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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?

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Memphis Trace wrote:

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.

How exactly does your C S Lewis meet your carved-in-stone hard rules on the semicolon? "Burns compares his mistress to a 'red, red rose'; Wordsworth his to 'a violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye.'"

You imply the verb compares for Wordsworth. In order to do that you call it apparent. In other words you create context out of thin air. Within the context I pulled out of thin air, how come it is not apparent to you that:  A woman is without; her man is nothing?

Charles F Bell wrote:

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.

You failed to respond to my response to such allegations in a previous post as noted here:

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

  It's a yes-or-no question not directed to you whose invective has gone past annoying.  Even if Janet may answer in a way that I would not like, she would answer politely sans ad hominem.

The one who states,

Charles F Bell wrote:

A defender of such junk, presumably knowing better, is a cultural nihilist which is worse than being a dumbass hick.

is being polite?

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Memphis Trace wrote:

Every punctuation rule is set in stone according to archivists and lingweenies.

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.

Harbrace 14c - Use the semicolon only between parts of equal rank, not between a clause and a phrase or between a main clause and subordinate clause.

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.

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"

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

njc wrote:

But this is not  a scientific paper nor an office document; it is an expressive passage in a narrative.  ...

Yes, if  there is any validity to a claim for artistic license in punctuation it is only that fiction requires more of it in different ways than non-fiction. However, [Phrase];[what could be a complete sentence] = A woman without; her man is nothing  always has poor punctuation in fiction or non-fiction.

And what of poetry?  To quote the Pirate King: And what, we ask, is life without a little poetry in it?

What is the actual speaking cadence?  I think you'll find it's best approximated by the comma.

But this is not  a scientific paper nor an office document; it is an expressive passage in a narrative.  Nor do I consider this 'creative punctuation',  it is accurate punctuation, representing the cadences of a particular vocalization.  That choice of vocalization for the narrative might well have been creative, but the punctuation is its literal depiction.

Creative use of punctuation?

http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tena … =f&l=f

Or is it just bad grammar on the bad grandma?

Memphis! I so interpreted your "punctuated" sentence to be about someone who might be transgender. A woman on the outside--Alas, her man is nothing.

Wordplay may be within the reach of one person, but beyond the reach of another.  Horses for courses and licenses for audiences.
Joyce is a troublesome example, not because of his vocabulacrobatics, but because of his politics and the JackHenryAbbot excuses that the literary community made for him.  Before I knew of that, I had marked my copy of The Portable James Joyce (Humanities 101) as "The Unpotable James Joyce."  But if that's your mead, drink freely.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Memphis Trace wrote:

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.

The sentence Vern posted—A woman without; her man is nothing.—was an efficient and elegant summation of the context

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

A woman without; her man is nothing was composed by an inept author offering no artistic merit.

Please broaden my horizons and explain how arbitrarily adding "offering no artistic merit" to your statement changes anything.