Okay, forgive my spamming in this thread but this one is making my brain hurt (I think I'm usually very good at grammar, scored a perfect on my English ACT way back when, etc., so this is really bugging me).

Stripping away my other problems with the sentence and reformatting it to my liking, I would contend that these two sentences are both grammatically correct and have a different meaning:

1) Anything translated from Mandarin has obscurity.
2) Anything translated from, say, Mandarin, has obscurity.

Similarly I think that the following two sentences are both grammatically correct and have the same meaning:

3) She never shouted like Miss Lucy did when she got mad at you.
4) She never shouted like, say, Miss Lucy did when she got mad at you.

Obviously the comma structure is different between #2 and #4 when logically it seems like it shouldn't be, so if I'm wrong I would love to have someone show me why (or at least tell me definitively from a good authoritative position).

The reason I feel compelled to place a comma after "Mandarin" in #2 is because, I think, I feel that the interjection of "say" acts as an implied "for example," which would be inserted after "Mandarin" to form:

5) Anything translated from Mandarin, for example, has obscurity.

I don't know if that's an actual grammar rule, though, or just my brain putting the pause in there when it shouldn't.

The difference between 1&2 vs. 3&4 is, to me, that 3&4 is already comparative, so the addition of "say" doesn't really change the meaning; it's redundant. So my brain doesn't insert the implied "for example" and thus doesn't require the pause or the comma.

Is my brain getting this wrong, or am I somehow subconsciously applying some subtle rule of grammar?

I'd say it's because the example situation is the time when Miss Lucy got mad and shouted at you. So that needs to be one clause without any separation. If you separate it then the pronoun 'she' in that clause modifies the opening clause 'she never shouted', and would mean something like, 'she never shouted when she got mad at you, like Miss Lucy did'.

3 and 4 are slightly different because, in 3, only one comparative situation is referenced. In 4, it is implied that there could be other comparative situations.

If you didn't put a comma after Manderin, you would be translating from 'Mandarin has obscurity', which makes no sense. You need to separate Mandarin to make it clear that you are translating from something called Mandarin.

Nice post. To add context, the article is about translating Japanese literature into English. Keene was saying readers of translated literature don't want there to be ambiguity, usually, so he advises translators as a general rule to state things plainly (even if the original work intended to convey some ambiguity).

Larger excerpt:

I absolutely (irrationally) hate the use of an apostrophe when referring to a decade e.g. 1970's.

Was very surprised to see it used frequently in Caro's biography of Robert Moses. Is it in fact acceptable?

In this month's Bluff magazine:

One could use the same logic to argue "for example" doesn't work in the first of the following sentences:

"Any obscurity in a work translated from the Chinese, for example, is laid to the workings of the ..."

"Any obscurity in a work translated from the Chinese is laid to the workings of the ..."

Removing "for example" changes the sentence's basic meaning (going by your definition of "basic meaning")--as removing "say" in the first set of sentences does--but both the sentence as a whole and "for example" being parenthetically offset are correct.

I think you and RT have different definitions of "basic meaning"; his definition is akin to "[general / loose] meaning" and yours to "precise meaning"; so this is as much a semantics dispute as anything.

I agree with you that the sentence, as originally structured, has many problems.

They aren't needed, but many style guides advocate their use; they aren't "incorrect."

But most recent style guides suggest not using them.

They are mandatory only when indicating pluralization of single letters (e.g., "t's and v's").

Maybe it's "Things to do in Vegas when your busto Mexican roommate runs off with all the cash."

I was proud that the first two responses to the "Remix's and Mashup's" thread was a comment about the poor use of punctuation. Well done, people.

I like them. Looks wrong to me when I don't see an apostrophe in that situation. Swan's 'Practical English Usage' says they're fine.

Gonna be super nitty here, right quick.

First, I've wondered whether to use "logic" or (I dunno) "reasoning" in this spot. I usually go with "reasoning".

Second:

"Logic" is correct, as per definition 2b here. "Reasoning" is fine, too.

Your confusion might stem from treating "incorrect" and the sentence immediately before it (which is part of my reply to Jinster's post) and "one could use the same logic to ... basic meaning ..." (which is part of my reply to Shaffer's post) as one seamless whole.

That's one of the only two things I can assume you're doing with this particular ellipsis-shortened quotation, given both the way you formatted it and that you didn't say anything else. (Now I'm confused. )

The other thing I can assume you're doing is wondering whether or not the use of those quotation marks was correct.

In the first case, "your definition of 'basic meaning'" is an elliptical form of "your definition of [the phrase] 'basic meaning,'" and quotation marks are correct when one is referring to a word or phrase as being a word or a phrase. The quote marks around "incorrect" are the more gratuitous of the pair you drew attention to. They're fine because I meant to use "incorrect" in an ironic, not-quite-itself sort of way.

Thanks for clarifying the logic/reasoning issue. Never mind about the rest of it.

Something that really bothers me, and I'd like to know your opinion on it.

'Obligated' - disgustingly horrible word imo. I hate it.

Consensus?

I don't think so. Grammar book says No. And so does this page.

It looks way better to say 1970s and '70s than 1970's. I disagree with Swan there. People who write 1970's and CD's put me on tilt, kind of.


Jesus Christ. Majorly tilting.

Why?