On Tuesday 22 March 2011 03:37:15 Joe Zeff wrote: > On 03/21/2011 05:49 PM, Tom Horsley wrote: > > Apparently Nero Wolfe is willing to make contact with > > the expression "begs the question" :-). > > If you read it carefully, you'll see that he's not misusing it; he's > pointing out that whoever Whipple is referring to as "they" are assuming > that "it has a basis" without evidence. If he were misusing it, he'd > have said, "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?" Now you've got me curious about this. :-) If I understand correctly, you say that the original quote (that Tom Horsly gave) "That begs the question. I'll try again. Why do they think it has a basis?" is correct usage, while "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?" is incorrect. If I assume that the "I'll try again." sentence in the middle is irrelevant in this context, the only difference I see is comma vs. period. So, all in all, are you actually complaining about punctuation usage? As English is not my native language, I tend to understand the meaning more from the context than from the syntax, so pardon my ignorance in this. Can you explain why is the period-sentence correct while the comma-sentence is incorrect? The way I see it, both sentences convey the same meaning, and I don't understand why the usage of comma over a period in this case makes the statement wrong. This may be some subtlety of English that I am not aware of, so I'd be grateful for an explanation. :-) Best, :-) Marko -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
