[WAYYY OT] Begs the question

[Ed Greshko]

On 03/22/2011 09:17 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Even more OT: since we're talking about English grammar and orthography,
> there are certain errors that tend to crop up on this list (and on
> others of course), to wit:
>
> 1) This looks like an error?
> 2) How do I do this.
>
> Sadly, they are often committed by those who would seem to be native
> English speakers. People, informality is fine and I have no problem with
> it, but a question in written English has to be grammatically structured
> as a question and not a statement (error 1) and *must* conclude with a
> '?' (error 2). Neither of these is optional, e.g. you can't convert a
> statement to a question merely by sticking a '?' on the end. So the
> correct forms of the above would be:
>
> 1) Does this look like an error?
> 2) How do I do this?

When viewed as single sentences what you've said makes sense. 

However, when viewed as part of a larger piece of work the sentence
"This looks like an error?" may indeed be just fine and dandy.   It
would be a shorten form of "This looks like an error to you?" where the
"to you" is implied by the broader context of the larger work.



-- 
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is
not original and the part that is original is not good. -- Samuel
Johnson 葛斯克 愛德華 / 台北市八德路四段

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