Re: Code beautifier

At 6:47 PM -0400 7/25/08, Daniel Brown wrote:

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 6:29 PM, tedd <tedd.sperling@gmail.com> wrote: But, there's nothing wrong with starting a sentence with but.

There, I even started AND ended with one.

    Correct, as I said, in "Reader's Digest" English.  In proper

grammar, it's tantamount to ending a sentence with a preposition[1]. However, even in Reader's Digest English (RDE[TM]), heading a word with "but" is acceptable.... but following it immediately with a comma is not[2].

    1: Hence the name, "pre-position" --- positioned before.
    2: http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article628.pdf

As I see it, this is more of a "When to use a comma" thing than a "but" thing. I use commas like I talk. For example, I would never say: But that didn't happen. Instead, I would say But -- pause -- that didn't happen. So, I write it: But, that didn't happen. The "But and pause" is used by me to get someone's attention before presenting my objection. Now, one can argue if my method is proper or not -- but, I don't care. The purpose of writing is to communicate and I do that rather well. I remember three discussions I had with teachers about writing -- one teacher in High School told me that no one intelligent would ever consider anything I had to say because of my obvious limitations. But, I still graduated from High School. Another teacher marked me down from an A to a B in my last year in college because he said that he didn't want me to graduate with honors for I wasn't the "proper type" of person to represent his college as an honor student. But, I still graduated with honors. The last one claimed that my use of commas was excessive in my MS thesis. But, I still published, defended my thesis, and received my MS. So in the end, these were the things I remember being taught by "English" teachers. They taught me well -- but, nothing about writing. :-) Cheers, tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com