Europe and America are two continents separated by a common language: e-mail English (or Mailglish).
Excerpts from the Bill Gates manual of style: 1) Thou shalt not begin a sentence with "But" lest the anti-porn-spam autocleaner randomly deletes all your messages. 2) Thou shalt not begin a sentence with "And" lest the Outlook perfect grammarian rewrites it as "But, on the other hand", then proceed to delete all your messages in view of 1 above 3) Generally speaking, thou shalt not begin a sentence with "On the other hand" unless you can verify that you do own at least one hand before you can use the other. 4) If thou happens to be a politician, keep your sentences under the 5 words limit, the first one of which must be either "And", "But", or "On the other hand", in which case you can only use one more word, but that should be enough for the full extent of your strategery. A definition of the Universe: a vicious virus that prevents the Windows operating system from functioning properly. And, all jokes aside, I think Jacob Heringman recorded a Bakfark CD - if I recall called the Black Cow. But I can be wrong. On the other hand... Alain PS: How about Law French as an itnernational language At 06:26 PM 9/22/2004, Vance Wood wrote: >To all interested: > >Grammar aside, I think some are missing the point. I work with a Polish >emigrant who is trying his best to improve his English. He is always happy >when someone points out something that is not quite right. I could be wrong >but I think that was the intent offered and not meant as criticism or >ridicule. I wish I knew enough of another language that some would offer >help in improving my usage of it. I admire anyone who can learn English as >a second or third language, I have trouble with it as my native language. >But again the old Proverb that no good deed goes unpunished seems to be in >effect here. > >VW >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Stewart McCoy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 1:24 PM >Subject: Vihuela vs guitar > > > > Dear Rainer, > > > > Philip Sidney is not the only writer to begin sentences with a > > conjunction. I have just picked up the first book I could find by > > Goethe, and immediately spotted a sentence beginning with "Und" > > (_Die Leiden des Jungen Werther_, May 26th): "Und da käme ein > > Philister". Next I opened my collected Shakespeare at random, and > > found, "But I'd say he had not" (_The Winter's Tale_, Act 2, Scene > > 1). Many verses in the Bible start with "And it came to pass". The > > world is full of sentences beginning with conjunctions, often from > > very eminent writers, but that still doesn't make it grammatically > > correct. > > > > Only too well aware of the discrepancy between theory and practice, > > I confess I had difficulty deciding how best to give the grammatical > > rule, while at the same time accepting that the rule is often > > broken. After many attempts I came up with "One should not normally > > begin a sentence with "But", which seemed the best way round it. > > > > Just for the record, I never begin sentences with "And" or "But". An > > editor once changed something I had written to include a sentence > > beginning with "And", and published it without telling me what he'd > > done. I nearly blew a fuse. :-) > > > > Best wishes, > > > > Stewart. > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Spring, aus dem, Rainer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 9:50 AM > > Subject: RE: Vihuela vs guitar > > > > > > > > > > Dear Stewart, > > > > > > > > > > > 1) One should not normally begin a sentence with "But", since > > "but" > > > > is a word used to co-ordinate two parts of a sentence. > > > > > > Have a look at Sidney's Arcadia :) > > > > > > Best wishes, > > > > > > Rainer aus dem Spring > > > > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > > > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
