Students-particularly very basic writers-often tell me that they have been
taught to think of a sentence as "a complete unit of thought." But that
definition doesn't work very well for them, especially when it comes to
understanding punctuation. For example, they will argue that a sentence
containing a pronoun cannot be fully understood (to their way of thinking)
without the previous sentence that contains the noun to which the pronoun
refers. They create comma splices, therefore, because they think they need
both sentences for the thought to be fully understood.
Nancy
_____
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edward Vavra
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 3:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Each sentence contains a thought
Ed,
My problem with "Each sentence contains a thought" is that most
sentences contain several thoughts. I can't remember if I gave the following
explanation on this list recently, but .....
He lives in a house. (1 thought)
The house is green. (1 thought)
He lives in a green house. (1 thought?)
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 10/10/2005 2:54:41 PM >>>
Dear Folks,
I have my own ideas on this, but I wondered what some of you might
say---succinctly, if possible---to someone who made the assertion: "Each
sentence contains a thought." They are talking about the written language
and about American English.
Ed To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
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