Charles_F_Bell wrote:If you go back further to the progenitor of this thread, you can conclude that I opine that if James Joyce writes:
A woman without; her man is nothing.
he is an inept writer in both standard and non-standard English.
As much as I would like to take credit as the “progenitor” of this thread, I did not give birth to it, nor did I create it, originate it, found it, or build, invent, or pioneer it. What I did do was offer a humorous alternative to the humorous differences presented as gender specific choices of punctuation.
Now for someone who can’t even look back to the beginning and clearly see who started this thread, it seems rather preposterous for them to declare anything inept, kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. Going back to my first post within this thread:
In response to the link provided by Janet Taylor-Perry (the progenitor/originator), I wrote “Or: A woman without; her man is nothing.
You responded with: “Ordinarily the two parts of semicolon phrasing can stand alone, and the above fails. The first half ends in a preposition, has no verb, and does not make sense.”
And I responded with: “Really? I seldom deal with the ordinary.”
Since you didn’t respond again, I assumed you must have figured out that if you don’t get all bent out of shape over some technical punctuation issues which are irrelevant in creative writing since the “ordinary” use can be thrown out the window, then the sentence does indeed offer something within the context of the link provided. Who wants to strive for ordinary? Certainly not me.
At any rate since you seem to still be having trouble coming up with any sensible interpretation of “without” in the phrase, “A woman without” I shall endeavor to explain in a way you might appreciate (or not).
In the phrase under consideration, the word “without” takes on the connotation that the woman is literally doing without. Doing without what, you ask. Well, since music sometimes makes things easier to understand and remember, let me refer to the lyrics of a marvelous 60s song: I can’t get no SATISFACTION. So as not to run afoul of the censors, I am going to assume you do indeed know what that refers to and that though the song was from a male perspective, I do believe we can extrapolate to the female gender without too big a stretch.
So, now, if you are still following me here, we continue on to the second phrase of “her man is nothing." Now considering that we have established that the woman is indeed “without” in the sense that she ain’t getting none – I hope the use of double negatives here and within the lyrics doesn’t throw you for a technical hissy loop – we could postulate that the man is either lacking in size or performance or both.
Now, I’m sure you can probably come up with other scenarios for alternate meanings of the poor woman without, but hopefully this will at least put you on track – no, maybe it would be more appropriate to say get you off the track of such restrictive thinking about the proper use of punctuation. At any rate, I felt I should at least try to save you from yourself as well as save some other weak-minded soul from falling for such asinine rigidity of thinking regarding punctuation or any other aspect of constantly evolving language. May your commas, semi-colons, etc, keep you warm at night should you befall the plight of the woman without. Take care. Vern
She didn't say anything above about telling other people to remove words from their writing. She said that she is leery of advising people to auto-delete words from their manuscripts, as this often changes the intended meaning. I can't say I disagree with her.
