Bravo: a deft, quirky and thought-provoking comment about “how difficult writing and reading is and how easy misunderstandings are born”—and my own careless—or not!—phrasing was the writing at issue.
Here is Zanshin’s Comment of the Day on the post, Trevor Noah’s Critics:
Jack,
In the sentence,
version 1. We should respect consistent standards and integrity instead of hypocrisy, not treat them like they are qualifications for sainthood.
I guess you meant expect instead of respect.
version 2: We should expect consistent standards and integrity instead of hypocrisy, not treat them like they are qualifications for sainthood.
And even then, I, with English as a second language, would read ‘ should expect’ firstly as “To consider likely or certain” but given the current climate that is not a given anymore. Therefore, to emphasize the (intended?) meaning of ‘expect’ as “To consider obligatory; require” the following sentence would have been clearer to me,
version 3:We should demand consistent standards and integrity instead of hypocrisy, not treat them like they are qualifications for sainthood.
Flash of insight: By pondering your sentence and rewriting it I realized that your sentence is fine but that I bracketed the sentence in a wrong way; which is made possible given the complexity of two polarities involved in this sentence:
a. consistent standards and integrity versus hypocrisy
b. [treat them with] respect versus treat them like they are qualifications for sainthoodLets name the different parts of the sentence,
A: [should respect
B: consistent standards and integrity
C: hypocrisy
D: treat them like they are qualifications for sainthoodThe bracketing I now think you meant is: { A { B_C } } versus { D }
The bracketing I understood first was: { A { B } versus { C } } versus { D }
But in bracketing the sentence in my way, ‘respect’ felt awkward once reading part D. That’s when I backtracked to A and thought-up ‘expect’. while thinking, “Just another typo by Jack and/or wrongly suggested/inserted word by the word processor.” Continue reading
If you do read the letter, you will note that Attorney Garman never learned that the possessive “its” has no apostrophe, and that he writes English like it is a second, and perhaps third, language. Here are the best, as in worst, examples of his professional writing:
Ethics Alarms 