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Subject:Re: The editor was *not* correct. From:Nora Merhar <MERHAR -at- ALENA -dot- BITNET> Date:Mon, 19 Jun 1995 13:31:42 CDT
I don't know if Beth was referring to me when she said "I'm surprised that
someone said that the editor who used "things" was correct", but I didn't
say that. What I *did* say was that the editor was correct in attempting to
rewrite the sentence so that it would be a complete sentence, because the way
it was set up was grammatically incorrect (You can't use a colon at the end of
an incomplete sentence to introduce a bulleted list. That would be like
writing "For dinner we are having: chicken Kiev, steamed carrots, and french
fries.") I ALSO said that "things" was awkward, and gave several recommendations
for rewriting the list.
While "things" is a pretty useless word, it was grammatically correct in that
context--more so than the writer's original construction. But Beth, if you look
at my original posting, you'll see that I rewrote the sentence in much the same
way you did.
Nora
merhar -at- edsvcs -dot- switch -dot- rockwell -dot- com
