, then perhaps you are reading as if they were ellipses?
- Veen 10y agoCommas have two roles: syntactic and prosodic. Today, we almost always use them to indicate syntax: separating subclauses etc. In the nineteenth century, they were commonly used to indicate prosody — breathing pauses and the intended rhythm of the sentence — which leads to comma placements that seem odd to modern eyes but would have been perfectly normal to a nineteenth-century reader. If you read any Jane Austen, George Eliot, or other Victorian writers, you'll see that sort of usage everywhere: > "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."