"Otherwise" and "Turnover"

Hello again oristar,

Ok, otherwise normally means differently, or opting for another choice. The usage in this sentence is a bit odd. It seems to mean and so on. ...calls for a general strike and everything else had limited impact... It's a pretty ugly sentence, IMO.

Turnover in this case represents the future plans for the United States to end its military and political control of Iraq and hand over the power to an Iraqi run government. turnover = rotate

Hi Ceili,

So the causality in (1) is like this:

Why the warnings of terror attacks and anonymous calls for a general strike etc had limited impact across Iraq is because U.S. authorities moved to counter an intensifying insurgency.

Am I on the right track?
TY.

I usually read "otherwise" as more like "other than that..." or "aside from..." So the meaning in that sentence is something like,

"Other than nervous parents keeping their children home, the impact of anonymous calls for a strike was limited."

Other examples of "otherwise":

"Half of my candy was stolen, but otherwise, it was a pretty good day."

"She got some chocolate on her dress, but otherwise she managed to stay pretty clean."

Hi oristarA. I agree with sozobe (as usual) about otherwise... and ceili is right in saying that turnover represents plans to turn responsibility and authority over to the Iraqis; that is, to give them the responsibility and authority that the US-led coalition has been holding over their affairs...

Hi sozobe and Wy,

I've gotten a clear picture of "turnover" in the context; regarding "otherwise", I didn't get it very clearly. If I adopted your opinion, yes, in logic, (1) seems fine, but it looks somewhat weird to put "otherwise" in that "remote" place. And if I adopted Ceili's idea, the sentence looks ugly...

So I have no idea to deal with this situation for the time being... Anyways, thanks.

Oristar, if I may suggest:
Don't try to learn English or English usage from American news reports: theye are generally very poor in this regard.

(This is not a UK vs. USA matter; just my opinion about this kind of report. There is plenty of bad English written in the UK and elsewhere.)

BTW the sentence from AP with "otherwise" in it is perfectly all right, and Sozobe's explanation of "otherwise" is perfect IMHO. In My Humble Opinion.

I'll break that AP sentence up into bits, which might make the meaning clearer:

Warnings of terror attacks
and anonymous calls for a general strike
caused nervous Baghdad parents to keep their children home from school on Saturday
but otherwise
had limited impact across Iraq....


so "otherwise" means "apart from that (that I have just mentioned)"

Thank you McTag.

If I put English language masterpieces in first positon to learn it, I might feel quite tired -- because news are more active and attractive than novels or works (Nevertheless, it is inevitable to delve into those masterpieces). May I ask you which newspapers online in UK/US etc. are always with good writting skills while their news sources are always reliable (Reuters/AP's news are often with high reliability)?

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/
The BBC
The Independent
The Times
The Telegraph

All London-based, of course, but none the worse for that and varied from left-leaning to right-leaning

If you want other web-published stuff to read, which is more general in nature, I like this US website, Arts and Letters Daily:

http://www.aldaily.com/

Plenty of material there.

Hi McTag,

I've created a folder, which is named "News Writting Skills", in My Favorite and put all the links that you offered into it.

I wish I had your IT skills; I couldn't create a folder to save myself!

Ah, I've been flattered. Do you mind letting me introduce a bit about it?

(Cos my IE version is not in English language. So in my intro the terms might be not as the same as the terms in English-version IE, but largely it can be understood by you, I supposed.)

(1) If you want to add the link http://www.guardian.co.uk/ into a folder named McTag's Coffee, click the link to open the link.
(2) And then click "My Favorite" menu on menu bar of your IE ("My Favorite" button is between "View" and "Tool", it might be called "Add", I think you know what I mean), choose "Add to My Favorite", then a dialog box pops up.)
(3) On the right of the dialog box, there is four buttons (if you find out there is just 3 buttons there, skip to step (4)below), one of them is "Create A New Folder". Click this button, another dialog box pops up; type "McTag's Coffee" into that "Folder name" textbox, and then click OK button. You'll have seen that the "McTag's Coffee" folder has been automatically added to "My Favorite"; choose "McTag's Coffee" folder in the dialog box of "Add to My Favorite", click "Create It To" button, the link "http://www.guardian.co.uk/" has been added to the folder "McTag's Coffee". Now all are Okay.
(4)The problem that you may encounter is: in step (3), you perhaps find out there is just 3 buttons on the dialog box that pops up. If so, click "Create It To" button, then the fourth button "Create A New Folder" occurs -- now turn to step (3).

Hope this helps.

Thank you, OristarA, for your trouble.

I have two computers, one at home and one at work (which is the same for most folk I suppose, those who have a desk job) and the home one is only used for email. I have no printer, so I only do the simplest things on it. At work, I ask somebody younger to help me! Which is the easy way out, I suppose, but it means I don't learn much about IT.

Just as a matter of interest, OristarA, what is your native language? Mine is English, and I know a little German and a very little French.