On 1/9/2013 17:12 Mark Miesfeld said: > On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Chip Davis <c...@aviatrexx.com > <mailto:c...@aviatrexx.com>> wrote: > > On 1/9/2013 14:27 Staffan Tylen said: > > Aah, it was that simple, don't know why it didn't make sense to > me :( > > > > That is because the sentence has a "misplaced modifier", a chronic > condition in contemporary English. And when it comes to clarity, > there are few more insidious traps than the "only" adverb in the wrong > place. > > In this case, the sentence should read: > > /The list box sends the DBLCLICK, SELCHANGE, and SELCANCEL event > notifications only when it has the NOTIFY style./ > > > > That's great Chip! Much better. Now if I could only get you > busy writing the ooDialog doc, I'd be in heaven. ;-) > > Or should that be, if only I could get you busy writing the ooDialog doc?
:-) And thank you for not taking umbrage at my rant, Mark. Sad to say, the intersection of computer geeks and grammarians seems to be a very small set. While the issue is pervasive, the vast majority of grammatical offenses are benign: the reader figures out what was meant by the context. (I stopped ranting about "I could care less" years ago.) But there are places where precision is required (contracts, insurance policies, instruction manuals, prescriptions, and legislation come to mind) and our vernacular is simply not sufficient. The insidious thing is that one can misplace an "only" and it will be grammatically correct; a "grammar checker" won't flag it. The meaning of the sentence however, can change dramatically. -Prof. Henry Higgins- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS, MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122712 _______________________________________________ Oorexx-users mailing list Oorexx-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-users
