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Originally Posted by Karen
Weetabix, I have looked over the sentences you wrote in e-prime and you have made an excellent attempt at replacing standard English for e-prime. However having said that, please allow me to give you some grammar rules in English. #6 What held you up, ends in a preposition. Never end a sentence in a preposition. You can revise this sentence by saying, Why did you get delayed?
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I have to admit I know the grammatical rules you've alluded to. I choose to break some of them. I figure that English, deriving grammatically from German, can use some of their conventions, and one can correctly end a sentence with a preposition in German (
Wo gehen Sie hin?) I kind of side with Poe in the opinion that since many of the English grammars derived from Latin that some of the long-held rules don't really apply because our word structure differs from theirs.
Can't split infinitives? Surely, you can't in Latin where one word contains their infinitive, but I like (with Captain Kirk) to boldly go where no man has gone before. I generally try to avoid it because it often sounds clumsy, but I don't always. Sometimes you can achieve greater clarity of communication with a split infinitive than without.
Also, "Why did you get delayed?" implies getting delayed
by something, so I'd have an understood passive voice there. I think I'd prefer, "What delayed you?"
As to punctuation rules
: always separate independent clauses joined with a conjunction by a comma. In your first sentence in the quote above, you should have a comma after "e-prime."
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In sentence #11, if you start a sentence in the past tense, do not change tenses in the middle of the sentence. You statement would correctly read, The Colts lost and the salty drops fell like rain from his clouded brow.
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I, too, applaud and encourage parallel construction. I intended to type it as you corrected it. Sorry for the typo.
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#15 you have written an incomplete sentence, so_____________?
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"Why do the firemen cluster around that cat so?" By the "so" I meant it in the sense of "in the condition or manner expressed or indicated" rather than in the sense of "because of the reason given" so nothing followed.
Latin for "Time flies!" I amused myself with that translation of the original, "I
am getting late," though I apparently didn't amuse you. I'll try to do better in future.
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#25, the sentence would read better if you put the date at the beginning.
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"Tomorrow will you attend?" sounds more clumsy to me. If I read your formula correctly "Date + Subject + Verb + what, where, why, how, when," my
tomorrow expressed the ultimate
when rather than the date of the action.
I'd think, by your formula, if I meant to insert the date of the specific action of the sentence and to recast the question itself, my sentence would read:
"Today, I ask you: you will attend tomorrow?"
I believe your formula applies more correctly to indicative sentences than to interrogatives.