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Subject:roll in your soup From:LaVonna Funkhouser <lffunkhouser -at- HALNET -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 10 May 1995 08:55:05 -0500
As much as I admire Uncle Ralph, I will back up Mark on this
one. My 7th grade English teacher had a shortened version
of this on a poster in the classroom. I have thought about
it for years. It is only funny because "roll" is ambiguous.
Changing commas does not save this sentence. Only rewriting
so that roll falls earlier in the list will clarify things.
Also, we should probably change "in" to "into" so we don't
have folks standing in their soup.
"Don't break your crackers, roll, biscuits, or bread into your soup."
To be honest, though, I like crackers in my soup.
LaVonna
lffunkhouser -at- halnet -dot- com
> "He always used to tell us kids, 'Don' break yer crackers,
> bread, biscuits or roll in yer soup'."
> ** I don't buy it. The comma never makes the list harder to read
> or more ambiguous. The above sentence means the same thing with
> or without a comma before "or". If there were another "or"
> before "biscuits", the sentence would mean something different.
> __________________________________________________________________________
> ||- Mark L. Levinson, mark -at- sd -dot- co -dot- il -- Box 5780, 46157 Herzlia, Israel -||
