Re: Miss Grundy's Classroom A parenthetical idea? Even though you didn't put it in parentheses. Those are dashes, not hyphens. You used hyphens, but in print, they would be set as dashes.
Re: Miss Grundy's Classroom I find extraordinarily long sentences to be a common issue, too, Birdz. Like you, I try to break them into smaller sentences.
I only use dashes to set out a phrase in the middle of a sentence in special situations. Maybe the phrase is completely divorced from the rest of the sentence, or maybe the phrase needs to be specifically highlighted. But usually the sentence can be reconfigured to avoid it.
Re: Miss Grundy's Classroom Ohhhhhhhh.... Ari Melber started his show with George Will, and what George Will said about Trump's statements was SO delightful that I immediately thought of Miss Grundy....
"You're quite right that this [crisis] is Trump-made. The president is (and I want to say this as delicately as possible) syntactically-challenged. He has a very difficult time getting from subject-object predicate through a sentence. The sentences tend to explode in mid-flight. And for that reason, it sometimes IS difficult to know what he intended to say. Now, I think as a matter of philosophy, if you can't say something, you can't think it. And the fact that a lot of what he says comes out in confused language indicates there's confusion straight through."
Re: Miss Grundy's Classroom While I have very often disagreed with George Will over the years, I oftened tuned in to George Stephanopolis on Sunday mornings just to hear Will talk. The man TALKS just as he writes. Delicious!
And the cherry on top is that he has come in from the dark side.
Re: Miss Grundy's Classroom I believe Donald Trump would fail both Miss Grundy’s English class, as well as Signora Miglianico‘s English class at the International School of Trieste.
Last edited by GoHawk, 7/20/2018, 5:13 am
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Long live the Free Territory of Trieste (1947 - 1954)
Many moons ago I remember a friend commenting that while he knew that a double negative made a positive he didn't know if it was possible to construct a triple negative in English. But he was insistent that, regardless of the language spoken, there was no way to turn a double positive into a negative. To which I responded:
I believe Donald Trump would fail both Miss Grundy’s English class, as well as Signora Miglianico's English class at the International School of Trieste.
No doubt you're right, GoHawk. That just leaves me scratching my head over what the HECK happened at the University of Pennsylvania. He HAD to have had other kids taking his classes. He's far, far too ignorant about economics to have EVER held a legitimate Economics degree. That's not just a slam. I'm serious. No one could POSSIBLY spend a lifetime with that level of ignorance and hold a degree in the subject.
