"But anything to..."

Question

I'm wondering about the grammaticality of a sentence like "That might have been a far-fetched argument. But anything to make my point." (I'm curious specifically about the sentence in bold.)

Although the sentence seems technically to be a fragment, I wonder if it could be considered acceptable (even in an academic paper), or if it would have to be somehow re-written/re-worded.

My argument that it's correct is that there would be an ellipsed "I would do" in the sentence, as in "But [I would do] anything to...", which I would think is allowed. All help appreciated!

Answer 1

I wouldn't say that there is an elliptical I would do in the sense in which elliptical is normally used.

Generally, elliptical constructions are more explicit:

I ate chicken and then [I ate] dessert.

Here, I ate is already used in the first part of the sentence, so it's omitted presence is easily assumed in the second part of the sentence.

Or:

Did you have chicken for dinner?
Yes [, I had chicken for dinner].

Answering yes or no is commonplace, and the omitted information from the question is easily assumed.

That might have been a far-fetched argument. But anything to make my point.

You might look at your construction as an example of an elliptical sentence. But I think it would be putting too much of a burden on the reader. There is no obvious context from which I would do can be taken as the missing phrase.

You have struggle briefly to come up with omitted words that make the second sentence complete. In fact, first I try to change the punctuation. Then I consider what else would make it work. It took me about ten seconds to come up with I would do as a possibility.

Any construction that causes a reader to pause or backtrack in order to parse it should probably be rephrased.

In this case, it seems fairly trivial to add that missing I would do—so, why wouldn't you?