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Memphis Trace wrote:

Doses my supplied context render the sentence efficient and elegant, and the punctuation correct; meeting all your carved-in-stone rules?

If it does not, tell me how the verb is is not understood as easily as your verb compares?

Again, I already supplied my argument for "context."  Universally, nothing can be understood by any sentient creature without context. It is the author's duty to set the context, or at least provide the means for the reader to be directed to the context, of the words he puts to paper. Even modernist, absurdist authors understand, if not acknowledge, that.

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Adverbs cannot modify states of being -2-, and I deny that a woman without can be implicitly directed into a state of being in a location such as she was outside, rather only of what she may be outside -- of the building, and such an example is again using the meaning (whether of without or outside (of) as a preposition, and the whole phrase, preposition plus object, is then an adverbial phrase indicating a state of being itself. If the author wishes to express an adverbial phrasing to modify a form of "to be" with no to-be verb and no object for the preposition, he provides no context for the reader and had better ask the reader to make up his own story.

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Memphis Trace wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

You have only an interest in engaging a political/social polemic against the "wrong people" and can't be bothered to actually look up in reference the hard and fast rules that apply to the use of the semicolon and give an example how they may have been ignored in prose by known and accomplished authors in the last century.  See: Harbrace College Handbook chapter 14, for example. To say that those rules only apply to language snobs ("archivists and lingweenies", really whatever that is supposed to mean) is to deny any punctuation rules at all. In artistic license I have only come across one sort bending of the semicolon rules, and that is ...; and ... in Wilde's Dorian Gray, and that is really a bending of the rule that a main clause/sentence not begin with a conjunction.

Cite a single example in literature of Phrase;complete sentence. in which the Phrase also contains either a preposition without object or its homophone/homograph as an adverb used modifying nothing.

Any exception is only apparent: "Burns compares his mistress to a 'red, red rose'; Wordsworth his to 'a violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye.'"  {C.S. Lewis} Either two clauses of comparison are being marked off by a semicolon or compares is implicit after "Wordsworth."

Your and Vern's rudeness and lack of attention to facts on this simple matter of punctuation does not reflect well on the sort of technical discussion, or certainly what ought to be a straightforward exchange, in TNBW forums.

As to being straightforward and polite, I would say you are the rude one in this thread.

Vern took the trouble to repeat how I enter this

Or: A woman without; her man is nothing.
Your first response to the above sentence: "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."
My response: "Really? I seldom deal with the ordinary. Take care. Vern"

Pointing out an a error in punctuation in a thread on punctuation without bringing any sort of personal attack, I pointed out the facts. Vern returned with a snarky remark because evidently he feels the whole thing is just a joke, and humor does not require proper punctuation. I pursued the tangent of the thing from the original post as a "funny," when it is un-funny feminist propaganda, elsewhere, and there being no need to add punctuation to the original unless the obvious meaning is to be changed, and those re-punctuated sentences were both improperly punctuated, and I showed how. It is not possible to have an intelligent discussion with you because at no time did you ever not inject your pathetic diatribes against people you don't like  and irrational excuses to employ poor punctuation such as the excuse you used against my example of the appearance of an improper semicolon in the C.S. Lewis example I provided when it is properly punctuated according to the hard rules on the semicolon. You have yet to cite any example of the use of the semicolon in published literature, that is to say: highly vetted writing, between expressions of unequal rank like A woman without; her man is nothing.

vern wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

You're not admitting you made a mistake with A woman without; her man is nothing, too.

What mistake?

A woman without; a man is nothing. uses a semicolon incorrectly according to a punctuation rule which is set in stone, and ordinary readers unfamiliar with an archaic use of without as an adverb would take that without to be a preposition without an object, and furthermore, even with reading without as an adverb, there is no verb or adjective within that phrase to modify. It is about as gross a violation of simple punctuation rules as there is, and yet you never acknowledged the mistake and even went on a tear against me for pointing this fact out even though there contained at the outset no comment from me about you personally and only about the "punctuated" sentence A woman without a man is nothing. that, in fact, requires no additional punctuation without an effort to change the obvious meaning as is.

Memphis Trace wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

There is no informative or artistic merit in jumbling words together without context, whether provided by standards or intelligibly by an author's talent, likely both, to ascertain meaning.

A written work containing a single word:

what

must be in your opinion worthy of the Nobel Prize in literature because the author does no more than coordinate four letters.

Ah, but there's the rub. Elegance and efficiency arise from the ashes of context.

My first contribution to this discussion was to provide context wherein I met the challenge of showing the example— A woman without; her man is nothing.—was elegant, artistic, fraught with meaning, and powerfully punctuated. The context: If without is an adverb meaning outside, then using the semicolon is power punctuation and the sentence is wonderfully efficient. Within the context I'm thinking, it means: Minnie went somewhere with her girlfriends for a night out; Riley stayed home and can't even find the fixins for a sammich.

As I've said before, "You seem bent on limiting your word usage to situations not requiring context. Pick any word and you can make it ambiguous without context."

As far as a written work containing the single word what being worthy of a Nobel Prize, nothing in my argument remotely suggests that A woman without; her man is nothing. is noteworthy absent context.

Write a novel with the proper context for what to render it's appearance on the page as a denouement. a fully realized thought and not an ambiguity, and it could indeed be worthy of a Nobel Prize. Even if the letters were arranged to spell thaw.

The writer must provide that context, not someone else. The writer will obstruct the way for any context by poor grammatical structure and archaic word choice in the language he writes. A woman without doth return anon signals to the reader an archaic word choice immediately by a clearly choosing archaic words in all. There is no context to A woman without written as a complete sentence which the use of semicolon or full stop requires except that the writer is incompetent. A writer presenting a single word without punctuation, for example, may deliberately create his "work" with no context to be had can call it "artistic," but it is really just junk. A defender of such junk, presumably knowing better, is a cultural nihilist which is worse than being a dumbass hick.

Memphis Trace wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

A semicolon can be used to separate a series of items that are already separated by commas, or it can be used between parts of equal rank.  A woman without is a phrase; her man is nothing is a complete sentence.  A woman without; her man is nothing was composed by an inept author.

in the Oxford English Dictionary, without as an adverb listed as archaic

Literary is one place where creative writers use the language for all it offers.

There is no informative or artistic merit in jumbling words together without context, whether provided by standards or intelligibly by an author's talent, likely both, to ascertain meaning.

A written work containing a single word:

what

must be in your opinion worthy of the Nobel Prize in literature because the author does no more than coordinate four letters.

corra wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Other than possibly leant, what do you suppose that I think needs deciphering?

A great many things, but I was referring to this:

your example inserts from nowhere a whole panoply of external information to decypher

That does make make standard English, whose existence you deny, disappear from everyone else's universe.

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.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Imagine finding context in a tweet.  It is sad.  We will see you later. =  well c u l8r

Celebrities (at least) who probably rarely ever tweet and have their people do that, get caught out saying stupid things but leave off with the excuse: that was taken out of context, and I didn't write that anyway. It could become the excuse for everyone generally not taking responsibility for what they punktuate in 140 characters or less.

The good news is that it looks to be a passing fad. It harks from the initial SMS text messaging arrangement from a cell-phone where the numeric keypad doubled up as alpha keys. Press the number 4 key once for 4, twice for the letter G, three times for the letter H and four presses for the letter I. Similarly the number 6 key is pressed once for 6, twice for M, thrice for N and four time for O... and so on.

Users (especially the young) rapidly became very proficient at typing with both thumbs flashing simultaneously. Naturally that font of resourcefulness, the human mind, looked for shortcuts to this labour in the form of abbreviations. It was an era when text messages cost a fee to send, phone memory buffers were small and long message would need to sent in several sections. Again abbreviation was desirable in order to compress the message into a single 'text' and therefore minimise the fee.

I was split. Whilst I found the bastardisation of the language and the disregard for grammar quite offensive I was amazed at the mind/eye/thumb dexterity of my kids and found myself grudgingly admiring the inventiveness and resourcefulness of these acronym/abbreviation codes.

However, enter the 'Smartphone' and 'tablets' with their large display and QWERTY touch-screen keys and the pre-emptive/predictive text systems (the words are spelled out in full, automatically spell-checked and punctuation is automatically added by the system). With most of the new systems if you type 'l8r' into the phone, an automatic conversion is applied and the word 'later' will appear in the text document.  For the most part, text messaging is either cheaper or 'free' or up to limit included within a contract. Also the size of message is much less an issue with larger sized text massages allowed by the carriers and the phone memory buffers. Nowadays my children often dictate a message to their phone and the voice recognition system creates the (punctuated and spell-checked) text message for them.         

This has led to the Punkuation phenomena fading away. Like morse-code or semaphore, people simply don't need to do it anymore. Some remnants will remain as nostalgia for those who used it, but the actual necessity or incentives to abbreviate have disappeared and thus the drivers for its use.

Added: Oh, and the advent instant video messaging on mobile phones, the likes of Skype and Facetime further diminish the old ways of SMS texting.

Memphis Trace wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

highly archaic, so any efficiency gained made by leaving out words is lost by lack of understanding by vast numbers of English speakers. Also, again ordinarily, the two parts of a semicolon sentence require connection, and a woman being outside and a man being nothing has a weird, unfathomable connection.

Without meaning outside is not archaic, let alone archaic. See definitions 4-10: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/without?s=t  Where do you get your "vast numbers of English speakers" would not understand using without to mean outside? Imposing your limited understanding of the language, can only serve to keep you wallowing in the archives.

How is the woman being outside and the man being nothing, either weird or unfathomable in the context I presented? To wit: Minnie went somewhere with her girlfriends for a night out; Riley stayed home and can't even find the fixins for a sammich.

Memphis Trace

Cite and quote any such like "the woman is without" after the 18th century in which without  is an adverb. Okay, I'll give you one from Dickens: "Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag..."  and we can guess together just how many good readers will not pause to think that actually does not mean the poor guy had no door behind which to stand. It is weird to any good reader and unfathomable to the barely literate --- today's average college student --- and your example inserts from nowhere a whole panoply of external information to decipher "The woman is without, and her man is nothing."

Moreover, one can discern just how archaic, though not obsolete, an English word is by trying to find the equivalent in another language. French, German, Spanish, Russian all translate without as an English adverb the same only as the English word outside but the English preposition exactly as their own : sin la puerta; sans la porte; ohne die Tür --- there being no adverb that is not literally outside in their typical dictionaries. Draußen vor der Tür by Dürrenmatt, for example, cannot be translated as Without the Door which can only be translated into German as Ohne der Tür, not what Dürrenmatt meant.

Memphis Trace wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

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.

If without is an adverb meaning outside,

highly archaic, so any efficiency gained made by leaving out words is lost by lack of understanding by vast numbers of English speakers. Also, again ordinarily, the two parts of a semicolon sentence require connection, and a woman being outside and a man being nothing has a weird, unfathomable connection.

Memphis Trace wrote:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

You could have it both ways and write for dialogue: 'round.  "Round" (meaning it that way) is not standard English even if most Americans do not fully pronounce the "a".  "Round" itself has many meanings enough without adding another one.

My guess is that the non-standard pronunciation of around (round) by eliding the a has been used for so long that it has become accepted and, thus, the ' is no longer needed. Sort of like till has become standard for 'til. Still using the ' before 'round in dialogue would capture a sense of the speaker's dialect.

But, I would use it also in the narrative thoughts of the speaker who spoke 'round in order to lend a conversational quality to the narrative. If there were an enunciator in the speaker's tribe, I'd consider using around in his speech and narrative POV.

Memphis

Cept to-day round ain't good spellin fer around and putting it in narration makes yous look like dumbasses.

My opinion is that till and until or 'til were different words with similar meaning. In Southern U.S. and Scottish (?) till can mean to. Afore he goes till church, he stops at Ma's and eats his biscuits and gravy.

Getting around to it is idiomatic expression and does not depend on the same meanings of around and round used as prepositions. Coming around (or round) the corner.