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In my mind inserting the 'and' separates the 'ineffectual' and 'perpetual' so it appears the person being described could be a perpetual grad student as an inde
by jeromec 16y ago
In my mind inserting the 'and' separates the 'ineffectual' and 'perpetual' so it appears the person being described could be a perpetual grad student as an independent idea -- but maybe they just love school life, so it's not really anything negative. Leaving the 'and' out, however, implies to me the person is probably a perpetual grad student because of being ineffectual.
- nkassis 16y agoExactly what I'm thinking. If you remove the and there are two interpretations ( blame english for this). both ineffectual and perpetual or just perpetual or just ineffectual.
- jeromec 16y agoYes, unfortunately no language is an optimum form of communication, so we rely on other cues (often body language when available) to try to determine what an author/speaker really means to convey. Word choice does play a role in that, which is why I think pg (or anybody) would prefer to be quoted correctly :)