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Below is a quote from Herbert Simon (italics his, not mine)-

"...the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function."

How is it different if I simply say that the designer is concerned with how things ought to be in order to attain goals and to function.

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  • You should post a full reference to the source. It seems like you're reading a defective copy. I don't know if you're embarrassed because your version is pirated, which would explain both the error and your reluctance to explain where you saw it.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 24 at 8:58
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    I’m voting to close this question because the OP seems to be cited an incorrectly punctuated edition of perfectly ordinary text.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 24 at 10:24
  • '... concerned with how things ought to be how they ought to be in order to [achieve]' is clunky, but makes sense: '... concerned with how things ought to be in what is considered the optimal state in order to [achieve]'. I'd prefer a comma after 'state', and the whole sentence might be seen as a platitude. // But this is a misquote at some level; the original contains an expansion on 'how things ought to be', qualifying the statement and repeating the string for emphasis.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 24 at 11:11

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The full quote is this:

The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function.

I don't see any problem with the above quote.

The dash (which you've omitted in your post) indicates a brief pause. The writer takes on the preceding statement further after the dash and completes it after adding extra information.

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  • There is no dash in the version I am reading.
    – Shashank
    Commented Jul 24 at 8:44
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    Obviously an OCR failure on the version you picked. I had no problem finding several correctly scanned versions.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 24 at 10:25

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