On 2012-03-16, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:53:24 +0000, Neil Cerutti wrote: > >> On 2012-03-16, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> >> wrote: >>> Ah, perhaps you're talking about *prescriptivist* grammarians, who >>> insist on applying grammatical rules that exist only in their own >>> fevered imagination. Sorry, I was talking about the other sort, the >>> ones who apply the grammatical rules used by people in real life. You >>> know the ones: linguists. My mistake. >> >> I am not pedantic. You are wrong. > > Whether you like it or not, it simply is a fact that in English > (I won't speak for other languages) people use colons without > the first clause *necessarily* being a complete sentence. They > write things like this:
People spell your name Stephen, sometimes too. Thinking of changing it? Gore Vidal's quote has panache, a valid compensation for breaking the usual rule. How many other uses on that page are similar? -- Neil Cerutti -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list