Joel Wilcox wrote:
> .........
> Seriously, I like your more "graceful" rendering. Anything to avoid the
> proliferation of "whiches" and "thats", though I have never taken up dangling
> prepositions as a cause.
They aren't a big issue with me. I do think they often sound awkward.
When writing for a public audience, I prefer to avoid them, as there is
a minority of readers who will fixate on usage issues and thus manage to
avoid hearing what one is saying at all.
I am of the opinion that there is almost always a more graceful way of
saying the same thing that will avoid the whole issue without the icky ,
often convoluted usage of "which" and "that".
In the above sentence, should it be "use" or "usage"? In the immediate
sense, I'm talking about how one uses "which" and "that", but in the
larger context, I'm talking about English grammatic usage.
> Shakespeare used them, although I never saw one in the King James Bible,
> including the parts gentle
> Will himself wrote (lame joke). Let someone better "We are such stuff as
> dreams are made on" if he can.
>
It seems to me that poetic usages are generally freer than prose. Still,
had he written it something like this, would the meaning or impact have
been different?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. Of such stuff as dreams,
Full are we made; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Read the whole thing aloud, I pray thee. Like all Shakespeare, you
can't tell how it works any other way.)
A. Shameless Moose
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