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Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:01 am
Post subject: English grammar help |
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Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Jeskola303
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Weatherlawyer
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:01 am
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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kristenwaterman@gmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
It isn't a sentence. |
A sentence tells you something. What that statement is, is just a
garbled cryptic statement that is only solvable because you know the
answer.
Who or what is on the pavement?
Who or what are they?
Where exactly was the hurricane?
Obviously the hurricane was not on the television. Or was it?
Hurricanes are hundreds of miles across. Was it a model of a WWII
fighter plane, or what?
Were a group of people standing on the sidewalk outside a shop that
sold TVs?
Or was a blind, Spanish giraffe high on caffein and lemon-balm, peeing
"On the sidewalk" whilst a crowd of barking dogs wearing pink were
appearing "on the television" "watching the news of the hurricane" that
was on display "in a store window" off camera?
If the person reading the description has to make up what he
understands as he goes along, the narrator is in trouble. |
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Don Phillipson
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:25 am
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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Jeskola303 <kristenwaterman@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130721574.332326.77550@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
|
This sentence has no grammatical errors. It could be
rewritten if you needed some special effect, but there
is nothing "wrong with this sentence."
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
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CDB
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 6:38 pm
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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<kristenwaterman@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130721574.332326.77550@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane
on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
|
It isn't grammatically incorrect, but that series of prepositional
phrases could be confusing. It would be easier to read as something
like "All the people on the sidewalk were watching the news about the
hurricane that they could see on the television (set) in a store
window." There are other arrangements, but you get the idea. Honour
demands, or at least suggests, that you make up your own version for
your homework assignment. |
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Django Cat
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 4:19 am
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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kristenwaterman@gmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Jeskola303
|
It's in the commas.... |
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Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 3:44 am
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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Weatherlawyer wrote:
| Quote: | kristenwaterman@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
It isn't a sentence.
A sentence tells you something. What that statement is, is just a
garbled cryptic statement that is only solvable because you know the
answer.
Who or what is on the pavement?
Who or what are they?
Where exactly was the hurricane?
Obviously the hurricane was not on the television. Or was it?
Hurricanes are hundreds of miles across. Was it a model of a WWII
fighter plane, or what?
Were a group of people standing on the sidewalk outside a shop that
sold TVs?
Or was a blind, Spanish giraffe high on caffein and lemon-balm, peeing
"On the sidewalk" whilst a crowd of barking dogs wearing pink were
appearing "on the television" "watching the news of the hurricane" that
was on display "in a store window" off camera?
If the person reading the description has to make up what he
understands as he goes along, the narrator is in trouble.
|
YOU are wrong. It is a sentence. Moreover, whether it is cryptic or
not depends on the context. Many sentences if viewed as "stand alone"
constructs are not clear. That, however, does not necessarily mean they
are defective as pieces of communication. If the meaning is clear to
the target audience in the context of the article, etc. the sentence
has served its purpose as far as communication is concerned, although
there may be other faults. The problem with the quoted passage is that
it is stylistically clumsy. A better way of saying it would be:
"Everyone on the sidewalk was watching the news about the hurricane on
a television in a store window".
Even this, however, is clumsy. It would be better to break completely
with the "tyranny" of the origninal sentence and be a bit more daring,
e.g.:
"A crowd of people were standing on the sidewalk, anxiously watching
the latest news about the hurricane on a television in a store window."
By the way, as a Brit, I would say "pavement" instead of "sidewalk",
but that's just a question of which side of the pond you're on!
Roger |
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Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 8:05 am
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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kristenwaterman@gmail.com wrote:
| Quote: | Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Jeskola303
|
What the others, (Roger, in particular), have suggested is good advice.
The use of "on" in two different senses makes the sentence untidy, and
the use of multiple locations (in a store window; on the sidewalk)
makes it worse.
There's just too much to process, and you end up having a kind of
Russian-doll effect. e.g. The flea on the chair next to the bed in the
house on the corner of the street jumped onto the carpet in a rage
about the flea on the chair ... etc ...
Is "the sidewalk" really necessary? And althought the idiomatic "on
television is fair enough, isn't the central idea distribtuion of news
via the medium of TV in store windows? e.g.
News of the hurricane was brought to them via televisions in store
windows.
or, perhaps, if it's really about the human drama and its effect on the
general public ...
They stood transfixed at store windows, as the latest news about the
hurricane flickered on TV screens.
TOF |
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Weatherlawyer
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 12:04 am
Post subject: Re: English grammar help |
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rogertidy@yahoo.com wrote:
| Quote: | Weatherlawyer wrote:
kristenwaterman@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, I'm doing my homework and I'm stuck on finding what's wrong with
this sentence and I just can't figure it out:
"On the sidewalk, they were all watching the news of the hurricane on
the television in a store window."
Can anyone help?
It isn't a sentence.
A sentence tells you something. What that statement is, is just a
garbled cryptic statement that is only solvable because you know the
answer.
Who or what is on the pavement?
Who or what are they?
Where exactly was the hurricane?
Obviously the hurricane was not on the television. Or was it?
Hurricanes are hundreds of miles across. Was it a model of a WWII
fighter plane, or what?
Were a group of people standing on the sidewalk outside a shop that
sold TVs?
Or was a blind, Spanish giraffe high on caffein and lemon-balm, peeing
"On the sidewalk" whilst a crowd of barking dogs wearing pink were
appearing "on the television" "watching the news of the hurricane" that
was on display "in a store window" off camera?
If the person reading the description has to make up what he
understands as he goes along, the narrator is in trouble.
YOU are wrong. It is a sentence. Moreover, whether it is cryptic or
not depends on the context. Many sentences if viewed as "stand alone"
constructs are not clear. That, however, does not necessarily mean they
are defective as pieces of communication. If the meaning is clear to
the target audience in the context of the article, etc. the sentence
has served its purpose as far as communication is concerned, although
there may be other faults. The problem with the quoted passage is that
it is stylistically clumsy. A better way of saying it would be:
"Everyone on the sidewalk was watching the news about the hurricane on
a television in a store window".
Even this, however, is clumsy. It would be better to break completely
with the "tyranny" of the origninal sentence and be a bit more daring,
e.g.:
"A crowd of people were standing on the sidewalk, anxiously watching
the latest news about the hurricane on a television in a store window."
By the way, as a Brit, I would say "pavement" instead of "sidewalk",
but that's just a question of which side of the pond you're on!
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Oi!
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