RE: "and then," or simply "then"?

["Sean Brierley" <sbrierley -at- Accu-Time -dot- com>]

Practice makes permanent. Practice certainly does not make perfect.

Perhaps Scottish writing instruction was by educators who disdain the
teaching of grammar? I'd be curious to see more information on that.

And, certainly, in the example you prefer, you are using "then" as a
conjunction. Why not use a semicolon?

Cheers,

Sean

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sbrierley=accu-time -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sbrierley=accu-time -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Sarah Blake
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 12:53 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: "and then," or simply "then"?


> While some may say a comma splice and the use of "then" as a
conjunction
> improves readability, I'd need to see hard data to be convinced.

Well, as a complete grammatical ignoramus (I blame the state of teaching
in Scotland circa the 1980s), I find the comma-splice-and-'then' more
readable.

I wouldn't dream of writing 'press CTRL then click the mouse'.  Nor
would I dream of writing 'press CTRL, and click the mouse'.*  But 'press
CTRL, then click the mouse' seems perfectly reasonable to me.  'And
then' seems so clumsy by comparison; the 'and' is unnecessary, implicit
in the 'then', and I stumble slightly in reading as the redundancy
grates.

I guess I'm not exactly using 'then' as a conjunction, but I'm not
exactly using it as an adverb either**; it's in a category of its own
somewhere between the two!

And why not? :)
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