RE: Apple permits "then" to be used as a coord. conjunction in instructions?

["Tom Johnson" <thj -at- tampabay -dot- rr -dot- com>]

<<Clearly you haven't been paying attention. <g> At the no-longer-tender age
of 43, grammar continues to baffle, amuses, and astound me--which is part of
the fun of working as an editor and trying to explain our language to
younger editors who haven't yet learned to relax and just accept the <ahem>
occasional </ahem> bit of bizarreness.>>

I am all for accepting oddities of language, but I wanted to first
understand whether it was an oddity or an error.

<<I've got some bad news for you... <g> First, most authorities (such as my
1973 Random House Unabridged and the 2000 edition of the American Heritage
Unabridged) note quite clearly that this use of "then" is actually an
adverbial use, with the "and" left implicit as an ellipsis--in short, "then"
takes the place of "and then", and your coordinate conjunction ("and") is
still there where it should be, just formatted as hidden text. <g> English
is somewhat... um... promiscuous about the use of ellipsis, but that's also
one of the joys and powers of the language.>>

I happen to have a 1982 American Heritage Dictionary. Where did you find
your explanation referenced above? In the section in the beginning on
grammar? If so, under what heading?

Can you also explain how "then click New" in the phrase "Click the File
menu, then click New" acts as an adverbial clause? I just don't see that.
I'm okay with the ellipses, although it's not a common elliptical
construction. Much more common is, "He ate four pieces of pie; she, none." 

<<Second, beware the difference between prescriptive grammar ("English as
she should be spoken according to [fill in name of authority here]") and
descriptive grammar ("English as she is actually spoke by the populace").
The use of "then" in place of "and then" has a long and proud history
because it obeys what is arguably the only important rule of grammar: the
structure of the sentence must be such as to make the meaning of each word
and phrase unequivocal.>>

Actually, I find that "and then" is much clearer, particularly in regards to
performing steps. I like Microsoft's adoption of the "and then" style
because it emphasizes the distinctness of the steps.

<<If you dissect any grammatical rule--and I am distinguishing these rules
from the so-called "rules" of style or usage--you'll see that the rule
describes some of the deeper workings of how we speakers of a language parse
that language's structure. In that sense, grammar is inherently descriptive,
because it describes the underlying rules of what makes the language work;
it is also inherently prescriptive in that it tells you what works, and what
doesn't, thereby providing the tools to consciously think through
communication problems until you have learned to subconsciously solve the
problem.>>

I assume you're excluding the split infinitive.

Overall I guess I have some investment in the "then" argument, having marked
it as an error on student papers for the last 5 years. Of course they
weren't writing in the imperative mood, but I don't see why the logic of
accepting "then" as an ellipses in the imperative mood does not also entail
accepting it as an ellipses in the descriptive mood. "Jack and Jill went up
the hill, then they fetched a pail of water." Couldn't this be an ellipses?
Jack and Jill went up the hill, [and] then they fetched a pail of water? How
does this rule "describe some of the deeper workings of how we speakers of a
language parse that language's structure"?

My comments are not meant to be combative, just analytical.



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