Craig,
Thanks.
Did Annie Dillard really invent that use of the colon? It seems to me it's older than she.
Curiously,
Paul
Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Paul is right in suggesting "might" over "should". Here's an alrernative I might use to designate the second part as a sort of appositional explanation.
What a paradox: the internet, the very cutting edge of information technology, is creating an anti-social society.
My other quarrel with the sentence is that it implies that technical advances are inherently going to bring us together, which seems questiionable. How about this as an alternative:
What a paradox: the internet, which was supposed to link us all together, is creating an anti-social society.
I stole this use of the colon, by the way, from Annie Dillard. She uses it often between two independent clauses when the second seems like an appositional extension.
PAUL E. DONIGER wrote:
I have two thoughts on this (amazing that my brain can fucntion so well, isn't it?):
1. If Bruce is right (and I think he is -- having thought the phrase, "What a paradox" was eliptical before I read his response), then 'a paradox' becoems s subject cccomplement for 'it'. Or, I guess, it makes it a subject (but iof the elided 'is' -- not the one in the clause about the Internet.
2. I think that Christine might have been better off to ask, "How might this be punctuated?" rather than "How should this be punctuated?" -- there are more possibilities than the two supplied.
Paul
Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Christine,
It is hard to disagree with Herb. One little observation, however. I think something needs to be said about the possibility that "what" in an exclamative is a modifier of the article. I am more comfortable with the exclamative being a full NP. This would make "what a paradox" parallel to "many a paradox." The full form would be "What a paradox (it is)!" rather than "What (is) a paradox" (! for ?) or "What a paradox (is is)," which both seem vapid at best. (These last two involve the so-called headless relative, which I prefer to call the indefinite noun clause.)
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 8/5/2004 8:21:13 AM >>>
Christine,
I like your second version. The problem with the first is that it makes a difference what the subject of "is" is, to paraphrase a well-known Rhodes Scholar. Grammatically, the sujbect has to be "a paradox", and what's within commas is an appositive. However, "a paradox" is also the complement of "what" in an exclamatory sentence. Exclamations beginning with wh-words typically lack verbs, just "what" + NP. So "a paradox" is being asked to play to grammatical roles at once, something that doesn't usually work well. The reader is tempted to make "the Internet" the subject, but then the sentence becomes a comma splice.
Herb
Dear Group,
How should this be punctuated?
What a paradox, the Internet, the very cutting edge of communication
technology, is creating an anti-social society.
What a paradox! The Internet, the very cutting edge of communication
technology, is creating an anti-social society.
Christine Martin
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