Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!news.musoftware.de!wum.musoftware.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Neil Cerutti Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: Python is readable Date: 19 Mar 2012 12:53:23 GMT Organization: Norwich University Lines: 44 Message-ID: <9sooi3F682U1@mid.individual.net> References: <4f612b19$0$1379$4fafbaef@reader2.news.tin.it> <8e72d74f-c844-4de3-8a37-f6b1fdc2291f@y27g2000yqy.googlegroups.com> <50e9ceec-40f1-4ead-b2b6-87328b30d084@ow8g2000pbc.googlegroups.com> <4f61c828$0$1390$4fafbaef@reader2.news.tin.it> <4f61d728$0$1375$4fafbaef@reader2.news.tin.it> <4f61fd0a$0$1389$4fafbaef@reader2.news.tin.it> <4f6280a0$0$29981$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <4f6333ca$0$1392$4fafbaef@reader1.news.tin.it> <4f633a1a$0$29981$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <9sgsb1FsbpU1@mid.individual.net> <9sojehFi09U2@mid.individual.net> <4f671db2$0$29981$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net M9nmruVtsPTlhVcAmcJdYAxb+IqoldIEWCO66XzDUsRcP5x52P Cancel-Lock: sha1:ZUcSlUoHMRvoFW6fiMZSVD7EO3c= User-Agent: slrn/0.9.9p1/mm/ao (Win32) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:21893 On 2012-03-19, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:26:10 +0000, Neil Cerutti wrote: > [...] >>> *A major style guide for general American writing and >>> publication: used by some as the 'Bible'. >> >> Thanks for the discussion and corrections. My apologies to >> Steven for pushing my apparnetly overly narrow view. There are >> plenty of valid use cases for a colon without an independent >> clause. > > No apology necessary, I like a good argument :) > > http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/sketch.htm > > One observation that amuses me though... it seems to me that > the widespread practice of people writing colons following > sentence fragments isn't sufficient to convince you that this > is grammatical, but a self- declared authority prescribing it > as allowed is. That makes you a grammar prescriptivist :) There are certain uses of colon that are worse than others, in my mind. It's a matter of taste, and that's going to be impossible to find references for. My birthday cake had three kinds of frosting: chocolate, vanilla and raspberry. I checked only one reference before diving in (www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/), but it's a guide that concentrates on presenting yourself well through widely acceptable grammar. It's not an exhaustive taxonomy of all valid usages. So I looked in the wrong place. I still think sentence fragments before a colon introducing a list often looks bad, and may be taken for an error. But it doesn't always look bad, and I didn't think about it enough. > We're-all-a-little-bit-prescriptivists-when-it-comes-to-grammar-ly y'rs, Yep: my clever usage is another's abomination. -- Neil Cerutti