braveowl
Reptile Researcher
Memento Mori to all lads lasses and all other sorts of peevish people
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Post by braveowl on May 9, 2015 10:21:52 GMT -5
In the book File under: 13 Suspicious Incidents on page 22, third paragraph it states, and I quote "Neither of us was fond of the woman who ran Partial Foods, but lots of people nobody is fond of having (have) sick cats." Does anyone else think there should be a Like in that sentence.
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Post by gliquey on May 9, 2015 10:35:10 GMT -5
My copy reads "...but lots of people nobody is fond of have sick cats" (emphasis added).
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braveowl
Reptile Researcher
Memento Mori to all lads lasses and all other sorts of peevish people
Posts: 43
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Post by braveowl on May 9, 2015 10:42:02 GMT -5
oh sorry your right I changed that word's tense......but that just makes it make less sense
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E.F.
Reptile Researcher
Destructively Literary
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Post by E.F. on May 9, 2015 11:39:03 GMT -5
I was really confused by that sentence as well, but I think I've since made sense of it. I think of it as "...lots of people [whom] nobody is fond of have sick cats." If this makes sense to anyone else
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Post by bandit on May 9, 2015 13:00:50 GMT -5
I read this out loud to my mom when it came out, and I distinctly remember being utterly boggled by that sentence. Thank you, E.F., for saving the day a year later.
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Post by gliquey on May 9, 2015 13:38:52 GMT -5
I remember struggling with the sentence too, but it does make sense. "...but lots of [people nobody is fond of] have sick cats" helped me to understand the meaning.
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braveowl
Reptile Researcher
Memento Mori to all lads lasses and all other sorts of peevish people
Posts: 43
Likes: 9
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Post by braveowl on May 9, 2015 13:40:54 GMT -5
That intrepretation makes sense, I wonder if a newer print of the book would have been corrected....or mabye nobody else noticed.........Editors have failed this book
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VicePresidentOfOrphanAffairs
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Tried typing "letmein" to the VFD, how sweet would it have been if that was the password?
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Post by VicePresidentOfOrphanAffairs on May 9, 2015 14:58:45 GMT -5
I interpreted it as 'People who are generally unpleasant are the owners of sick cats' After reading it like 4 times, because I was also confused
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on May 10, 2015 2:34:11 GMT -5
I don;t find this confusing. But i'm the person who is always confused. ....this is confusing.
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on May 10, 2015 13:50:30 GMT -5
I suppose I'd recall it if I'd been in doubt about the sentence when first reading it - still, I didn't understand it just now until reading E.F.'s explanation.
That being said, I think nothing should be changed about it. Uncommonly sown-together sentences that are nevertheless grammatically correct are only healthy to be presented with once in a while.
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braveowl
Reptile Researcher
Memento Mori to all lads lasses and all other sorts of peevish people
Posts: 43
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Post by braveowl on May 10, 2015 14:05:20 GMT -5
I suppose you are correct it is healthy to see a mistake once in a blue moon
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Post by Dante on May 11, 2015 5:05:17 GMT -5
There's nothing incorrect about it. If E.F. hadn't proposed a revision that made things clearer to the rest of you, I honestly wouldn't have understood what you found confusing about it. I'm still not sure that I do.
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braveowl
Reptile Researcher
Memento Mori to all lads lasses and all other sorts of peevish people
Posts: 43
Likes: 9
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Post by braveowl on May 14, 2015 5:21:43 GMT -5
Well maybe we all don't have the same gift
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Post by Dante on May 14, 2015 6:55:59 GMT -5
To be clear, I didn't mean that abrasively. I genuinely would have struggled to explain, so I'm glad E.F. stepped in to clarify. To clarify again, where in the quoted sentence did you suspect a "like" might have fitted?
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Post by gliquey on May 14, 2015 11:00:19 GMT -5
"Neither of us was fond of the woman who ran Partial Foods, but lots of people nobody is fond of like having sick cats." is a functional sentence, albeit with a different meaning to what we seem to have concluded Handler meant, and I assume it's what braveowl thought the sentence was supposed to say. I could be wrong, though.
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