3 ms·

What is the error there?

• rogual 2y ago
  "However" isn't a conjunction. It should be "Not many academic philosophers discuss magic. However, five centuries ago..." Using "however" the way the author did will trip up a reader expecting correct English -- once you have "Not many philosophers discuss magic, however" you expect the sentence to end, but it doesn't and you have to go back and reinterpret.
  • D13Fd 2y ago
    Agreed. It should have been a period or or at least a semicolon before "however": "Not many academic philosophers discuss magic; however, five centuries ago . . ." In any case, I think the author really meant "although."
  • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    This sentence trips you up? ""Not many academic philosophers discuss magic, however, five centuries ago, prominent Renaissance philosophers, such as Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), and Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), wrote extensive treatises on the topic"" I think you'll find a lot of people would breeze past this and not debate commas and semicolons. You are correct, by the letter of the law, according to the semicolon police this should be a semicolon. But that is like arresting people for jay walking. Yes, it's wrong, but come on.
    • marnett 2y ago
      I agree it isn’t going to trip many up, but also agree that the standards of writing coming out of an education institution should be grammatically correct.
      • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
        Sure. But this is super low bar mistake. I would bet 90%+ of general population would not know this was an error at all. But, what is prevalent today, is to pile scorn on to educational bodies. So to take a really minor grammar error, in a rather small and niche paper, and extrapolate to a condemnation of the entire institute, is really obviously politically motivated.