Timeline for "She pulled back her fingers a second before they were sliced off." Does she still have all of her fingers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26, 2018 at 19:28 | comment | added | Mazura | The cure for an out-of-control HNQ is to make it a CW. That's up to you. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 18:10 | comment | added | jpaugh | @Mazura Maybe, but that statement reveals as much about you as about the OP (as communication always does). I, a native speaker, got it nearly immediately, but then I enjoy such puzzles. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 16:26 | comment | added | barbecue | @anongoodnurse I didn't make any statement about the quality of this particular writer. I merely pointed out the fact that "bad writing" does not mean the same thing as "ambiguous grammar." The list of reasons why fiction writing does not need to follow strict rules of grammar is far too long to discuss here. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 15:31 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | @Tuffy - That is the nature of a Hot Network Question. It happens to many of us. No modesty required, and certainly not a plea for fewer votes. And of course the position that this is bad writing has been challenged. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 14:32 | comment | added | Tuffy | Polite request. I am most grateful to those who have been giving me all these points. But please now stop. What I wrote was, I hope, helpful. But it is getting more points than it can possibly deserve. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 14:26 | comment | added | Tuffy | @anongoodnurse I don’t think anyone has suggested that the writing is of particularly good quality. All I said was that you could justify a degree of ambiguity on the basis of literary effect. The literary standing of the author or what s/he has written is not at stake here. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 0:21 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | @barbecue - This writer is no Shakespeare, Twain, or Faulkner. Not all writing is good writing. This isn't this decade's Ulysses. | |
| Apr 25, 2018 at 22:52 | comment | added | Brien Malone | I disagree with the 'die of cold' comparison. The original post was past progressive. "Were sliced" sounds like an action completed in the past, while "die" is present tense... "before you die" is a forecast. "before they were sliced off" could be serializing the order of events in the past. "I told her to get out of the water before she was dead from cold." Is more in line with the ambiguous mess of the OP. :) | |
| Apr 25, 2018 at 20:27 | comment | added | barbecue | @anongoodnurse You need to define the phrase "bad writing." If you're saying quality fiction cannot use incorrect grammar, Shakespeare, Twain, Faulkner and Baldwin would tend to disagree. | |
| Apr 25, 2018 at 19:05 | comment | added | Burkhard | @trlkly: to be fair, I did not ask about what the author should do, but how one (or me) would differenciate the two meaning. And yes I am ESL :) | |
| Apr 25, 2018 at 6:43 | comment | added | trlkly | I'm not a fan of the additional question about what the author "should" do. This is purely opinion based, a value judgement. It isn't our purpose to tell authors how they should write, but to simply to explain what the common and acceptable practices are. It would be better to describe the effect and how it is different from the prescriptively correct version, rather than to specify that one or the other is better. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 22:22 | comment | added | Chaim | Stop in the name of love lest you break my heart. Lest you accuse me take a look at yourself. Etc. Doesn't sound quite as... current, I suppose. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 20:31 | comment | added | Tuffy | I am offering an opinion. You may, of course, disagree. I do not say it is good or excellent writing. You would need to see far more of the text to say anything like that. All I am saying is that strict rules of grammar and semantics may be stretched for literary reasons. Absolute absence of ambiguity is a core rule for expository writing. For connotative (literary) writing it is not. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 16:19 | comment | added | anongoodnurse | "...in literary terms justified." Are you sure? I know of no source that justifies bad writing. This is an example of just plain bad writing. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 11:11 | comment | added | Nigel Touch | +1. Though "before they would have been sliced off" sounds more typical that "could". | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 9:12 | comment | added | crobar | This is correct, as it is is simply the use of "before" with the meaning "In preference to" or "rather than" an accepted definition in any dictionary (google it). | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 5:09 | vote | accept | Burkhard | ||
| Apr 24, 2018 at 2:17 | comment | added | English Student | Best and most sensible answer: I upvotes! | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 0:32 | comment | added | Mazura | TL;DR: colloquial, +1. OP is ESL if I had to guess. I had to read the sentence a few times to even understand their perspective. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 0:01 | history | answered | Tuffy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |