@JTT,
Quote:After just collapsing three of your petulant and silly posts on the "king's English" thread, JTT
JTT wrote:Why not just answer them, Merry?
You were an editor/reporter for a newspaper, were you not?
[Note how I included the "past conditional" there?]
Yeah; I did too, J.
Arguably, it is folly to argue with a crazy man . . . but what the hell.
U have 2 sentences there, J; thay r otherwise known as a "run on sentence".
That is
not bad enuf. The first part of your run on sentence
contradicts the last part of it. The first part of it (up to your comma) is
affirmative.
The last part is a question cast in the
negative.
Crafting a sentence that way only creates
unnecessary confusion.
If the reply is rendered "yes" or "no"
it remains unknown whether the answer is rendered
to
the first part of the run on sentence
or to
the end of it.
There can be severe consequences riding on the answer,
including matters of life and death.
Years ago, an attorney told me of a murder case in whose trial
he participated. The only witness was asked something
approximately along the lines of:
"Sir, did u not see the defendant crush the decedent's head with a hammer?"
Witness says: "yes." After conviction, and after loss of the witness,
the case was appealed, arguing that the only witness had attested
that he had not seen defendant crush decedent's head with a hammer.
Appellate court reversed.
Conviction vacated; (talk about getting away with murder).
Accordingly, another trial judge (fairly well known to me)
enacted rules of court whereby attorneys were prohibited
from asking "more than 1 question at a time" in his court,
and were prohibited from asking any questions cast in the negative.
David
