Proper Grammar

[Harold Snyder <ENSNYDER -at- ECUVM1 -dot- BITNET>]

The Correct Grammar thread
>"On the beach of indicision
>Lay the bleached bones of thousands
>Who with victory in sight
>Sat down to think about it."

has been working its way steadily over this list.

The responses have been interesting, but for different reasons.

When I first saw the original posting, I fired off a one-liner to the
effect that the antecedent of of "who" is bones.

If we were to translated this poetic expression into prose (the medium
in which most tech writers work), the complete sentence could be:

On the beach of indecision lay the bleached bones of thousands who, with
victory in sight, sat down to think about it.

                   or

With victory in sight, the bleached bones of thousands lay on the beach
of indecision and sat down to think about it.

In the original poem, the prepositional phrase "with victory in sight" seems
restrictive because then and only then, did the bones sit down...On the
other hand, when this poem is written in prose form, the phrase within a
clause becomes unrestrictive (and, therefore, takes a set of commas--and--
indicating that this interrupting phrase is unnecessary to understand the
remainder of the sentence). In the second sentence in the above example, the
introductory participle phrase takes a comma because it doesn't immediately
precede the verb (see The Chicago Manual of Style, papa. 5.37), which makes
this a complex sentence (a dependent element and an independent clause).

If no one objects by 12:45 EST, I'd like to use this example in my
Technical Editing class...

Hal
East Carolina University
Greenville NC
(If one is a technical writing teacher, can one be called a TWT--make that a
TWIT?> {:>