On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 09:23:08 -0500 "Palmer, Ralph" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ---------------------------------- > > My copy of The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers, Fourth Edition, > (1996), under "Problems with that, which, and who?" says, > Understand that both essential (restrictive) and > nonessential (nonrestrictive) clauses may begin with which. A clause > introduced by that will almost always be essential. No commas are used > around such clauses. . . . Context and punctuation, however, determine > whether a which clause is essential or nonessential. If the clause is > essential, no commas separate it from the rest of the sentence; if > nonessential, commas enclose the clause. (Emphasis in the original.) Interesting! I must admit that I found nothing objectionable with the "which"es that Kurt suggested replacing with "that"... actually, in a few cases, I thought that "which" sounded better. But I've always avoided learning anything about grammar[1], so I didn't mind replacing them. [1] As a native English speaker, I don't see the point -- I can speak and write perfectly well without knowing any formal rules of grammar. Actually, when I started learning Japanese, I was confused when the lesson was talking about "subject" and "object", and had to look it up. For anybody who thinks that knowledge of formal grammar is necessary to be a good writer, I have a challenge: sit down and write the complete rule for pluralization in English. At a minimum, what is the general rule which tells you how to pluralize "foot" and "boot"? I bet that there's less than a hundred people on the planet who could formalize anything approaching a complete rule for English pluralization... yet millions of people can do it perfectly, recognize and correct mistakes, etc. Cheers, - Graham _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user