re: Eats, Shoots & Leaves page 7

I would have done the same as you, and I ... an explanation by Gerald makes me think other thoughts ...

Christopher has hit the nail on the head on both counts. I could go along with Skitt in regarding 'in ... have used a question-mark at the end of that sentence, I had thought that it might conceivably have been defensible..g

Fair enough. I that "no question mark" and "as" are the desirable usages.
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/

(snip discussion of Bill Bryson)

(Aside: I don't really understand what you mean by "stuff he couldn't have known about".)

I said, "stuff he could have known about." Things he could have fairly readily have seen were doubted or dismissed ... or he decided it was anticlimactic to say "but that probably isn't so." I'll get back to you on examples.

Ben and John D. have given various examples, which took the pressure of off me a bit, but I still wanted to look myself. Reputation is a precious thing and I wouldn't like to think of Bill Bryson being unfairly maligned. When I looked through "Mother Tongue" today I was pleased to see how much he is right about things (as far as this group has been able to establish) and how he does attempt to indicate doubt in subtle ways (although I think that a simple "may" is not enough to convey to the reader "probably not true, but it makes a good story").

As a positive example, with the issue of whether anyone in the Appalachians speaks/spoke "Elizabethan English," he spends considerable space explaining why this can't be so, why the illusion arose, and who it was who generated the false story. If he only did that more often.

As I kept looking for examples that he made sound cut-and-dried that I know have been debated here, I saw this, with no more comment:

(p 200) The Elephant and Castle, originally a pub
and now a district of London, may have been the
Infanta de Castille.
At least he said "may," and skeptical sophisticated people will say, "Yes, and maybe not." But the average Joe is going to read that and say "Elephants? Infanta? I get it! How interesting. That makes sense." When that Joe retell it to someone, which is the word he's most likely to forget? "May."
He went on to say something about another pub name, that I am so dubious about I'm going to move it to a separate post.
I checked the newsgroup archives for more examples where his veracity was challenged.

This reminds me of Bill Bryson's claim (in Mother Tongue, p.163) that the short A of "bath" and "path" has died out in Britain. I wonder whether he listened to his neighbours in Yorkshire?

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast chunks, the topics that were discussed were:
- whether glass flows ('A Short History of Nearly Everything') - whether "root, hog, or die" has a debatable meaning ('Made in America')
- whether Queen Anne really informed Sir Christoper Wren that his work was amusing, artificial, and awful" or whether this was an apocryphal anecdote. ("Mother Tongue")
- whether "blimp" came from "Type B-Limp" as opposed to "Type A-Rigid".

I have to say that only one of these actually showed the quote from Bryson (glass flows, where he did not qualify it a smidgin). The others were from people's memory, and like I said up above, the fine shades of doubt that might have been expressed are the first things to be forgotten. All the more reason not to write things in a work of nonfiction that are colorful and memorable but not true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Best Donna Richoux

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(cut)

Fair enough. I that "no question mark" and "as" are the desirable usages.

"In the category with" is a perfectly reasonable way to say the same as "In the same category as". Random examples:
Mahlon Loomis is still not in the category with Marconi (who studied his patents),
I hope I have proven that I really don't fall in the category with those people who HATE Hentai.
You put a gay in the category with thief or an adulterer?

You will likely be put in the category with other Web sites or businesses like yours
JLo is trying to put herself in the category with Julia, Kate, Sandra, Renee, etc.
I put myself in the category with fighting men
Don't even try to put me in the category with a bunch of liberal pundits that think with conventional wisdom.
As for the question mark, that served several purposes, and I think it served them well. It indicated doubt (which Matti picked up on) and a wish for confirmation.

Best Donna Richoux

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Fair enough. I that "no question mark" and "as" are the desirable usages.

"In the category with" is a perfectly reasonable way to say the same as "In the same category as". Random ... and I think it served them well. It indicated doubt (which Matti picked up on) and a wish for confirmation.

People desire various things. Some more so than others. Things, that is.

On first reading, I didn't find any fault with your sentence and the punctuation of it. Only upon closer examination did it seem somewhat different from what I would have written that's why I was unsure of what the problems were that others saw.

Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/

(cut considerable chatter) (cut)

Fair enough. I that "no question mark" and "as" are the desirable usages.

"In the category with" is a perfectly reasonable way to say the same as "In the same category as". Random ... Don't even try to put me in the category with a bunch of liberal pundits that think with conventional wisdom.

By "random examples", do you mean that you composed these so-called examples yourself off the top of your head, or do you mean that you picked them randomly from independent sources?
Even having read your "random examples", I still think that "in the category with" (meaning "in the same category as") is peculiar in the extreme.

As for the question mark, that served several purposes, and I think it served them well. It indicated doubt (which Matti picked up on) and a wish for confirmation.

Such a sentence would either have begun or ended with the word 'surely', or would have ended with a question tag, so I still think your question mark stuck out like a sore thumb. Now you say it served "several purposes", but then proceed to mention only two "purposes". "Several" suggests more than two, so did your question mark serve any other "purposes" and, if so, what were they?

Christopher
My e-mail address is not 'munged' in any way and is fully replyable!

I simply wasn't sure how to spell 'mnemonic'.

If only there were some way to help you remember... :-)

I simply wasn't sure how to spell 'mnemonic'.

If only there were some way to help you remember... :-)

My Next Exercis - Make One New Interesting Clause.

(snip discussion of Bill Bryson) I said, "stuff he could ... probably isn't so." I'll get back to you on examples.

This reminds me of Bill Bryson's claim (in Mother Tongue, ... I wonder whether he listened to his neighbours in Yorkshire?

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast chunks, the topics that were discussed were: - whether glass flows ... work of nonfiction that are colorful and memorable but not true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Thanks, Donna. I accept that mistakes and some occasional sloppiness occur in his books, but when you consider just how much ground he covers for a non-academic readership I do think he gets the majority overwhelmingly right. We should also make allowance for the "pre-internet" factor in books like his, and realise that it's now much easier to check a claimed "fact" against a huge corpus of readily-available knowledge.
This last point serves to excuse errors in Mother Tongue but not Nearly Everything , of course. I've certainly read that "glass flows" in many places over the years, and never realised until now that it was disputed. Don't we all take such things for granted until we encounter a disputation?
Matti

I don't regard 'in the category with' as gibberish, because its intended meaning was clear. Also, the phrase is idiomatic in other contexts. I'll reword my comment on the second point to say that I had thought that a defence might conceivably have been forthcoming, because Ms Richoux has deliberately used question-marks at the end of formally declarative sentences before..g