On 24/01/2015 10:14 AM, Janet Wilder wrote:
> On 1/23/2015 4:30 PM, Xeno wrote:
>> On 24/01/2015 7:54 AM, Kalmia wrote:
>>> On Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 3:21:33 PM UTC-5, Bryan-TGWWW wrote:
>>>
>>> Certainly, any man's man, any guy who
>>>> likes movies with car chases and explosions, and who, if they'd been
>>>> dragged
>>>> by the wife/GF to see The Fault In Our Stars, and would rather have a
>>>> root
>>>> canal than sit through that again would hate it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I would hate to try to diagram that sentence. Kind of fractured,
>>> huh? IF that's the style of your book...........AAAGGH.
>>>
>> I must admit, I would find myself tripping over the fractured grammar
>> and thus be unable to get immersed in the storyline. I do tutoring for
>> PhD students and I always get them to break up convoluted sentences like
>> that. I feel that writers must set standards.
>>
>
> You wouldn't believe some of the convoluted sentences I've had to
> rewrite as an editor of manuscripts.

Trust me, I would! ;-) At 1:30am this morning I had the joy of editing
a paragraph that consisted of one single sentence over very many lines.
It would be impossible to read it out aloud without stumbling over it. I
will say that my student is of NESB and, as such, does tend to struggle
with English. She is a lecturer at RMIT Uni and I get to review ALL her
classwork notes, lesson plans, etc before they get used in her classes.
As well, I tutored her in her Masters prior to her commencing her PhD. I
know her style quite well by now but she still persists in writing long
convoluted sentences no matter how much I try to convince her it's a bad
idea. Another item that she has trouble with is indefinite articles...
they seem not to exist in her native language.

> There is, in literature at least, a very fine line that the editor
> mustn't cross when rewriting an author's work.

I have no problem with that concept at all.. but you can, as a writer,
at least stick to correct punctuation. Punctuation has a distinct
purpose and that is to make the document readable and reduce ambiguities.

> It's very hard to maintain the author's voice when you
> are rewriting a sentence to your own "ear".
>
Most of my work has been in the field of technical writing where the
author's "voice" is much less important than the communication of one's
ideas in a clear and unambiguous manner. Regardless, punctuation should
be used correctly, no matter the writing form, in order to let the
reader's mind flow easily over the text and allow them to focus on the
content or, as the case may be, the storyline.

--

Xeno.