Some of these sentences are only difficult to understand because they lack punctuation. If you know how to punctuate, your communication becomes much clearer.
And if you don’t know how to punctuate, may I recommend my book The Well-Presented Manuscript: Just What You Need to Know to Make Your Fiction Look Professional?
Via Laura Gibbs.
Originally shared by World Economic Forum
“Most of these sentences were invented by psycholinguists to break the human mind.” Can you work them out?
Excellent examples in there of why “that” isn’t the bugbear some people have been taught it is. It’s a very helpful, useful relative pronoun.
Karen Conlin The disappearance of that from speech and now, more and more frequently, from writing is occasioning a comma crisis too: do we include a comma for the missing “that” … or not? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. 🙂
I’d think mostly no, because “that” is (in AmE, anyway) a restrictive pronoun and doesn’t take a comma in that position. The statement “a comma for the missing ‘that’” confuses me.
Bring me the red cloak that is behind the door.
(There are presumably several red cloaks, but the one I want is the one you’ll find behind the door. Not the one that is draped over the rocking chair, or the one that is hanging in the closet. The one that’s behind the door. [And now, note that I could just as correctly leave “that” out of those statements, and the meaning is unchanged. The one behind the door = the one that is behind the door])
Bring me the red cloak, which is behind the door.
(There’s only one, and it happens to be behind the door. I’m being nice and telling you where to look.)
That’s what I know about it. Where would you put a comma, Laura Gibbs? I’m honestly confused by your statement.
Karen Conlin Not the relative pronoun “that” … the subordinating “that” like in the example in the article which confused the computer:
I convinced her children are noisy.
I convinced her (that) children are noisy.
Many of my students would put a comma there:
I convinced her, children are noisy.
(I would not put a comma there, but I totally understand the temptation.)
Likewise, my students regularly want to put a comma in a so…that construction where the subordinating “that” has dropped out:
The pizza was so hot, we burnt our tongues.
The pizza was so hot (that) we burnt our tongues.
Commas in place of elisions can be really helpful (especially for the poor computer ha ha), but I usually avoid them. My students embrace them. 🙂
Ah. Not all the examples were subordinating “that” so I was confused.
And I would never put a comma in place of one, anyway. So yes, confused.
Less so, now. Thank you.
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