Dear Gordon, The underlined material is the idiomatic resatement of these clauses: My life will be better if this time of my life is over sooner rather than later. These clauses then become: The sooner it is over, the better (my life will be). I think that there should be a comma following "over," to prevent misreading. JVB At 09:11 AM 7/3/98 -0500, you wrote: > One of my students wrote a sentence that uses a common idiom that >has me questioning how to parse the part in underlined Italics and >wondering if it requires further punctuation. "This time of my life has >been the strangest and most stressful I can remember, and the sooner it is >over the better. I would appreciate your comments. >Gordon Carmichael >Texas University State System (English Department) James Vanden Bosch (616) 957-6592 Department of English [log in to unmask] Calvin College fax: (616) 957-8508 Grand Rapids, MI 49546 http://www.calvin.edu/~vand for PureVoice software: http://www.eudora.com/epro/purevoice.html